Hi, Robert. In reality, the forums exist at https://retro-link.com/smf. If you go to forum.retro-link.com, there is no certificate, and you may get weird errors in your browser as you navigate. However, if you stick with https://retro-link.com/smf, you shouldn't experience those problems. Hopefully I will one day have the time to perform a successful upgrade and migration of the forums to eliminate all issues.

I have now installed security certificates for this site. What this does is it encrypts information between your computer and retro-link.com. Previously, things like your password here or even messages posted in non-public areas of the site could potentially have been seen by a 3rd party. You may have seen such warnings from your browser. To utilize these new certificates, make sure to access this site through https:// instead of http://. Thus, this site would be https://retro-link.com/smf/. Since I haven't had the time to go through all parts of this site and change all the addresses, some parts, like graphical images, may still be delivered using http without encryption. I don't consider this a big deal, as the important stuff will be encrypted.

Hi, Robert.

Upgrading to SMF 2.x isn't an easy task. It's not impossible, but I'd have to set aside some time to make sure to do it right; meanwhile, I've patched up the current version. It's now upgraded to version 1.1.21, which should address some bugs.

Many of the problems you may experience are probably due to the fact that I'm running this on a lower tier hosting package, which also hosts my personal blog at pquirk.com, as well as mymicra.com. If I can monetize either the retro-link blog or mymicra.com (or both), then I would use that monetization to move retro-link.com up to a higher tier hosting package, and then it would make sense to use that opportunity to also upgrade SMF to 2.x.

Another option I've considered is simply migrating these forums over to a free hosting service. Unfortunately, nothing is really free, and we would lose control to the hosting provider. This means that unfounded complaints or harassment by certain people could result in the forum being taken down.

Hopefully the work I did today will improve things, and here's hoping we can see some monetization in 2017!

I have no idea why they won't revive their Tandy and TRS-80 line. That would be a gold mine today!

The hosting isn't exactly the greatest. I'm going to try to get some advertising going in the blog to see if I can generate enough revenue to improve the forums. Please excuse the ads...

It's great you're keeping that car going; where I live, it would've turned to rust by now.

Cooper Cobra GT's are great tires for the price!

I feel you on the tax thing. I just got hit with a double whammy of property tax and income tax! Yikes!

All of our Future Shop stores have closed, and are converting to Best Buy.

The times, they are a changing...

Test post

To access these forums, you now need only to enter forum.retro-link.com. The old method, retro-link.com/smf, will continue to work; I've simply added this sub-domain method for convenience. Enjoy.

After playing around with a few ideas, I've revamped the main retro-link.com page. It's now clean and simple, providing two links. The first one takes visitors to our blog, while the other link takes visitors to this forum. A reload in your browser may be required to see this new content.

Thanks, Robert; I'll pass that along!

This is probably more directed at Robert; do you know of any user groups in Europe, perhaps in the UK, that sell Vic 20's? Paradroid90 on Denial is looking for one, and on eBay there's nothing but overpriced crap right now.

I now find myself listening to absolute80s.com. Love it when modern technology meets retro goodness!

Wow, that's amazing! I can vaguely remember when they were clearing out the players for half that! Personally, I've always had good luck with flea markets and thrift stores. If I come across a Beta machine, I'll let you know, Robert.