The AM Forum

Uh-oh.

Just went to see if Bunker of Doom had a manual... looks like it is down, unpaid, or something??

Anyone know what happened?
Trying to pull his name out, swapped emails some years back... he had a LOT of STUFF!!

                    _-_-bear

Bear, try sending a PM or email to Patrick, KD5OEI.  His email is listed on the zed.

  I'm able to access the site, but many of the links to manuals and such just lead to the dreaded 404. Not all of them, though; some of the links work fine.

His web site comes up fine.
www.bunkerofdoom.com

Interesting.  At the time I answered Bear's post earlier today, the site did not respond.  But now it is responding.  At that time I verified DNS was not the problem.  

 nslookup bunkerofdoom.com
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  192.168.0.1
Name:    bunkerofdoom.com
Address:  206.130.102.170

Whatever it was, it is working fine now.  
There was no ping response at 21:06 EDT today.

Go figure.....

Life can be a bitch at times!

" NEW! ~
Please bear with us as we work to survive a migration. Some items may return errors during this time."

Found on his page at 8:15 this morning.

a ha!!

"migration"!

Seems that migration is also an issue with certain text messages by a certain entity...
...no wonder the rest of us have such troubles then??

                _-_-bear

Maybe all the rain in Texas recently has caused him some problem. Dallas area so far this year has had about 30 inches of rain.

PLEASE DO NOT POST MY EMAIL ADDRESS ON A PUBLIC FORUM. PLEASE REMOVE THIS POST HASTE. I was wondering where all the extra spam was coming from. Thanks a lot what a sorry thing to do.

Sorry to take a long time to log in here. Been busy. I assure all, it is not 'unpaid'.

Westhost 'migrated' all of their sites to some other server farm. Different IP address, who the heck knows what web server software they use. For that matter, what o/s, though it is likely some kind of Linux because that is free.

They announced this on a friday, after hours, and told eveyone to go update their DNS, mail, webserver config, etc.. within 3 days the original sites (many containing actual businesses and databases LOL). Clowns playing with peoples' livelhoods.

So in the webservers I'm familiar with, which are 'Apache' and 'IIS', there is a text type of file called .htaccess
This file contains directives to be obeyed by the webserver software. There is a directive called 'speling', which tells the webserver to ignore spelling errors in URLs. The usual result of a spelling error, when 'speling' is ON, is that the server will then offer the guest a choice of close matches, instead of giving a 404 error.

I don't have spelling errors in URLs. That is, not if the case is ignored - but wait, case isn't spelling. Last time I looked at human dictionaries, case or capitalization is not a spelling thing, but simply a grammar thing to denote beginnings of sentenced and proper nouns and acronyms, etc.

But that is not the main point. The other directive in the file is called 'caseonly'. If this is turned on, only case discrepancies are ignored. 'speling' must be on as well. So, it's like telling the web server to check spelling and react to errors, but ONLY if it is an upper/lower case "error", in which case ignore the case and deliver the target resource the URL calls for.

Some URLs and file names on the site have a difference of case - that is, the HTML code will ask for "/LIT/RCA_document.pdf", but the path and target may actually be "/lit/RCA_document.PDF".

So, it's a specific type of syntax error, if anyone wants to make that stretch.

o/s like the UNIX of old, and semi-clones Linux are inherently fussy about upper case and lower case, and get their shorts wound up about it. This is because of the age-old defect in those o/s of making commands uppercase and filenames lower case. This, I suppose, was originally to keep people from accidentally trashing the system. It's not a problem any more, not for many years. But that's how it was, and the convention has been kept, just like many other conventions in other o/s's.

High end o/s like VMS / OpenVMS don't care about case, never have. My humble site was born in the dim time of the internet, written and hosted on VAX-VMS, eventually got an IP address, and grew with some edits being made in Microsoft Notepad. Of course it workled perfectly. Being all manually written it loads up fast and there's no need for css, scripts, ads, tracking or other bloat for somerthing so simple.

