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Theres been a great big huffaw in the press recently in regards to banks ‘charges’ when you go overdrawn or a direct debit bounces etc. Some banks, mine included charge upwards of £30 even if you dare go more than £1 overdrawn. Clearly this is quite ridiclous and banks arent meant to make profit in this way. Its stated that the cost to the bank of you going over drawn is around £6 so the rest is profit. You can also claim upwards of six years worth of fee’s! Do it now! Read about it here

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bankcharges

to cut a long story short, Ive requested that the bank send me the last six years worth of charges and Im going to see what I can get back – expect recordings of the phonecalls so you can see how to do it for yourselfs!

UPDATE

The bank were very nice actually, but it appears that ALL banks will most likley shut your account down if you successfully claim overdraught or default charges back. You see, its YOU as a consumer who is defaulting on your agreement as set out in your T&Cs when you sign up for a bank account. They can choose who they do business with and with notice, can close your account down within 28 days. If your going to do this, set up a account beforehand just in case

Not the best screen shot but this is a Commodore 64 emulator, a BBC Micro emulator and a RISC OS enviroment all running at the same time

:-d

here to download

Now, one of my first foray into the world of computers was with a Acorn Archimedes. Luckily, my folks afforded me a A3010 and from this, I have put the OS Roms onto my webserver, for ME only. FOR ME!

Risc OS 3.11 romset (for use with RedSquirrel or similar)

Arcemulator (which will work with the above ROMS)

ArcElite (to run on the emulator, emulable only ADFS file format)

RiscPC Emulator – (To emulate the Risc PC, youll need some RISC OS 3.5 or above ROMs)

Hard disc image – (a 50 meg blank hard drive image, youll need the tool below to format a HD)

Hform – a hard drive formatting utility in ADF format,

Chuck Rock – the amazing chuck rock game, comes in two adf’s

For that true classic feel, and I know this is how I first discovered Elite, why not try a great Commodore 64 emulator. Once installed, load in the tap file of Elite, and enjoy. Revel in the exact tape loading times too – pure nostalga

 C64 emulator – HERE , Elite tape image – HERE , New ELITE homepage

See here for all the latest images, both tape & disk – keeping it all real here

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The true original 8-bit BBC Micro image - HERE -

You may want to try an alternative emulator, - HORIZON -

 Loving it since 1986 – check out my new Elite website coming soon – www.mostlyharmless.com & www.verydeadly.com – COMING SOON

Why not have a look at the complete manual – HERE 

 or how about a lovley screensaver - its speng! – HERE

ok ok, on my first R&D run of redeveloping Elite, I figure im going to need to do some research first, and as always, Ill blog every single step of the way, making it easier for anyone else who wants to follow my footsteps. With that in mind, get your hands around these most tasty links……

BBC Emulator – THE BEST BBC Emulator for Windows on the Internet, completley customisable, second processor support, Econet, sound, graphics, PLUS a neat in built screen video capture. Very nice.

What you’ll be wanting next, and certainley what I want, is a sample Elite image file to run in the Acorn 8-bit enviroment for emulation purposes, and a bit of fun. This image file can be unzipped & run within the above emulator.

I’ve recently been pondering and nostalging over the classic 8-bit game, Elite. For those that have only been on this planet for a few years, Elite, was the most amazing space trading sim ever written & goes down in history as one of the top 10 games of all time. Whilst I appreciate theres a hundred different versions, various emulators and such, im going to write it better! in VB, full OpenGL support and its gonna rock! With that in mind, im looking out for the following people (you need skills)

 Visual artists – 3d Max, lightwave/Cinema & AutoCAD skills plus Photoshop (of course )

 Authors – to write detailed and entertaining manuals, pre game storys  and other various documentation

 Musicians – abillitys in Frooty Loops, Ableton Live & Reason