I’m still alive and I’ve noticed that some other people are starting to return and regain interest. It seems that interest in these old computers is cyclical. My Firebee is broken and I hope to repair it but so far I’ve not found a good way to do so. The components are very small and the one in particular is tough to get off the board, even with a hot air rework tool. The problem it has is a known issue from the first generation machines. To be honest it’s such a complicated tiny machine I’m surprised I didn’t have more problems. All in all I have no regrets, even if I don’t get it fixed. Since I’m not travelling so much anymore, I’ve been able to get my Falcon out of storage. Sometime long ago my repaired CTPCI came back from Rodolphe Czuba and also got put into storage. After various updates and work I now have a fully functioning CT60 Falcon with Radeon. Many people may not know this, but this is the fastest and most usable Atari setup. Everything from disk io to memory performance to software compatibility is better. The Radeon VDI is much faster than the Firebee. It’s a delight to use this machine. I’ve ordered a super tall Rosewill case that I intend to recase it in. A job I’ve always done a bit half-assedly in the past which I intend to do properly with all the internal ports and switches extended to the rear of the case. I also got a MonSTer board for my Mega STe and 1040STe. Both machines are now in pretty good shape with the 1040 having a Gotek usb floppy emulator. It’s now definitely the perfect “all in one” ST in that you can run TOS 1.04 on it for compatibility or TOS 2.06 for full featuredness. The Mega STe might be even better for that now honestly. I have 2 TT’s but sadly both are now broken. The one has bad video which stems from previous owner accident before I acquired it, the other now has no video at all but still boots. This seems to have happened sometime in storage. Then finally there is the MiST and Aranym. These two, I have been using a lot, Aranym on the beepi and MiST running MagiC. Both are excellent choices for people who want to get back into the scene without hardware headaches, but compatibility is not perfect on the MiST and you can’t run MiNT. More to come…