When the traffic became too much for a business ADSL line in the actual bunker of doom building, I moved the site to remote host 'Westhost', which was on Linux, with the Apache web server. This very issue we see today popped up immediately. I was able to get someone on the phone, and they immediately told me what to do, and it worked for years.

Fast forward to now: They moved it, didn't set up DNS or anything -I had to figure that out (no support) and it does not work because of the case issue is apparently not respected on their junk farm. You can't get anyone on the phone, and service tickets are not addressed. If you call the number, some kind of hellish robot answers the phone and tells you to use chat or start a ticket, then hangs up. Chat, BTW, and a 45-90 minute wait time, no doubt because all their junk is broken.

Not only that, I can Telnet and or FTP in there, or log in with the web-based 'control panel', see in the directory where there is the .htaccess file, that it has numerous versions, and none have worked. So, they did try to make it work, but have failed. Apparently, they don't know why it doesn't work or it would be fixed. I also tried editing the .htaccess file for speling and caseonly, to no avail.

Now, the buffoonish people who are running the new server, and using whatever undisclosed goat-head-of-demons abomination o/s and web server software is installed, I would presume, are more knowledgeable than I. So perhaps there is some cock-a-mame rat-king swirling cesspool of steaming rack-mounted oobleck there, and they are too terrified to speak too many names lest something even worse rear its ugly head and drag them all down through the raised floor into a bottomless pit.

I'm at a loss to fix this, I don't know anything about abominations or witchcraft. One thing I do know is that there is zero motivation to rewrite the entire site to fix this, when there is an .htaccess file right there.

It came right off your home page.

it's an image of his email address.

  Just for my own education: is showing an email address on a website as an image, rather than as a link, more secure since the 'bots are less likely to find it? Never thought about it before, but it seems like a good idea.

web crawler indexing is text based.  the web crawlers look at text like hyperlinks and metadata within the HTML of a webpage(s).

Very good; thanks. I took a course in HTML way back in the 90's, but it seems like (and it was) a very long time ago.

Thank you for removing the text. I understand the misunderstanding. There is indeed a big difference b/c crawlers and harvesters treat text differently from images and no one is analyzing images for (non-captcha types of) text because of the very small chance of reward.

After a year of rotten service, the Host has not been able to fix the site at all. I finally fired them.

I should have done this months ago but I guess I hoped they would fix it. The site is backed up x3 and may be brought back elsewhere later, IF I can find a host that:
1.) answers the phone and
2.) has human support via voice.

LOL I have standards. Like 50 year old Beefeater gin, of which a shot has been taken to celebrate.

Bunkerofdoom is still up at this time, but I'm sure they will be removing at their convenience it since the money's turned off.

Thank you to those who visited the site.

Contact Scott, KA9FOX, or one of his people at at QTH.com.
https://www.qth.com/
Maybe they can help as a new home.

Thank you, Patrick, for all the years you made this excellent resource available. Wishing you luck in finding a new host.

I always found it an eclectic website, well worth the electrons to visit!

Patrick,
for the handful of websites I set up over the years for some, I set them up with InMotion Hosting. Many years ago they were rated in the top ten of hosting services and their prices were very reasonable then. I don't know how they rate these days but they do have a staff that is available 24/7 via phone. I found them very responsive and helpful for when I needed assistance. 

Thanks  and I have been looking at QTH all day, not at the hosting offers but at some of the commercal ham or radio type of businesses they are hosting. I believe that if small businesses including ham stuff are happy then the host should be good enough for me. Of course I will also look at InMotion and any other suggestions.

Amazing on the QTH "unlimited" offering.. well we all know that's not exactly true but I'll have to look at the policies.

I have had a very good experience with InMotion Hosting as well. Been using them since 2010.
Excellent uptime and responsive service via phone, email, or chat. My site has about 90,000 files and 97 GB.

