Back To The Roots back from the dead!

MethodGit · 28 September 2007, 12:55

Yes, you read that right, the popular legal Amiga games site that seemed to have disappeared for almost eons. Well it's now back up and running as of today!

Well, not quite 100%. All the pages, indexes and hosted sites are back up, but the downloads have yet to become available again. There's a new Site Blog page up that gives visitors the lowdown on what's been going on lately server-wise and their attempts to get everything reactivated like before. I'll quote from the first entry (by hippie2000), which is a long piece explaining the reason for the downtime....

Quote:

BTTR Status information
-----------------------

Since a lot of different rumours about the loss of the back2roots.org main
archive crossed the rumour experienced Amiga- and Emulationscene here a short
status update:

The BTTR-Server never was switched off, it just ran without administration the
last 2 years (more precise since summer 2005). This shouldn't have been a
problem, since everything but the updates is automatted.

Surely everyone has noticed that we had massive storage space problems in this
time, which recuded our update frequency a lot. By asking the community for
contributions we tried to finance our disk space hunger, having still a lot of
unreleased material in the queue.

With time we received quite some contributions, so that the future of this
project should be safe. Despite the stabilty and automated nature of BTTR, the
hard disks totally ran out of space during the net-absence of our coder Ralf
Steines (aka hippie2000). This yielded in important parts of the BTTR-engine to
be overwritten with zero sized files. The result could be seen by everybody.

However, Ralf's back, the core team is reunioned, and we are currently working
on our server, located at the university of Trondheim to allow further
expansion of our project.

To everyone who donated so far: Be sure your contribution arrived, and will
only be used for the intended subject. Everyone else is still welcome to
donate. More details on back2roots.org.

In the next weeks we will restructure our servers from scratch, configure
everything to finally return in our old pride. After this further updates are
planned.

Until then the main archive will be online with limited functionality, so you
can see that we are back. Have some little further patience please.

Greets to all, yours back2roots.org team.

TikTok · 29 September 2007, 00:23

Well spotted MG. I can't believe its been two years since it shut down.

I tried downloading one of the Assassins disks as a test and it worked fine, so at least some of the files are back online.

Retro-Nerd · 29 September 2007, 00:44

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=32232

exoticaga · 29 September 2007, 02:04

This type of site is worthwhile to donate to. Though i'm generaly against donating to sites in general. There has to be some point that i say yes, i will donate. Will have to check if it is pp enabled for donations.

Another case for deserved donations is WinUAE. What would we do without it.

21 October 2007, 18:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by TikTok

Well spotted MG. I can't believe its been two years since it shut down.

I tried downloading one of the Assassins disks as a test and it worked fine, so at least some of the files are back online.

I had a problem with the Assassins disks I downloaded there trying to get it to a real Amiga. The .ADF's are 891K not the Standard 880K and when using Amiga Explorer and my A1000 it told me the disk was full before it finished. How do I make the 891K ADF's fit on a DD floppy disk? Is there a disk format utility that I need to use on the blank floppies?

Graham Humphrey · 22 October 2007, 09:46

I don't know why the ADFs are that size, but what I used to do was split the file so I 'lost' the extra 11K. So I was left with an 880K ADF file that worked fine.

YoJoe! · 22 October 2007, 10:01

The game(s) probably used 81 tracks instead of the standard 80. Each track = 11k.

I once had a Ruff'n'Tumble that used 82 tracks! (or maybe just 81) the flash mem in my brain have some bad spots.

Graham Humphrey · 22 October 2007, 10:06

The Assassins disks are standard DOS disks though, so I'm not sure they can use more than 80 tracks...?

YoJoe! · 22 October 2007, 10:20

Ok sounds like someone used a wrong parameter when creating the .adf files. Or they wrongly created them with .dms 81 track then used an auto-converter to morph them into .adf format. You can just never trust an Assassin

22 October 2007, 19:04

Iwas able to use ADF opus on my windows system to extract the files and make new .ADF's and that seems to have worked with the couple I tried. I will poke around for an FTP archive of the other sets done in standard 880K though rather than go through each one.

Still good to see BTR back. Have enjoyed browsing the site and the downloads very much.

Graham Humphrey · 22 October 2007, 19:24

Does Planetemu have the Assassins disks? I'm sure they used to but I haven't checked for a long time. Maybe they'd be the right size?

DamienD · 22 October 2007, 19:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Does Planetemu have the Assassins disks? I'm sure they used to but I haven't checked for a long time.

Sure do Graham, all sizes available

... Amiga > Commodore Amiga - Compilations (0.17) > A

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29 September 2007, 00:23	#2
TikTok Registered User Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Malayasia Age: 43 Posts: 657	Well spotted MG. I can't believe its been two years since it shut down. I tried downloading one of the Assassins disks as a test and it worked fine, so at least some of the files are back online.

29 September 2007, 00:44	#3
Retro-Nerd Missile Command Champion Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Germany Age: 52 Posts: 12,436	http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=32232

29 September 2007, 02:04	#4
exoticaga Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: UK Posts: 446	This type of site is worthwhile to donate to. Though i'm generaly against donating to sites in general. There has to be some point that i say yes, i will donate. Will have to check if it is pp enabled for donations. Another case for deserved donations is WinUAE. What would we do without it.

22 October 2007, 09:46	#6
Graham Humphrey Moderator Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Age: 37 Posts: 11,167	I don't know why the ADFs are that size, but what I used to do was split the file so I 'lost' the extra 11K. So I was left with an 880K ADF file that worked fine.

22 October 2007, 10:01	#7
YoJoe! Amiga Enthusiast Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: USA Posts: 217	The game(s) probably used 81 tracks instead of the standard 80. Each track = 11k. I once had a Ruff'n'Tumble that used 82 tracks! (or maybe just 81) the flash mem in my brain have some bad spots.

22 October 2007, 10:06	#8
Graham Humphrey Moderator Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Age: 37 Posts: 11,167	The Assassins disks are standard DOS disks though, so I'm not sure they can use more than 80 tracks...?

22 October 2007, 10:20	#9
YoJoe! Amiga Enthusiast Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: USA Posts: 217	Ok sounds like someone used a wrong parameter when creating the .adf files. Or they wrongly created them with .dms 81 track then used an auto-converter to morph them into .adf format. You can just never trust an Assassin

22 October 2007, 19:04	#10
mrnukem Posts: n/a	Iwas able to use ADF opus on my windows system to extract the files and make new .ADF's and that seems to have worked with the couple I tried. I will poke around for an FTP archive of the other sets done in standard 880K though rather than go through each one. Still good to see BTR back. Have enjoyed browsing the site and the downloads very much.

22 October 2007, 19:24	#11
Graham Humphrey Moderator Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Age: 37 Posts: 11,167	Does Planetemu have the Assassins disks? I'm sure they used to but I haven't checked for a long time. Maybe they'd be the right size?

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