Quick post, guys. A lot of people have raved about the v1.6 Fujinet for the Atari 8bit systems and some, like me, might not realise just how simply incredible it is. Here, Retro Shack shows us. Enjoy!
I'm 50-50 on the Fujinet, the Networking and comms side don't do a lot for me, I was never a big BBS person, I was a sysop for a while but got bored of it and the only thing I used BBS's for was getting naughty programs off of them, the whole social aspect didn't do a lot for me as they talked like geeks all the time, if you mentioned going out with your girlfriend it was like I'd farted in the room, they just wanted to talk about ATDT and the like. The networking side is very nice but I'd probably never use it that much. SO now it has to get me looking if this 90.00 device (yup, it's gone up since the vid) is worth the outlay, so I look at what the device can do for me to justify the cost. Printing, I like the feature, clever the way it emulates the various printing types, BUT, when did I print out anything on the 8 bit in recent years, answer, not once. So now it's down to virtual drives and tapes, well I have the AVG for that and an SD-MAX and (when I can be bothered to build it) a Mega speedy disk drive mod. So, for me it would be a lot of money for something I would be owning simply to own the tech, I can't justify it. BUT, for someone with all the bits I have and a love of BBS type things, then I'd say it's a dream device. All that functionality on a single cart, superb, just not any use for me.
The FujiNet is an amazing bit of hardware and I had some fun downloading from BBS and liked the PDF printing option. BUT, after trying that the novelty kind of wore off and, like Paul, a lot of the features I probably wouldn't use much. Still a great device though and it's amazing to see such support for our beloved old micros. If I had to pick one add-on for my 800XL though, it's got to be the AVG cart. It lets me easily play all the various file formats I want to, is joystick controlled and really straightforward. I think the latest update also lets you use it as a memory expansion as well. What a great time to be an Atarian!
Indeed - excellent appraisals and summings up there, fellas. As you say, if you're an out and out Atari networking, weather station watching and game coding/listing printing Atarian, then the Fujinet is going to be your best friend and best buy, but if like the majority of us, we also get our fixes through other hardware means, it might become an over-priced dusty and shelved peripheral. There can be no doubting its power and potential though - it's an incredible wee box of tricks and huge praise must be directed the way of the the designer(s) behind it, the Fujinet team. Take a bow - immense design and as Al says, what a great time to enjoy being an Atarian!
Still hacking away on my Fujinet enabled 800xl. I've been wrasslin' that N: handler lately, and I'm afraid it's getting the better of me. I have a ftp server at home and I snagged some free web hosting space(IONOS) but my atari will have nothing to do with either of them. Grr. Things go much better with ftp.pigwa.net so I'm wondering if it's a matter of getting the ftp server tweaked just right
I wouldn;t be at all surprised if you're already knocking on the door of the solution there, Cy - keeping cracking away and as Paul's suggested elsewhere, there's a good chance AtariAge users may well have already covered this issue. Good luck..hunting, buddy and don't forget to keep us updated on your impressive progress.