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Swiss Army Knife Utilities


mritter

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My name is Mark Ritter. Back in the 1990s, and still today, I went by 'mritter'. During high school and college I wrote a collection of utilities I called "Swiss Army Knife Utilities". These small but useful programs were my way of teaching myself C and good coding practices.

As with many of us, when the Amiga "died" we had to move on to Windows. So I sold my Amiga system, books, disks, everything. Then I bought my first Windows computer.

But before I did that, I uploaded the latest versions of my programs and the source code to Aminet. I wanted people to learn from my source code. I spent 6 years programming on my Amigas. Loved every minute of it.

I uploaded the programs and source code to Aminet on June 6, 1996.

Now, 17 years later, I have started to program again in C for Windows. But, all I can think about is my Amiga programming days. So I started to Google my programs. I found most of them on Aminet still. But I can not find any of my source code. This is where I need your help.

I am hoping someone out there has a copy of my source code, or knows of a site that has it still as a download. Google is not much help. Aminet doesn't have the source code, just my programs.

I am pleading for help. I really want to find my source code so I can get started programming for the Amiga again. And take that knowledge and apply towards my Windows C programming.

This means the world to me!

Here is a list of my programs:

Tabulator 1.2
Universal Translator 1.8
Version Handler 1.1
Screen Mug Shot 1.1
Sound Player 1.2
Printer Spooler 1.3
CxPx 1.0
Conundrum 1.3
Icon Copier 1.1
Monitor 1.7
Monitor II 1.0
Intuitive DMS 1.6
Shell Menus 3.0
Tool Type Editor 1.4
Audible Illusions 1.3
Optimus View
Retina FLImation
Mega Conundrum 1.0

On Aminet, do a search for 'SAKU-V' or 'Mark Ritter' or 'mritter'.

Maybe you have used some of these utilities back in the day. They made on to Fred Fish disks, several magazines with disks, etc. I hope you found them useful.

Please reply here or contact me directly if you have or know of any of the source code archives for my programs.

Thank you from the bottom on my Commodore heart!

(Vic20, C64, C64C, C128, A500, A1200, A2000, A3000)

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Good idea, but no luck. It seems like the entire src directory on Aminet is either missing completely, or nearly empty when can find it.

My next step is to try the old newsgroups. I didn't use them much, but not much else to look into.

What sucks is that I uploaded my code on 1996; Google didn't start until 1998.

Thanks.

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Good idea, but no luck. It seems like the entire src directory on Aminet is either missing completely, or nearly empty when can find it.

My next step is to try the old newsgroups. I didn't use them much, but not much else to look into.

What sucks is that I uploaded my code on 1996; Google didn't start until 1998.

Thanks.

Don't forget that DejaNews was the big thing for web access of USENET before Google came along, and Google famously acquired them. From Wikipedia ...

The Deja News Research Service was an archive of messages posted to Usenet discussion groups, started in March 1995 by Steve Madere in Austin, Texas. Its powerful search engine capabilities won the service acclaim, generated controversy, and significantly changed the perceived nature of online discussion.

While archives of Usenet discussions had been kept for as long as the medium existed, Deja News offered a novel combination of features. It was available to the general public, provided a simple World Wide Web user interface, allowed searches across all archived newsgroups, returned immediate results, and retained messages indefinitely. The search facilities transformed Usenet from a loosely organized and ephemeral communication tool into a valued information repository. The archive's relative permanence, combined with the ability to search messages by author, raised concerns about privacy and confirmed oft-repeated past admonishments that posters should be cautious in discussing themselves and others.[6]

[...]

By 2001, the search service was shut down. In February 2001, Google acquired Deja News, and transitioned its assets to groups.google.com.[8] Users were then able to access these Usenet newsgroups through the new Google Groups interface.

By the end of 2001, the archive had been supplemented with other archived messages dating back to May 11, 1981.[9][10][11] These early posts from 19811991 were donated to Google by the University of Western Ontario, based on archives by Henry Spencer from the University of Toronto.[12] Shortly after, Google released a new version, which allowed users to create their own (non-Usenet) groups.

It's possible that if your stuff made it to USENET then it just might have bounced around Google hard drives and is still available. I've seen some text from discussions I was in from the mid-80's thanks to the great forward-thinking Henry Spencer. I can't remember if any attachments or files from those days made it though. You really should try corresponding with someone from the Google Groups organization.

Good luck!

