SPACE Newsletter

November 2001

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November 2001

I NEWSLETTER November, 2001 President's Corner by Michael Current November, 2001

This month is the SPACE Club's Annual Meeting. We will have elections for the Officer positions that make up the Executive Board: President, Vice-President, Secretary, and . Treasurer. Additional nominations may be made at the beginning of the meeting, but so far the nominations are: President - Michael Current Vice-President - Greg Leitner Secretary - Brian Little Treasurer - Greg Leitner The Annual Meeting is also a time to make sure we have continued commitments for the volunteer positions of Membership Chairman, Newsletter Editor, DOM Librarian, BBS Operator, and Webmaster. This is a crucial moment for the club. With our membership count as small as it is, it would only take a couple key people deciding to step aside to bring essential club functions to a halt. I hope there remains enough interest among us to keep SPACE going for another year. I think there is! Elsewhere in this issue, I believe you'll find the announcement of the opening of the Official Clevelend Free-Net Atari SIG Archive. This is the cumulation of a project I've been involved in over the past two years, helping develop a permanent web archive of the CFN Atari SIG, which I helped operate for a number of years. It's an extensive resource, and I'm really happy to see it finally available again, in a form resembling the original. Take a look at: http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/ A few weeks back I wandered into one of the electronic games stores in the Burnsville Center, and ended up buying a couple more of the Atari/Hasbro Windows games efforts: Pong and Breakout (very cheap closeout prices). These are fairly well executed actually, in my opinion, although kind of scary in a bizarre way. They took these two very simplistic gaming originals, and turned the little rectangles you used to control with a paddle into walking, thinking rectangles with eyes, that speak some alien language. Have you ever watched Teletubbies? The games are turned into graphical adventures, pausing often for skill challenges, some of which resemble the original game concepts and some less so. I already finished Breakout, that might also tell you something. If I can get them cheaply, I may continue to look to complete my collection of the Hasbro Atari games for PC.

Another reminder of my project to complete our collection of past SPACE newsletters. If you have any issues earlier than February 1986, please let me know, and consider contributing them back to the club, so that we can complete our records of our own history! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday, November 9, 2001.

Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For October, 2001

Well, there weren't many of us in attendance at the October SPACE meeting but we had great discussions on many topics. It was unfortunate that many of you were not there for the nominations of SPACE officers for the November elections. It looks as though there will not be many changes for 2002 except Mike will step down as Secretary and Brian will once again try his hand at it. Thanks to Brian for stepping up to fill the position. If anyone still wants to run for any of the officer positions there will be another chance before we vote next month. Here is the accounting of the SPACE club finances for October 2001. Beginning balance as of October 1, 2001: Receipts for October 2001 Membership renewals Doms sales Total receipts Expenses for October 2001 .00 Ending balance for October 2001

800.75 15.00 15.00 30.00

863.14

As you can see the Club is still doing very well and I can't see why we won't have a very healthy cash flow for the new year. Amazing isn't it? I have to implore every member to be present for the November meeting and vote. This is your responsibility as a SPACE member and that is why only those who are paid up can vote. P lease make sure that your membership is in good standing and if you have any questions about where you stand you can see Glen. So please mark your calendars for the next meeting and don't forget we need to plan for the SPACE XMAS party.

Secretary's Report By Mike Weist For October, 2001

and wanted to pay for a membership. Mike will pay Glen Kirschenmann $15 for a membership. Meeting adjourned at 8:40 PM. Mike Weist,

Space meeting opened at 7:50 PM. Michael Current, Space club president, welcomed members to meeting. Michael asked for a secretary report. Mike Weist, Space club secretary, recapped September minutes printed in October newsletter. Michael then asked for a treasurer report. Greg Leitner, Space club treasurer, gave a report. Greg stated that there wasn't much expense for October 2001 except $48.01 paid out for newsletter expense to Mike Schmidt, newsletter editor. Haven't seen a room rent bill for 3 rd quarter(July, August, and September). Greg said 2 members renewed, auction income was $57 .00, and $61 for DOM sales. This makes a $61 gain to treasury. The treasury balance stands at $861.14. Michael Asked for DOM report. Glen Kirschenmann, DOM chair gave a report. Glen said side one has two games on it. These games are Rubber ball and Maneuver, Side two is Gismoe, a dungeon game. Michael asked for a membership report. Glen Kirschenmann, Membership chair, gave a report. Glenn said there are currently 15 paid up members and a few members can renew. BBS report Nolan not present. BBS is not working.

