Maurice Randall Sellout on Ebay

e5frog · Posted: Fri May 25, 2012 1:40 am Post subject:

Think it's pretty decent selling off some stock, ship it and then pay people back with the money that's left over.

THEWIZ · Forum Junkie Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 527

mistermsk wrote:

plbyrd wrote:

Maurice was involved with CMD, but not one of the owners. When CMD went non-Commodore, they licensed a lot of stuff to Maurice to continue producing.

Thanks for the clarification. Hmmm. Are licenses still valid for companies that are no longer around? Is CMD totally gone or did another company buy them?

Copyrights and patents don't just go poof when a company dies. Those rights get transferred somewhere. To another company, to the original owners, somewhere.

A long time ago Maurice bought out CMD's CBM supplies, and licensed some stuff from them to resale. Then he disappeared.
_________________

http://www.style64.org

eslapion · Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 4:00 am Post subject:

C64Knight wrote:

Custom hardware = better CPU does bugger all for the majority of games. Look at the Amiga? Did Outrun become better if run on a £2500 Amiga 3000/25 compared to a £150 A500 bought 2nd hand covered in cigarette burns? IMO nope.

Playing Gunship 2000 on an Amiga 3000/25 with all the graphics settings to the max made it a lot smoother and nicer than on an A500. Yet both have pretty similar built-in graphics capability.

Its the CPU that allowed it to be nicer.

Having a faster CPU on the 64 allows it to draw things much faster and make animations/movements much faster/smoother.
_________________

I have a crystal ball... it is rectangular in shape, made of beige plastic with a tag on it that says Tektronix TDS 1002.

hurminator · Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 10:48 am Post subject:

eslapion wrote:

...Its the CPU that allowed it to be nicer.

Having a faster CPU on the 64 allows it to draw things much faster and make animations/movements much faster/smoother.

Yes, I agree 100%. I have the Chameleon and it makes some games so much better and more enjoyable (Leaderboard golf displays each screen instantly instead of taking 5 seconds for each one -- very handy if you are bad at the game like me Wink

). Several other games that work better as well.

Neo-Rio · C64 Enthusiast Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 703

Schema wrote:

Just got a refund for my JiffyDOS order from 2006. Shocked

I recently got a partial refund from all the way back in the early 2000s. Shocked

It's 10 years late and of course won't take into account lost money on interest and foreign exchange rates over this time.

In an email:-
"I'm trying to, little by little, take care of the people who have been waiting way too long. There are not as many people owed as what some people think. It's easy to blow things out of proportion."

I would normally say thank you, but IT'S BEEN 10 YEARS ! Crying or Very sad

Still at least happy that he's trying to clean up the mess and sort things out.

jerrykurtz · Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 12:46 pm Post subject:

Neo-Rio wrote:

In an email:-
"I'm trying to, little by little, take care of the people who have been waiting way too long. There are not as many people owed as what some people think. It's easy to blow things out of proportion."

Let me see if I can translate his words.

By "There are not as many people owed as what some people think", he means "It's all OK since I only scammed a few people."

Nice to see some effort, but I agree, a little too late if you ask me... I did get my 1571 drive heads this past week. At least with eBay and Paypal, he has to honor his end of the deal otherwise the buyer has an avenue of recourse.

However, considering the US dollar is far worse than it use to be as far as exchange rates go, I think that you may actually be up on that side of the equation. I remember buying games from Canada and Australia and getting what felt like 1/2 off Smile

Now, it's nearly 1:1, so no break on the price for us in the USA. The GBP is currently kicking the dollar's butt and those using that currency seem to be getting the 'sales' so to speak.
_________________

My favorite game houses: Broderbund and Synapse.

motley2659 · Newbie Joined: 06 May 2012 Posts: 13

e5frog wrote:

Think it's pretty decent selling off some stock, ship it and then pay people back with the money that's left over.

That's like saying Bernie Madoff was a decent guy for telling the FBI where his offshore slush funds were to pay back ripped off investors. What a gosh darn honorable guy ole' Bern turned out to be.[/b]

c64web · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 8:41 am Post subject:

Maurice

it's a start.

Shane.
_________________

Looking for a causal coder, Python/MYSQL/PHP/Java. PM Me Smile

Kremlar · Newbie Joined: 30 Mar 2012 Posts: 17

Could someone provide the history on what happened? I'm curious, and was not in the community back then.

Tigro · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 2:59 am Post subject:

Kremlar, read this thread.

sledge · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 3:54 pm Post subject:

Great to see that he refund people who haven't got their items. This is perhaps a new start for him, and a way to get back.

He still have good software to sell. And it would be great to be able to buy Wheels again!

frankencelery · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 6:25 pm Post subject:

I agree with Sledge. I've done a bit of MR bashing over the years too, and although I was promised a CMD HD, I never lost any money on it. If he's working to put things right, that's very good news indeed, and we should all hold our harsh words and let him do it.

