It would seem that the 68kMLA is down once again. I've gotten confirmation from other members via IRC and AIM, and was wondering if any of the admins were aware and/or doing anything about it yet. I would hate to see the 68kMLA have to start over again... Even though it's been less than six months since the last crash (I'm still waiting for my official "I survived the Great 68kMLA Server Crash!" t-shirt 
), there's still been quite a bit of info posted in there again. While I'm sure that we could rebuild again if we needed to, it would really suck 
Note that you can contact the core group of 68kMLA members via IRC. The channel is #68kmla on irc.freenode.net
Here's to the 68kMLA.
Woah, never mind, it seems to be working again. Ignore this thread I guess
My apologies .
seems to be a bit spotty today :-S
i cant connect at all.
I can try but it will just sit there and not doing anything, like its being DOSed. i have my browser trying and its been like 4 minutes and it has not timed out yet. usualy if the server is down or the connection isnt there it will give me the cant connect to server or server is not responding or it will time out.
dunno what is wrong
Slow for me, too. Very slow.
Peace,
Drew
not working ... so I am lost with my not viewed posts
I wonder why it's so slow. It's been like this for a day or two now. It's rather frustrating.
Well, I visit 68kMLA almost every day, and I didn't notice the site was down or slow. I can only hope that it went down (when you gentlemen saw it that way) due to the owner's making a decent backup. For if my beloved 68kMLA ever goes down again and the owner's start apologizing about a missing or incomplete or destroyed backup, let it be known that those responsible will be put on my personal hit list!
They really had no excuse for no backup the last time the server crashed, so they definitely have no excuse for a future repeat. But I still worry about it. Incompetence doesn't suddenly disappear one day after something bad happens. I think the reason why there wasn't a decent backup before was because the owner's of 68kMLA didn't give a darn about the forum (or they didn't give a "sufficient" darn). So for us to think they've forever changed their lax behavior would be rather ignorant of human nature, I think.
And so I will continue to pound on the owner's of 68kMLA regularly to ensure they know their users are "watching" now. And believe me, I am watching them closely and not ashamed to post about it! It wouldn't matter at all to me if 68kMLA was a run down forum the likes of Jag's House Forum (sad too, because I used to post there a lot in years past). But as of now, 68kMLA has some of the best classic Mac 68k posts around, so I can only hope the owners will consider this and be much more responsible about making regular backups. Backups are to be made by the owners of the forum, and the owner's should never expect their host provider to perform such an important service. And even if your web host does perform server backups, you (the owner of a site on that server) need to do your own regular backups. It's just common sense. And no, once a year is not enough!
Sorry for the rant, folks, but I get heated about backups whenever I reflect on how stupidly this last 68kMLA server crash was handled. Sure, the service provider was the one primarily responsible for the crash, but the owner's were to blame for not having made regular backups. Shame on them! We lost several years of great posts that can never be restored (because not all are saved in Google's cache). Don't let it happen again, 68kMLA!
I was seeing it fine when this thread began, and up till yesterday. Now I'm getting a MySQL error page.
True. It's down as of today. Hmmm. That SQL error page says that Tom Levens had too many connections!
That only emphasizes just how popular that site has become!
And once again, I hope and pray Levens made a decent backup!
its back up again!!!
You know, it was absolutely hilarious when I found this site down yesterday with an SQL error! It's almost like someone is going around hacking into classic Mac servers to bring our forums down! It can't be a coincidence!
well, its down once again! (EDIT: Its back, nvm)
No, I said I found "applefritter" down yesterday with an SQL error!
Down with a "500 Internal Server Error" yet again, as of October 12th, 8:30pm, Japan time.
Tom Levens, what in the world are you doing about these frequent server errors?
UPDATE#1: Site still down as of October 13, 8:30am, Japan time (12 hours exactly, after my report above). Interestingly, today I am not getting an Error 500. Instead the Safari just spins its Wait Wheel forever until there is a timeout. I assume this means someone is working on the problem. Hopefully it is a permanent fix because the downtime is far too frequent. And I certainly hope Mr. Levens has been making his proper server backups!
UPDATE#2: As of October 13, 11:20am, Japan time, I see the following error when trying to access any page in the 68kMLA site:
Was up earlier today, now it's down again.
M
the mla is down in the central florida division as of 12:27 AM 10/14/07
68kMLA is back up!
Come post before it goes back down
(it seems this thing rides a jumpy rollercoaster
68kMLA is down yet again, as of 8:00pm October 18th, 2007, Japan time.