I'll have to explore InMotion again, I have not had time to do it in any depth due to lots happening around here. QTH has the sketch-mark (*) after 'unlimited storage' To be sure there are upcharges after 10GB but haven't had time to inquire there either. It'll be a few months before I have time to do anything but appreciate the suggestions that's for sure.

Hi Patrick,
I've been using Interserver.net for my dedicated domain servers for about 15 years. The uptime has been stellar and the Customer Service is outstanding. When I signed up with them the cost was only $54 per domain and that price was locked as long as I kept the account. I think they are up to $64 for the basic server now with optional upgrades.
Check them out:

https://www.interserver.net/dedicated/

73,

Michael
WZ5Q

The site is de-activated.

Indeed it is. At this time, the site exists locally in a few backups. It's a good time to do a major cleanup and improvement.

Removing unneccessary files.

Trying to put scanned publications that are made up of hundreds of individual JPG files into a single PDF, e.g. the RCA Tube Manual and some Transformer Catalogs. The old Sylvania tube manuals will be left as is (html based) because they already include an index of links like the Frank tube site.

Maybe updating or checking for updates for some material where I have previously gotten permission to mirror some resources.

Adding links to the main page to deliver many existing but unlinked files that were at some point uploaded and forgotten.

Adding new scans.

Somewhere, I think I might have most of the Triad transformer catalogs page by page scans at full resolution, but they need cropped, every single page, and put into PDFs. The resolution is higher than the resources presented online by Triad. I have to ask permission.
BTW Cropping a stack of images which may or may not all have the same cropping sizes and coordinates is no simple task. I don't have automatic  or batch software for that, it may not exist in my $0 price range.

A programmer friend suggested using some automation to fix up the case issue and also to apply CSS site-wide to be consistent.

About trying to put scanned publications that are made up of hundreds of individual JPG files into a single PDF:


IRFANVIEW will do it and with as much or little lossy compression as wanted. I try to go uncompressed. The "Westinghouse  Annual Catalogue of Electrical Supplies 1920" of 1488 pages at 4000x6000 turned out to be 4.2GB. This was done as a test of the software. It not only converted jpeg2000 format to jpg, but also put them in a PDF.
It should have been closer to 1.2GB at the same quality, but that was my mistake in eschewing all compression.
Irfanview can also use multi threads, but if that's turned ON, even with only 2 threads, then it can run the cpu up to 75%. Fast work but can overheat the processor after a couple minutes. The only cure is to control the power setting on the PC to 'eco'/green/LOW, meaning lowering the clock speed.

The happiness factor of large image size/lowest compression scan is that one does not get a headache from trying to refer to the small print and image details in the weighty tome.

This can not be said of the 184MB PDF available online for download. The point is that a lower-rez version is what most people want, and what more serious others need for a preview.

archive.org saw fit to include all the 4000x6000 source pages as well as the 184MB PDF document, so that devotees who had first read the 184MB file could decide to get the full resolution materials and could reassemble an excellent-looking and visually accurate volume from them.

The halftone dots are distinguishable as pixels in those 4000x6000 images. I have to give that site a lot of credit. Many documents include the raw or highest resolution scans as downloadable items.

The only thing I could not do to make it better is auto-crop. The main blockage looks like the right and left pages, as in a bound document. Cropping according to coordinates plus right and left offsets didn't seem possible, but I'm going to try again.

Hope all that made some sense. When the site comes back, I want it to have some improvements, or less annoyances in any case.

Thanks for all of the horrendous amount of work you have done Patrick and are doing to archive the antique and boat anchor documentation that makes it convenient for the rest of us to keep old gear going, the education the material provides, and for the sentimentality of just looking at the papers and remembering the good old days.

the site is being hosted again, though some items are still 404. Someone else is hosting on a private machine but no one's working on it.

nice to see it back up. thanks Patrick