As far as the SCPU goes...years ago I had a buddy who put a 383 cubic-inch small block in a 80 Chevy Monza. It was insanely fast, agreed, and caught a few wannabe stoplight kings by surprise, but it was still a Monza, and before long the unibody tore itself apart. Just sayin! Laughing

hbhzth · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:56 am Post subject:

Indeed he has listed some good games lately. I just hope he manages to deliver the stuff he is selling on ebay this time around. Else I think that he has burned the last bridge he has to the C64 community. Judging from his actions these last 6-7 years. BTW thanks for linking to the old thread from 2007.

boulderdash · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 5:09 am Post subject:

ive ordered stuff 5 times now from him in the last 2 weeks and everything has come in well packed and on time
_________________

home of Coprolite Computer By-Products

jerrykurtz · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:56 pm Post subject:

He's done this a few times: pop up, sell some stuff, and disappear.

I would NOT expect him to honor past sales of CMD Hard Drives, RamLinks, and SuperCPUs as he's selling off the finishing labels -- something I think he would hold on to if he planed on producing more of the hardware.

I got some 1571 heads this time around, an a bunch of various JD Roms last time around, but I really feel that the people he screwed out of large sums of money and hardware will NOT see anything.

Let's hope I'm wrong, but history so far proves me right.
_________________

My favorite game houses: Broderbund and Synapse.

c64web · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2012 7:51 am Post subject:

I am hoping he will release Wheels as promised.. Fingers crossed.

Shane.
_________________

Looking for a causal coder, Python/MYSQL/PHP/Java. PM Me Smile

sledge · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2012 6:07 pm Post subject:

I hope he will too. Wheels is too good to just be thrown away!

lostngone · Newbie Joined: 22 Jan 2011 Posts: 11

I would be pissed if I saw something that I sent to him for repair up on ebay.

hbhzth · Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 8:42 am Post subject:

sledge wrote:

I hope he will too. Wheels is too good to just be thrown away!

What's this Wheels I keep hearing about? Smile

Is it a hardware unit of sorts?

merman · Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 11:31 am Post subject:

hbhzth wrote:

What's this Wheels I keep hearing about? Smile

Is it a hardware unit of sorts?

Wheels was an alternative way of running GEOS. With Maurice's background in car repairs, there were lots of driving metaphors - so the desktop became the dashboard. It was designed to take advantage of the newer CMD drives and extra memory (you need memory expansion of some sort to use it).
_________________

The Commodore 64 Book - out now!

sledge · Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 2:41 pm Post subject:

Wheels is not GEOS, but Wheels makes GEOS life alot more easy. It's what GEOS should have been in the first place.

Nonefornow · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:17 pm Post subject:

In refernce to Wheels - have you guys seen this?
Coming soon! Click Here Software will be making available for free downloading the following applications for the Commodore 64 and the Commodore 128: Wheels 64, Wheels 128, plus all the major GEOS apps such as geoPublish, geoCalc, geoFile, and more. These will also be made available for purchase once again for those who do not wish to download and transfer over to a Commodore disk. Currently, Wheels 64 and Wheels 128 are undergoing modifications needed to remove the copy protection which will allow the software to be made downloadable and usable. The downloadable versions will all be keyed to match the GEOS system that is available for download here at cbmfiles.com.

It is in the "cbmfiles.com" site. Relatively recent.

frankencelery · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:27 pm Post subject:

I just downloaded a GEOS128.D81 image from cbmfiles.com and it worked great. Dunno about the copy protection, but I do know that I first tried to take my existing 1581 disk and convert it for use on my uIEC, but it wouldn't boot. The one from cbmfiles.com worked fine, so maybe that's one that's already had copy protection removed!

Unseen · Über Groupie Joined: 26 Feb 2008 Posts: 359

frankencelery wrote:

Dunno about the copy protection, but I do know that I first tried to take my existing 1581 disk and convert it for use on my uIEC, but it wouldn't boot. The one from cbmfiles.com worked fine, so maybe that's one that's already had copy protection removed!

As far as I know all versions of GEOS for the C64 were distributed on 5.25" disks and it did not offer an option to make disks other than the originals bootable - so to get a bootable 1581 disk you must have used a third-party tool. The one I know about is geoMakeBoot by CMD, which seems to be the tool used to create the downloadable GEOS disks at cbmfiles.com. It basically removes the entire copy protection checks.

If your 1581 disk isn't bootable with uIEC you either used a different tool to create it or there is some other difference in it that prevents uIEC from correctly recognizing it. It's very likely that this problem can be fixed, but that requires a copy of the non-booting disk image for analysis.
_________________

Code:

10 a=rnd(-1294):fori=1to52:a=rnd(1):next
20 fori=1to5:printchr$(rnd(1)*11+69);:next
30 printint(rnd(1)*4711)-3590

sd2iec homepage

hurminator · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:59 pm Post subject:

Unseen wrote:

If your 1581 disk isn't bootable with uIEC you either used a different tool to create it or there is some other difference in it that prevents uIEC from correctly recognizing it. It's very likely that this problem can be fixed, but that requires a copy of the non-booting disk image for analysis.

... also the firmware needs to be current. Version 0.10 or later.
http://sd2iec.de/