Regular users will have noticed that over the past month the website has been experiencing random 403 errors when trying to access the site and or download files.  This has been caused by excessive traffic, partly from site growth but mainly from users using download managers to leech hugh sections of roms and in some cases attempting to leech the entire site.  In principle I don't mind this however my ISP would not allow this activity to continue.

In Nov the site peeked at over 75GB of downloads per day and at this stage the ISP started to enforce IP bans.  This is why random users were experiencing random 403 errors.

Since this, and as of now, all download managers and site ripper style programs have been banned and are filtered out of IP traffic.  This means that if you try and download with flashget for example your request will be denied.  Please stick to using the normal click and download method for getting your roms.  I have also trawled through the logs and directly banned websites that were leeching from this site and stealing bandwidth.

If you wish to download large sections of roms and wish to use a download manager, I may still be able to allow temp access upon request and a healthy donation to the cost of running the site.  As any webmaster out there can appreciate, 70GB per day of downloading is not cheap to maintain so every penny is needed to keep this monster running.  If you have any issues or questions please email me at the usual address (hottrout [at] theoldcomputer.com) or more appropriately post in the forums.

Thank you all for your patience and here's looking forward to 2010 and some more new sections.

I have been making a number of maintenance updates to the website over the past few days.  I have created a new How To Help page which points users to various ways in which you can become involved beyond just making a donation. 

For other site owners and possible affiliates I have also created a Link To Us page which houses some great new banners, buttons and skyscrapers to use for linking back to this site.  I have also been repairing the Commodore PLUS4 rom section and converting all the PRG files to ZIP to make them easier handled.  I trust you will find the changes all good.

Thanks to Zack Fulpington for his Banner submission.  It has been used in the Nintendo Virtual Boy Roms section.  You can also view the other user submitted banners to get involved.

The final new section to be added this time is truly massive.  It is the entire Atari 8bit computer roms collection.  It covers all models like the 400, 800, 800XL, XE and variants.  This rom library has over 11,200 roms in various file formats.

I hope you enjoy this huge update.  Remember to follow my Twitters for up to the minute news and more great updates coming in the following weeks.

Its was March 1999 when I first registered the domain name that would become the mighty Old Computer Dot Com.  The last 10 years have whizzed past but I still love developing this site, answering your emails (a lot of emails), responding to the forums, uploading rom sets, blogging and generally being involved in all things retro.

Here's to the next 10 years, by which time I might even have finished uploading roms.  Possibly not though. :)

Welcome to 2009.  This year will be even bigger than 2008.  I am currently working on the complete revamp of the Emulators Library and hope to add dozens of new emulators.  Once completed I will adding a great many more formats of roms over the year and plan on making this site the most comprehensive collection of formats anywhere on the web..  A happy new year to everyone and remember to come back regularly over 2009..