[abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] - is it still broken/faulty?

[Richard]

I am trying to update my personal archive of the [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] forum (which I started years ago). As I was not connected on-line to the internet - I saved the manually collected webpages to usb sticks.

My collection seems to number about 10,000 web pages and the best overall estimate indicates reasonable archiving up to roughly end of 2017 (starting from earlier years).

I have tried to complete (and verify completeness) by visiting [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] (forum) but have run into problems - such as at one stage a message was returned that "someone may be trying to fool you … site is unsecure...etc).

As an example of another problem :-

when visiting Discussion, 190 pages are indicated (on  page 1 starting April 2018) but when go to page 2 of same only 138 pages are indicated (starting at 2013 and earlier) and I cannot view any particular topic. (My personal archive - till end of 2017 - lists I have 187 pages).

Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks

[bplus]

[abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] is ghost ship long abandoned, it's crew missing or dead

or here!

[SMcNeill]

I’ve been trying to piece together as much of the old [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] sit as I can, to retrieve some long lost golden nuggets of coding.  If you could, Richard, would you zip/7z up your archive and share it with me via Dropbox, torrent, or some other means?  What I’ve really, really, really been looking for is a copy of the Windows Printer work that mcaulkins worked up that allowed someone to use the Windows API to select a printer to use and then print from a QB64 program.  None of the current archives I’ve found has had it on it, but if yours is up to the end of 2017, it probably does!

I’d love a chance to dig and look for it one more time!  It’s one of the few pieces of code which I’ve been unable to replace, or redo, from memory that I know used to be on the old site.  ;)

[Richard]

Thanks Steve for your interest.

I would love to share my collection without tying up my computer (I do not have servers or anything - just my laptop and my internet connection is only via public free wifi or sometimes by mobile phone cellular data (which is very expensive) or sometimes using public computers on-line subject to booking conditions.

My collection, estimated at about 10,000 webpages, is estimated at over 10 Gigabytes, and at present is stored on usb sticks (about a small shoebox full of them) and I slowly have been trying to marshall the data onto a single portable usb drive - during which problems arose such as each webpage (about 1 Mb) takes about 3 seconds or more to copy (windows 10) - I think windows 10 is doing anti-virus checks on each file and having a hard time with these web pages!

I have never done any "zipping" of files and so do not know what is involved and may not wish to buy software especially - I have "unzipped" many times for free.
Also I have never "exported" (or whatever) anything before apart from simple email attachments and now recently my posting to QB64 forum (which is a big step for me in this regard). I have never used "sharing resources" such as Dropbox, etc and when I was then doing the archives, always had trouble accessing links to Dropbox, etc - and I think that Dropbox wanted me to register (and pay) for their services. I would be capable (and have the hardware in my laptop to do blue ray burnings I think) - perhaps my collection on DVD would be useable for you?.

So it would take some time to marshall my whole collection to a DVD - in the mean time I can send you some samples (certainly will try to locate your specific request) - however I was not totally organised or prepared on my archiving over the years and now I find it overwhelming to find a particular topic - since I do not have a suitable program to search 10,000 files @ 10 Gbytes total - I have considered to try writing one in QB64.

Just want to mention that when I was archiving [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] - it was mainly the opening page (of a topic) i.e. to say if the page had a link to somewhere, or an attachment (eg an image or program) - there probably is no archive of that attachment/link. From my samples (hopefully as requested) you will see what I mean.

As even the samples etc will "clutter up" this post (and you may not wish me to do this) - please advise where/how to send to you (I can send to this post - no problem for me - if you wish).

To assist me to locate your request (if I have it at all) - my first web page samples (and instructions how to handle using same - which may not be immediately obvious to you) would be a starting point. Probably by say my third message to you (with samples) I may have sufficient info to begin my manual search for your request.

Hoping all this will be of use to you

[SMcNeill]

If you've got that many files to keep track of, and they're all uncompressed, you really need to take a moment and download 7z for free.  https://www.7-zip.org/download.html

Usage of these type of tools has gotten extremely simple, and they're essential for disk space and organization.

For example, let me share a screenshot and link for you of the best archive I've managed to collect of [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there], so far: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gjjr4aw7go38ef7/www.[abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there].7z?dl=1

As you can see from the screenshot, the archive I've collected is about 3GB in size, and it's compressed down to only 14% of that size, which only takes up about 413MB of disk space.  (And that's with images, html pages, and all.)