Tom Levens, does some hacker out there simply dislike you, or is your web host incompetent?
Seriously, Tom, this is getting ridiculous! Create a mirror site or something, for crying out loud!
Give them a break...you get what you pay for. I would like to see another 68K forum with better focus. If you think you could manage it better than them, I say go for it!
Let's see... You advocate giving them "a break" (i.e., my saying nothing at all whenever they go down), and yet you slam them for "lack of focus"?
68kMLA is The Most Focused classic Mac site I've found (note that I only participate in the compact Mac forum). Indeed, it is because of my love for that site I am so passionate about commenting whenever it is down.
Hence, I in no way feel 68kMLA has a content problem. They simply have an up-time issue!
I definitely was not "slamming" them at all. I think the site is great, but a lot of other hardware has crept into 68kMLA overall.
That's why I mentioned in my previous post above that I only post in the "Compact Mac" forum of 68kMLA. I can attest to the fact that, in the Compact Mac forum anyway, there is no loss of focus nor any non-compact-Mac hardware being discussed.
And truly, I don't see why we need "classic" PPC Mac forums anyway. If you want a PPC Mac, it makes no sense to get an old PPC Mac. Get a fast G4 or G5 for crying out loud. But there is good reason for having "68k" classic Mac forums, of which the Compact Mac forum of 68kMLA is a major part.
So in terms of being the best "68k Mac" forum, I would have to say that 68kMLA wins the prize, with AppleFritter coming in rather distant second. I say "second" not because this site is inherently bad. It's just that, for whatever reason, there are more active posts on 68kMLA than here. But once and a while you'll find discussions only on Fritter, and that's what keeps me coming back here (and also to moan and complain about 68kMLA whenever its down).
I think a lot of us have moved on. I still have scads of 68k machines in the basement. Heck, even the Duo 280 is still plugged in. I just don't have a use for them any more.
I picked up a Mac Portable (non-backlight) in the case, simply because of the price, and I couldn't let it go to the recyclers (what that shops does with machines that don't sell). It doesn't work, and I have no real use for it. I guess I'm still a collector...
That being said, a JDW run 68k forum site, with minimal B&W low-res graphics, where I could point my SE/30 to, would for sure be top-notch.
I would love to do something like that, but I have no web programming skills. It takes major work to setup a nice PHPbb forum and requires a technical knowledge I unfortunately do not possess. And truly, I've looked into what it takes to create a forum too. The best I've come up with is a test forum on my company's website, created with Vanilla:
http://getvanilla.com/
But even Vanilla is a pain to setup, and there are a serious number of plugins and bugs and other limitations to content with.
Overall though, I'm fairly pleased with the frequency and content of posts in the Compact Mac forum of 68kMLA. However, I don't like the down time and I personally would make a great effort to reassure users that the site is being regularly backed up (in light of the fact the site has gone down more than once in the past, where all posts were lost).
Another think I would likely add, if I were running something like 68kMLA, is the ability to post screen shots and other small pictures. Cubeowner.com has this feature and I must say it is VERY helpful. I don't mind posting my pics on Flickr, but I'd rather post some pics in the forum itself from time to time.
No doubt, you gentlemen would have other suggestions too, which I would certainly be open too (if I were running a forum).
the maintenance is the hard part ..........
I don't know about the other forums on this site and 68kMLA, but if we compare this forum on Fritter to the compact Mac forum on 68kMLA, there is a world of difference. I come here everyday, only to find zero new posts most of the time. For example, it took over one week for someone to post here, and that post is shown directly above this one. It's really quite depressing to see so few posts on Fritter. And while there aren't new posts in the compact Mac forum of 68kMLA every single day, there are posts every week, which is not the case here.
So it would appear the most classic Mac users tend to flock to 68kMLA rather than here. I'm not sure if the reason is because they simply know of 68kMLA and not Fritter (I personally knew of Fritter before 68kMLA), or if they simply like the structure of the 68kMLA forum better. In any case, I prefer whatever forum is easy to use, blocks ads (unlike JAG's HOUSE FORUM), and has active-and-intelligent posters. For now, 68kMLA reigns supreme in this area. Many posts here are intelligent, but they are too infrequent for my taste. I guess that's why many people come to Fritter, merely to use this thread as a screaming post when 68kMLA goes down!
Yes, folks. Our beloved 68kMLA site is down again. And it's been down for 24 hours now.
