Atari-launchpad: about this site/contact

NOTE: This site is no longer updated or maintained

What you see is what you get! Expect a lot of non-working links which won't be fixed.
(However, there are things YOU can do in order to try to find their new locations, if available).

About this site

I actually started this site back in 1995 when it was a part of my main web site: St. Hall's URL-Hyperlink Launchpad which basically started out as a collection of links organized by subject for my own, personal use (instead of having to wade through all my bookmark files just to find that particular link).

Being an avid Atari enthusiast at the time I quickly expanded the Atari section with lots of links and sub-sections, and soon the single paged Atari section became too big, taking too long time to finish loading into a visitor's web browser. I found out that I really needed to split it all up into several pages, and that's exactly what I did.
My web site then contained among many different subjects, a basic Atari ST page with assorted links, the Atari ST FTP site page and the Atari ST "essential software and utilitites" pages.

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A separate website

This worked for fine a while, but expanding yet more I found out that what I really needed was a completely separate web site as the Atari sections alone almost outgrew the rest of the site!!!
So I tried to think of somewhere permanent and free, and I was recommended Geocities.

Now I had a completely separate Atari web page at a permanent location and I could expand as much as I wanted. I re-sorted the links at my existing pages, categorizing and sub-categorizing them again, making it even easier for people to find what they wanted. I created a web page version of my Atari ST FTP site list (which I first wrote in 1994 and continued updating regularly, posting to the main Atari ST newsgroups until May 1999), adding file-search abilities and direct links to the sites.
Furthermore, a huge Atari ST software page where I not only listed and linked the software authors alphabetically, but also wrote which software they represented.
Several new pages were also added, and have constantly been expanded.

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My Atari ST file archive

Actually, I also created my own Atari ST FTP file-archive, which contains what I have labelled "essential utilities and software" (as mentioned earlier). This is a collection of
utility software
information (Frequently Asked Questions, virus list and error message lists etc.)
icons,
bug-fixes,
CPX modules and even
MIDI software.

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Awards, rewards, miroring and more work!

Phew!!!!
Is there no end to this? Well, there's still more....
After promoting the site in the Atari ST newsgroups and by word of mouth, my site became quite popular, something which definitely boosted my interest in keeping it in working order and updated. I even got a couple of awards: The Atari Times award '97 for best Atari supporting web page of 1997 and The Atari Service STar award for my contribution to the Atari society, both of which I'm proud of and thank the Atari community for!

Finally, to make access to the site faster, it has now been "mirrored" in both New Zealand (this site) and Norway (identical copies of the main site, but located at different geographical locations).
And to top it off, an organization called Atari.org has given me a cool sub-domain URL (web site address) along the lines of launchpad.atari.org which looks better and is easier to remember than the original one, pointing to the main United States site.

UPDATE (January 2005): there are no more "mirror" sites available. The New Zealand site (where you're at now) is the only location.

........ I guess that's it -the story of this website and the work behind it.

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"What you see is what you get"

I've been updating these pages for several years now, by adding new links, correcting/removing outdated links and so on, but as this is a job that take a huge amount of time (and never ends!) I've decided to leave it more or less like it is for now, so what you see is what you get -broken links and all. Sorry.

Still, all is not lost...
Lots of links should still work, and will in many cases be starting points to other locations which are continously updated and thus have newer sites too.
If you find a link here that doesn't work, all is not lost in many cases. Here are a few things you can try out:

Looking at the URL (web address) in your web browser... if it's one which has sub-pages/directories, try going back one step to the left, and repeat if this still doesn't help. Like this:
- Starting with the URL: http://www.website.com/docs/info/faq/text1.html
- Go back one step which becomes: http://www.website.com/docs/info/faq/
- If this doesn't help, try: http://www.website.com/docs/info/
- Still no go? Try: http://www.website.com/docs/
- That didn't work either... OK, there's still one more go, which is at the actual root/domain level:
  http://www.website.com
It helped? Great!!! How come?
Well, a lot of people restructure their websites, which is OK as long as they remember to replace their old pages with "this page has moved to..." links or information, but many people don't do that, so you get error messages saying that the page isn't there. But the web page can actually still be at the same site.
The above didn't help? That must mean that the site has either:
(a) Been removed complely
... or
(b) Moved to a new location
If the latter is the case you might want to take a guess at the new address (something like the company/organization/theme-name of the site and adding '.com' or '.org' at the end is a good start), or you can search for using Google, by entering a description of the old site, and/or even a name of the site/page if it has one. Good luck!

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Questions? Help?

I used to have a feedback/contact form on this page, but I've decided to remove it since I no longer maintain this site, and therefore don't want any more questions related to it.

If you don't find what you need from the links at this site or otherwise need help and information regarding any aspect of the Atari ST, or just want to get in touch with other Atari ST users from around the world, I suggest you check out the two main newsgroups for this computer platform:

comp.sys.atari.st (software/general discussions)
comp.sys.atari.st.tech (hardware/technical discussions)