If you're interested, you can go over to the 7zip website and download whatever install package would suit your system.   (Just grab the MSI installer if you have a Windows PC and double click it when it's finished downloading, and let it do its thing automatically.)

Once you've got 7z on your system, all you have to do is select a series of files or folders in windows Explorer (the built in file manager), then right click to pull up the action box, scroll to the 7 zip option and then select the "Add to archive..." option and use the default settings to save your collection to a 7z archive file.  (A simple youtube video of someone illustrating the process is here, if you want to check it out:

)

It'll only take you a few times of using 7z (or any other archive tool really), before you'll wonder how you ever managed without them.  Like you, I'm a digital packrat, and I'd never be able to manage things without keeping a lot of stuff compressed up and archived.  For example, the list of ebooks which I've got stored on my PC, just for reading and entertainment purposes, is 106,786 Files in 8,784 Folders, and about 50GB of disk space!  (If anyone is interested in ever borrowing an ebook of mine, I'd be happy to share one with them from my list of books here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/50prog4pn468o9z/Steve%27s%20Entertainment%20Book%20List%20%282019%29.txt?dl=1)

7zip, winrar, and such are absolutely essential tools in my life anymore. ;)

If you've got 10GB of file archived, that'd take 3 standard DVDs (with about 4.7GB storage each) to copy them onto uncompressed.  If you get the same level of compression with your files, as I have, you could easily put them all on one DVD and still have lots of room for other things as well.  ;)

[Richard]

Thanks Steve for your very well explained advice re zipping - will follow up very soon.

Meanwhile I have transferred 99% of my files to a 256Gbyte usb stick (windows 10 is giving me issues with remaining 1%).

In windows 10 file explorer tried searching   mcaulkins   with advanced options of

in non-indexed locations   ticked File contents

and after an hour searching (still nothing - it is still searching  HOWEVER see attachments that I manually searched (guessed)

Do you want my convoluted instructions on what to do with these?

[SMcNeill]

http://www.[abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there]/forum/index.php?topic=11449.msg98159#msg98159 — Windows API Print Menu, Reply #9 seems to be the code I was looking for, from back in 2013, but the *.webarchive doesn’t convert the codeboxes into anything usable for me.  What do you use to create/view them on your PC?  It seems like what I’ve been searching for is there; I just need to access it now, fully.  ;)

[Richard]

(by the way - Windows 10 is still searching for mcaulkins)

NOW for the convoluted instructions:-

DOWNLOAD Safari Browser (for Windows 10) - this was written by Apple - but support discontinued years ago. When downloading (about 35 MB) you have a 50/50 chance it will be the last version.  To be sure you have the last version - download Apple Software Update.   ALTERNATIVELY if you have access to a modern MAC computer, say model 2009 or later, just view the .webarchive file in the MAC Safari browser - I think this may work.

When the Safari (for Windows) is installed, in Windows File Explorer, open the .webarchive file as … using Safari Browser - if all goes well within a second or two, a reasonable looking webpage should appear (created solely from the file - not by internet connection) - if problem occurs - you may have to be INTERNET OFF-LINE - as the file has codeing to auto launch into the internet with the URL - and retry opening the file again (always by Safari).

NOTE - if you are using a MAC instead to view - it may take 10 seconds for the file generated webpage to appear - you may even HAVE to be off-line.

Assuming that your PC now displays a meaningful web page, you should be able to use the vertical scroll bar on right hand side of code box to view all the code - it may or may not work for code select (Windows 10 gives me many issues with Safari Browser (for Windows).

SOMETIMES when using Safari (for windows) - when you

right click > Save Page As > Save as Type ..

you have option as HTML (or TXT) but not always.

IF ALL ABOVE FAILS - try viewing the .webarchive file in a text editor eg NotePad - and somewhere in amongst the 1 MByte file is the actual code you are after (and with a relatively simple QB64 program you could massage to be BASIC friendly).

Finally, I mentioned that I experienced many issues with Windows 10 - I thought that Apple and Microsoft were always in a happy relationship - should you still have problems launching/using Safari (for Windows) I can share some of my experiences (and how to fix) with you.

