It's me

[Supimajo]

Hi there,

this is Mario Misic, the actual technical maintainer of the 'Big Book of Amiga Hardware'.

At first i want to say sorry for my english speaking. It's not perfect.
I'm living in Bochum/Germany and maintained the german mirror of the BBoAH for several years and worked closely together with Ian Chapman in this time.

As you know, Ian gets retired of maintaining the BBoAH over the years and we came together to put the BBoAH in professional hands, to lead the BBoAH in a great future.

Differently than Ian i was a man, who stands talks and answer and stand for tranzparenz about the background work of the BBoAH.

I know, that some of you was annoyed of the actual colors.
Let me say, that the actual colors are an unavoidable temporary solution and will be changed as far as possible.
Also i know some "language bugs" and i'm working on them.
My intention was, to lead the BBoAH mostly in Ian's mind and extend it with much more features.
Also i guarantee you, that the BBoAH NEVER becomes commercial!
The reason, why Ian and i have choosen a commercial owner for the BBoAH was, that we're planning to reactivate the downloads area in near future.
A commercial owner can give much more possibilities to this than a private.

As in past, the BBoAH still should be a project from AMIGA users for AMIGA users.

We're always open for suggestions and intentions about additional features.

At this point i want to close my introduction so far.
Feel free to ask me anything you want.

[amigagr]

keep going man, and good luck :-)

[tonyvdb]

Hello Mario, to Amiga.org

Thanks for keeping the Big Book of Amiga Hardware going.

[AmigaMance]

 Welcome! And thank you for maintaning the biggest site of Amiga hardware.

[Matt_H]

Sounds excellent. Thanks for addressing the color, too.

[pedro7]

Hi and welcome,

I am curious about the driver uploads. Why is dms the preferred format? Why not adf files compressed with lha or zip?

Also I would like to make a suggestion.
How about a web based form for people to submit additional information about pieces of hardware. People might not know enough to give a full writeup but might know little pieces of information that could be useful. A web based form could make it much more convenient and so hopefully more people would submit and update information.

[TheWizard]

Hello Mario,

Thanks for maintaining 'The Big Book of Amiga Hardware'. Back to the color issue, if you could maintain a well-contrasting color scheme like the original, that would be perfect! Thanks.

The Wizard

[LoadWB]

Thanks, Mario.  I see your name on just about every article in the site.  Looking forward to what is to come. :pint:

[irishmike]

Really glad to see that BBoAH is going to have a bright future now!  I too would like to see the downloads in LHA or ZIP.

Just my two cents there :-)

Carry on with the excellent work!

Mike

[yetihw]

I could care less bout the colors etc.  To me its an invaluable technical reference and I honestly would not be upgrading my 2000 the way I am without it.  Thank you thank you...

[Supimajo]

Thank you all for your feedback.

As we'll start with the downloads again, we try to provide the drivers in some different file formats, such as DMS, ADF Lha or ZIP.
But before this come true, a lot of legal hires must be considered.
In germany we have very strictly laws regarding copyrights.
But the new owner of the BBoAH (a german publisher) has plenty of connections to different copyright owners.
Also i have personal contact to some developers and copyright owners.
Therefore we're looking confidently to the future in this direction.

A 'web based suggestion' we don't like.
Too much are the possibilities ,to harm the BBoAH in this way.
Feel free, to submit a suggestion via email.
It doesn't matter if you have only a little piece of information.
If your information is new and/or additional, it will be added to the database.

Another important thing, i wrote in the english BBoAH Forum some days ago, but isn't been read here, i think:

Ian Chapman received a value of donations from many users.
This donations will be freezed at the moment.
At this time we'll NOT collect any further donations, but the Users want it.
Our intention is, to provide a worthy AMIGA related hardware project in the future with this money.
Your money was NOT LOST!
If we think, a future AMIGA hardware development is worthy, the BBoAH will officially sponsor the developer with your money.

I hope i could answer the most questions.
If there are still any, feel free to ask me.

[zipper]

Mainly OK.
- well, you could correct that A500 tower section of Micronik; those 2 towers are the same, originally called Mini-TOWER AMIGA-500 (von Einbauanleitung); later as the Infinitiv towers came for A1200, this tower for A500 was advertized as A500 Classic (Mini?) Tower.

[Supimajo]

Mainly OK.
- well, you could correct that A500 tower section of Micronik; those 2 towers are the same, originally called Mini-TOWER AMIGA-500 (von Einbauanleitung); later as the Infinitiv towers came for A1200, this tower for A500 was advertized as A500 Classic (Mini?) Tower.

Your suggestion has added to the Database (aber das hättest du mir auch auf Deutsch schreiben können)  :-P

[zipper]

Da brauche Ich zu viel Wörterbuch, als Deusch erst mein 4:te Sprache ist :roll:

[Supimajo]

Hi there,

for a long time i don't talk to you all.

Some month were gone if i've taken over the maintaining of the BBoAH and here i'd like to inform those users, who don't visit the english BBoAH forum to read some news.

As you can see, we are still working on updates frequently and collected some interested new database entries.

The new structure of the BBoAH has brought us some additional people, who provide us with additional material for the BBoAH in this new way of communication.
Also we've found a very firm CGI coder, who has recode some of the BBoAH scripts to eliminate some bugs and provides new features in the near future.
 
For all people, who are interested in, i placed some internal BBoAH statistics here:

http://www.amigafuture.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15023

That's so far for today.
If you have any questions or suggestions/ideas, let us know please!

Kindest regards to every Amiga user all over the world,


Oh.....i've forgotten:

There's still the "problem" with the colours of the new style.

Let me say, that i became a lot of mails because of the new style at the beginning.
After some days no mor mails have arrived and the BBoAH ist still in use by a lot of users all over the world.

It's very hard to go away from an old and well known thing to an new one.
But in the case of the BBoAH, this way was not hard at all.
Most of the BBoAH is the same as in Ian's time - but the colours.
The new red/white is a MUST DO, because reasons of corporate identity.
The handling of the BBoAH and all other things are all the same as before.
After some Days in past i don't receive any more mails about changing the new BBoAH colours.
Because of that, i don't see any important reason to change the actual colours back to old-style.

My opinion is, to lead the BBoAH into a Future, and NOT back into the past.
Because of that i shortly placed the BBoAH under the "Creative Commons License", to protect it against any commercial things for the future.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/de/deed.en

Ian and i come together, that this was the best way, to establish the BBoAH for a long future without having trouble with any copyright owners and respect each of the suggestors, who have provide the BBoAH in any time.

I bow myself before all people, who had provide the BBoAH in any way!

Regards,

Mario Misic
--
Big Book of Amiga Hardware