If you can see this page - Vintage Radio is finally back. Whilst it'll be easy to get excited about this, and I am a bit, I just want to let everyone know that the site is yet to be fully tested on the new server and there WILL be things that do not yet work, such as the password retrieval service and one or two other non-core features. I will fix these as I run through all the necessary testing. There is no need to comment with things that aren't working - I am expecting that due to the different file structure that there will be things I need to tweak.

The other big issue, and it was the issue that started the downtime in the first place, is that the former webhost corrupted the database during a server migration and left it to me to repair all the damage. The trick is, I do not know how well I did with it. Whilst there are backups, these do not contain the most recent months of comments so if I went back to one of my own backups, there'd be a loss of some of the content - something I want to avoid. Several of the site files were also damaged. Did the webhost fess up and offer to assist? No they didn't. So using my own special brand of nomenclature - they can GGF.

So-called Australian companies that maintain a local sales office and leave the rest to offshore teams aren't worth their salt in my opinion. There is no ownership of problems, no decent service and plenty of language barriers both on the phone and via e-mail. In general, the service stinks and it is a shame that people have to resort to doing things themselves to get anything working properly. There are definite downsides to globalisation.

As for the site itself, including the forums, unless there is a big issue preventing people logging in and posting comments, it is back to normal for the time being. Down the track I will try and devote some time to getting the Wanted and For Sale forum back up and running. When that happens there will be a few new rules - I do not want to see a return to what occurred before I switched that forum off and I will be resolute about the results of any attempt to do so.

Lastly, much of the temporary content posted on the home page will be carried over to the Special Projects forum when time permits, including Fred's home brews. Again, please do not post comments that highlight non=working functions. One thing that I've learned (and I hope that those who doubted me when I have said it previously have also learned) is that when I say that time is in short supply - believe it! It's true. Work commitments, particularly of late, keep me busy and when I get home I spend the few hours I have to relax away from computers. I've also shifted house since the site went down and having done this more times than I care to recall, it is getting harder to do as the years progress. The unfortunate thing about possessing a large radio collection is that every radio has to shift house with me and, for obvious reasons, I cannot out-source that to a removalist.

It is probably also pertinent to mention that as a result of shifting the site, my e-mail is not yet up and running. This will occur some time this week and I will make an announcement once this has been done.

Great work Brad.

After not having the forum at all I am more than happy to put up with a few broken bits. Good luck with the remaining work. Hopefully it all goes smoothly.

Regards, Frank.

Yes indeed, good work Brad.

Having done 35+ years in IT, particularly in dealing with moving large databases, I know how (expletive deleted) difficult it can be particularly if there are issues with the underlying operating system and/or network.

Andrew

Good news Brad!
When normal transmissions are resumed I will continue the progress of my projects.
The "Tasma" chassis is now in a "Rat Radio" wood cabinet for one.
I will do a SC article covering that as well as a post in this forum.
I noted the RME receiver appeared in the current issue of SC.
They did a good job in cutting the 70 odd pages down to magazine length and keeping some logic in the ramble.
Fred.

Brad,

Brilliant stuff....well done. I have been hanging out for this to happen. Great to see Vintage Radio back up.

Agree re your comments regarding ISP's...many are useless and I have tried a few but found that the one I am currently with is VG but sadly they do not offer web hosting yet.
But being based in Morwell Victoria with Aussie staff in their call centre there one cannot ask for more...they are GOOD.

Lindsay

Hi all,

Good news that Vintage Radio is back up .... great stuff.

GGF .... I didn't need to do a Google search to work out that one ....

Cheers,
Ian (tinkera123)
Melbourne

GGF .... I didn't need to do a Google search to work out that one ....

I once worked for a short time at a private school in Sydney's north. I had a staff member under me who was deaf and I spent some time with him learning some basic sign language. One of his colleagues was with us to help with translating early in the peace.

When it came time to learn the sign language version of GGF, it turned out that it was identical to the English version - the V-sign.

If you can see this page - Vintage Radio is finally back.

TBH, I thought it was gone for good, I had pretty much given up. I had to read the site's front page before I could believe it.

Is Fred still about? I've got 2 Astor chassis and a cabinet of the type he worked on a few months back, if he wants them. I'm about to chuck them out.

Robert, you weren't the only one. I got to the stage where I just got sick of all the hurdles and was getting prepared to work out how to make the announcement that no-one would have wanted to hear.

My perseverence will hopefully pay off but I am not yet prepared to say the site is back to square one yet. I want to wait for it to get back to its previous level of busy so it can test under the normal load that it is subject to and then I will be more confident about it. The previous webhost pretty much stuffed everything and then absolved itself of responsibility. It is behaviour I've seen from many webhosts that I and many people I know have used over the years.

Some members may have understandably already reached the stage where it was pointless waiting for any longer. I can't blame them. It's just how things are sometimes.

Just a thought Brad....

The servers the webhost was using - solid state drives by any chance?

If you are running an application that is doing frequent writes to the drive (like a database), SSDs WILL wear out. Despite wear levelling algorithms. Causing slow response and eventual failure.

You are better off with a magnetic drive with spinning platters!

You are better off with a magnetic drive with spinning platters!

I second that. My C drive is SSD for boot and launch speed but I back up daily to a spinner. My D drive, where I keep data is also a spinner.

I have gone through a few SSDs in the last few years.

Brad: thanks for persevering. With the demise of Yahoo Groups, there is nothing else like this site locally -- except for some Facebook efforts -- and there's no way I'll use the Zuckerberg thing.

Re: "due to the different file structure that there will be things I need to tweak." ... have you migrated away from MS Access?

IIRC, the site was taken off the air in October 2020, yet I see some posts dated between then and now, so has it been up and down in that period? Anytime I checked I always got the TBA notice. Maybe that page was cached?

It's been up for a couple of months, but not officially. Strangely, I could post from here, but not from Hilltop - I'd get error 500 while trying to log in.

Somehow I was expecting a whole new forum with a different URL, but it appears to be the same one that's been alive for a while.

So let's just be thankful that Brad was able to resume normal operations.

I'm not on Facebook either, or Twitter for that matter.

I am a firm believer in a 'proper' hard disc. If you can get through the first year with one it'll generally last longer than the rest of the machine it resides in. I am not sure what the webhost used. For many reasons they usually keep to themselves on things like hardware type and OS version, etc. If one asks they might divulge what one wants to know but they seldom put such information on their websites.

Of course, the customer can do their own digging too - if your website runs ASP or PHP you can put a variable on a page which can identify that sort of information. I needed to do that when I wanted to know the file path to my site, which ended up being on W: Drive. I had to change the drive letter in VR's scripts to get things to work correctly here.

There something to be said about Facebook and at the rate its going, & where its going has caused, ire to members of the US Senate; not happy campers. They will win.

Marc

Hi Brad,
I have just realised I sent a message to you on the wrong post. It went to the post following your post on general discussion.
Sorry regards Stan