Many (just about every IT savvy person) would "scream" at me for using Safari (for Windows) - but at the time I started the archives, to me it was the best browser for the task. It has limited use as a browser, for instance I cannot use it for QB64 forum, but it did work fine for [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there].

Hope this helps.

(and yes - Windows 10 is still searching for mcaulkins)
 

[SMcNeill]

If you look in the program area, you'll see that I managed to extract the code I was really interested in, and with a little tweaking, I've got it up and going for our latest versions of QB64.  AFAIK, there's nothing else over at the old forums which I'm really missing, but I am extremely grateful that you managed to find such an old set of code and resurrect it once again for me.  Many, many thanks!

Now I can once again pull up the Windows printer dialog and change printers natively and such directly from within QB64 programs!  I've been missing this functionality for ages!  (Now I just need to hook my printer back up to my PC with QB64 and do some testing to make certain it all works 100% as intended...)  ;)

You can see the recovered and corrected code here at: https://www.qb64.org/forum/index.php?topic=1858.0

[Richard]

Thanks Steve

Could not get back earlier (just woke up)

… AND YES - Windows 10 is still looking for mcaulkins in my 10 Gbyte collection...
and its come up with a search result:-

index.php-topic=4848.0   as a HTML document (size about 80 KB) from [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there]

and yes - even now - it is still searching (I do not want to get file copy because on many occasions when windows 10 does time consuming searches - IT terminates ALL File Explorer instances running - for no apparent reason) - will send you above file when search finishes.

Was my convoluted instructions helpful - or did all I have to say was to use Safari browser?

You have 4 times as many files for [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] as I have - makes me jealous!

[keybone]

Smcneill, is that the [banned user] archive I sent you or a different one?
Richard are you willing to share your part of the archive? Let me know, I still have code missing from when .net went away.

[SMcNeill]

Smcneill, is that the [banned user] archive I sent you or a different one?
Richard are you willing to share your part of the archive? Let me know, I still have code missing from when .net went away.

It seems to be a much larger archive than the one [banned user] had available.  Richard's is about 10GB in accumulated file size, whereas the largest version I've found elsewhere tops out around 3GB or so.

[Richard]

up to the minute breaking news (breaking me that is):-

Windows 10 finished its search about an hour ago for "mcaulkins" and found only one entry:-

index.php-topic=4848.0.html  (attached)

(Note - every time I archive a .html file it NEVER looks as pretty as a .webarchive file (at least when viewing off-line))

Unfortuneatly windows 10 did not find the previously requested post. (?????)

Just in case it is of use to you (you probably already know all this stuff) I have attached other somewhat possibly related information (which collectively may be <0 in value to you).

Yes Keybone - I am willing to share my archive. Don't be mislead by total file size as the vast majority of my files are .webarchive format (averaging around 1 MByte) whereas when I archived .html format (in some cases) these average say about 100KB each. My estimated file count is only about 10,000 files (.webarchive). I was disappointed how long it took windows to search thru 10 GB (probably I suspect it does complicated virus checks/threats every time it gets access to a file (and for that matter any URL info)) - and after all that still not returning at least what I could find manually by guessing.

   [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]    [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]  

[QBExile]

Richard,
    If you create a gmial account then you will have a Google Drive of 15GB of cloud space for free.
Here is a youtube video showing how to set it up.

Google Drive Tutorial 2018 - Quick Start Training - YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVNi6uSSckU

[Richard]

Thanks QBExile

Will look into gmail cloud space.

I was wondering on the suitability of same for being a simple-for-me-to-use environment to upload all my [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] files (using Steve's compression advice).

The intention being for EVERYONE having access to all the files.

Is it against the "rules" to do this or extremely not advisable - or just plain not workable, etc? (e.g for my email account - NO ONE has access!)

One thing I learnt from simple email usage was that the limit for attachments was about 30 Mbyte (so I would have to compress many many smaller modules and upload many many emails to cloud).

I was wondering on the feasibility to experimenting to upload my files onto the forum itself - in an unofficial way - with a simple interface for users (though a little complicated) - I might just go ahead and try - and maybe a very limited very small collection just happens to find its way onto the forum and a few users to assess its usefulness - before the "powers to be of QB64" decide to terminate the process - this last sentence will self-destruct (I hope) when you have read this post!