I can only hope Mr. Levens has taken it down himself on purpose to address the bug I recently found in the SEARCH feature. I would be more than satisfied if the site comes back up with that fixed.
come to him who waits. After 10 or more wasted minutes trying to connect to, let alone log onto, 68kmla from either right-hand or lefthand iMac CRT, simultaneously or alternately, I left right-hand (10.3.9/Safari) trying while I followed the thread about iBook GPU failures from beginning to end (with excursions to posted pics elsewhere) using left-hand (10.4.10/Safari).
On return to right-hand I found it asleep. Wakened, it had made the connection. Log-in looked set for another eternal wait, but was effected in under 30sec.
Conclusion: 68kmla is accessible, but you need to wish very strongly to connect before you bother to try.
de
what is going on that makes it so slow? It takes forever to get on the site. what could possibly make it so slow. On top of it, why is it always giving errors?
Tom Levens, can you give us insight as to why this is happening?
I have been waiting for 20 minutes for the site to load. Now all I have gotten to is a white blank page. I can't even get on to check the latest posts!!!
i get this now
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /home/tomleven/hosted/68kmla.net/forums/db/mysql4.php on line 48
Warning: mysql_error(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/tomleven/hosted/68kmla.net/forums/db/mysql4.php on line 330
Warning: mysql_errno(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/tomleven/hosted/68kmla.net/forums/db/mysql4.php on line 331
phpBB : Critical Error
Could not connect to the database
I was able to connect shortly after DE's post. But now I see the same SQL error that madmax reports.
What a mess! I must assume that Mr. Levens did not in fact take his own site down for maintenance on the SEARCH engine, but instead the same reason that the site went down many times in the past has come into play yet again. Is it a hacker? Or is the server just on the fritz? I wish Mr. Levens would be open about this because perhaps it is a problem that one of us can help him resolve once and for all. No need to be secretive about it, for crying out loud.
yea it was weird, cause it would work and then pop that sql message ( refreshing the page would work,then get another sql error and so on) then it would just pop up the SQL every time.
t does seem rather weird that it would work then not for a bit and then just not work at all.
For much of yesterday (Sun. 11), after the post above, I was able to connect, browse and post to the 68kMLA, with only occasional excruciating waits for acknowledgment of requests. This morning (Mon. 12), after several hours of wrestling with a heap of Seagate 20GB ATA drives being formatted in an external FireWire (Prolific) enclosure, I get the mysql thumb-to-nose. An SOS or reassurance in this thread from tomlevens would spare a deal of speculation, no?
de
I hope MY forums don't get that way. I will even move hosts before I let mine do that.
As of a few moments ago, 68kMLA is back up.
With all these ups and downs in recent months, I can only assume that Mr. Levens enjoys a good rollercoaster ride on his days off. For indeed, if he didn't like the situation, I would think he would take steps to resolve the problem. And if he faced a problem he alone could not solve, I would think he could post about such so the community could lend a helping hand.
You know, you're always welcome to just have a discussion here (where you are clearly already a member) in the 68k forum... If you want more specific PowerPC discussion, you are welcome to do so at the PPCMLA. Neither site has the stability problems that the 68kMLA does.
Peace,
Drew
Yes, folks 68kMLA is down yet again. But it would appear as if Mr. Levens has done so to put it on a better server. Let's hope that solves the problem once and for all.
Drew, I do appreciate your reply. And I do respond here in Fritter whenever there is an interesting thread going or if I can post one for others. But for whatever reason, there are fewer replies here than what I get on 68kMLA. I'd like to change that, but I honestly don't know how. Is it that people simply do not know about Fritter whereas they DO know about 68kMLA? Seems odd to me, because I found Fritter first myself, and 68kMLA dead last (I learned about 68kMLA only through posts on other classic Mac sites).
As to Power PC chips, I have no interest whatsoever in classic PPC Macs. Only 68k classic Macs interest me. Why? Because 68k Macs were in an interesting era of Mac computing that died out long ago. We still have many PPC Macs in action today. Yes, folks, if you own a G5 iMac, you own a PPC Mac! But the fact is that the early PPC Macs, which earn the name "classic" were never the best Macs to use because they lacked real power to push code that wasn't fully optimized by Apple. I know because I got a 6100 when they first came out and was NOT impressed. Most of the early PPC Macs were slower in many ways than their 68k counterparts due to the lack of native PPC software. So while I don't have the best memories of classic PPC Macs, I do have good memories of 68k Macs, which is why I concentrate my posts on 68k Macs.