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But I was not referring to "generic" Wayback Machine, but rather to the specific CD collection.
As an example, this:
http://archive.org/details/cdrom-aminetcdnumber101996
is Aminet CD #10 1996
Which does contain (one that I found):

22677 39 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 39270 Dec 20 1995 /Aminet/gfx/board/OptimusView14.lha22681 5 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 4126 Jan 5 1996 /Aminet/gfx/board/OptimusView14.readme

Maybe, just maybe there are some of these including the source code (if it was "use at the time" to distribute the source code also).

Now searching on the aminet.net on the Wayback MAchine, I can find in /gfx/board/ version 1.5:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000618143725/http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dirs/gfx_board.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20030507152723/http://www.aminet.net/gfx/board/OptimusView.readme

(but not the actual .lha file - and I have no idea if it actually contains the source :unsure:)

A number of Gold Fish Cd's are available (but again I have no idea if they contained your programs or the sources):

http://archive.org/details/cdrom-goldfish-1cd1

http://archive.org/details/cdrom-goldfish-1cd2

http://archive.org/details/cdrom-goldfish-2cd1

http://archive.org/details/cdrom-goldfish-2cd2

http://archive.org/details/cdrom-goldfish-3

AND there is an online memorial archive to Fred Fish:

http://fish.back2roots.org/

where some of the files are available....

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Thanks for all the help!

Oh, I haven't given up. I have put like 20+ hours into this in 3 days.

Jaclaz, that is one of my programs, but not the source code. I guess I should have put in my original post that I named the LHA archives (I think) like this:

OptimusView14_source.lha

-and-

SAKU-V1.4-OptimusView source code (.readme file)

So it will be obvious if/when I come across them. I did all the .readme files with the same starting SAKU-V so I could easily search for them.

I have gone through the entire Fred Fish collection, no luck. Just some of my binaries.

I think the Usenet groups is my best bet. But I also agree, I doubt the attachments were saved.

The search goes on......

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Found this on Usenet:

By popular demand, I have put my program's source code back on-line
on my web page. The program's themselves are not up due to lack of
space, but they can be found on AmiNet, search for "SAKU-".
This may be for a limited time, so get them while you can.

Swiss Army Knife Utilities

http://www.netexpress.net/~mritter/

------------------------------------------------------------

Programmer: A red-eyed mammal capable of conversing
with inanimate objects.

Mark Ritter - Swiss Army Knife Utilities

mri...@netexpress.net - http://www.netexpress.net/~mritter/

------------------------------------------------------------

Only 32000 more posts to scroll through.....

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Thanks, guys. But still no luck. I even emailed my old service provider, NetExpress, last night asking if by any chance they had a backup from the 1990s. Yeah right. But I tried. Nope. They probably had a good laugh over that. I would have.

The Wayback Machine says the server with my site, http://www.netexpress.net/~mritter, is down. Fingers crossed it comes back online and has my files.

I doubt I posted my code on usenet. I always did it on my own site. But I am sure I did on Aminet, but no trace of it.

Thanks again for the help. I posted this same message on 2 Amiga forums and no one has replied. Way to go MSFN!

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"I even emailed my old service provider, NetExpress," "...asking if by any chance they had a backup from the 1990s. Yeah right."

It's not an unreasonable hope. Other users on that server show files with last modification dates going back to 1996, e.g.;

http://www.netexpress.net/~dnaab/img/

It is possible that they have an old server backup, sitting on a retired 'ancient' hard drive.

Several other avenues of inquiry for contact have been PM'd to you (including one dug up on

Netexpress's "experimental FTP server" ftp://ftp.netexpress.net/ ).

_

Although the Aminet server does contain copies of about a third of your below pgms, no where could any source, src,

or '.C' files of them be found on Aminet.

_

Audible Illusions 1.3

Conundrum 1.3

CxPx 1.0

Icon Copier 1.1

Intuitive DMS 1.6

Mega Conundrum 1.0

Monitor 1.7

Monitor II 1.0

Optimus View

Printer Spooler 1.3

Retina FLImation

Screen Mug Shot 1.1

Shell Menus 3.0

Sound Player 1.2

Tabulator 1.2

Tool Type Editor 1.4

Universal Translator 1.8

Version Handler 1.1

Edited by buyerninety
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I finally got a hold of Olaf Barthel. HE HAS SOME OF MY SOURCE CODE!!!!!!!!!!

He found an old archive, MarkRitterArchive.lzx, from December 1996, of some code we were working on together.

Not all of it, but I think enough to back up to speed faster.

I am going to ask him to check for more and I will keep searching.

Thanks for all your help!

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