OLD BUSINESS: Mike Weist, club member said Harnfest is corning up.

NEW BUSINESS: Lance Ringquist talked about the FIRST BUY LAW. Mike Weist said October newsletter was great.

Mike also touch on article in September 2001 IMAGE user group newsletter about the Classic Game Expo. Greg Leitner talked about great emulation on web site called Little Green desktop. It is run by Richard Davey. Nominations for officers went as follows: Greg Leitner nominated Michael Current for Club president. Mike Weist nominated Greg Leitner for Vice-president. Brian Little nominated himself for Club secretary. Greg Leitner was nominated for Treasurer. Greg Leitner contacted Mike Schmidt about accepting a honorary Space club membership. Greg said Mike declined

Space club secretary

************************************************** Subj: cc65 v2.7.0 released Date: 10/20/01 4:49:39 PM Central Daylight Time From: mcurrent@carleton.edu (Michael Current) --From: Ullrich von Bassewitz <uz@musoftware.de> --Date: Sun, 14 Oct200109:00:19-0700 I'm proud to announce version 2.7 .0 of CC65, a C crosscompiler /cross-assembler combo for 6502 systems. CC65 has C and runtime library support for many of the old 6502 machines,including - The Commodore C64, C128 •a nd the Cl 6, Cll6, Plus/4 machines. -The CBM 510 (aka P500), a quite rare Commodore machine (programs run in bank 0). - The CBM 600nOO family (programs run in bank 1). - Newer PET machines (not 2001) -The Apple][ (library support by Kevin Ruland <kevin@rodin.wustl.edu>) - The Atari 8 bit machines (thanks to the Atari team: Christian Groessler <cpg@aladdin.de>, Mark Keates <markk@dendrite.co.uk>, Freddy Offenga <taf_offenga@yahoo.com> and David Lloyd, <dmlloyd@atari-central.com>). - GEOS for the C64 and C 128 (GEOSLib by Maciej Witkowiak <ytm@elysium.pl>) The libraries are fairly portable, so creating a version for other 6502s shouldn't be too much work. Version 2.7 has a real lot of changes, including a completely rewritten backend. Here is a short list: - New compiler option --create-dep to create a dependency list for a makefile. - Option and pragma to generate stack overflow checks (both, parameter and CPU stack). - Transparent and efficient handling of fixed params in variadic functions. - Build parameter frames when calling other functions by adjusting the stack once and then storing into this frame instead of pushing each parameter separately. - More flexible .INCBIN command for the assembler. - Compiler generates line info for the assembler. The assembler passes this to the linker, which is able to generate files containing this information. - New, much improved compiler backend.

- The literal pool works now without a hardcoded limit. - C functions may now be declared as _fastcall_. - New #elif preprocessor directive - Boolean and and or in preprocessor #if clauses does now work. - New, improved _asm,_ syntax for the inline assembler. - New code generation for the switch statement. - Optimizations. Please note that some of the optimizations of the old backend are no longer there, so in rare cases, code may be slower when compiled with this version. - Symbols may now be defined in the linker config file. This is used for most platforms to define the size of the stack. - Updated the cc65 utility with all the new command line switches. - C64 startup code no longer uses fixed stack top. - Several changed/added runtime functions for better performance. - CBM BASIC compatible file I/0 functions by Marc Rintsch. - Support for the Commodore 510. - Mouse routines completed! Mouse support is available for the following systems: Atari, C64, Cl28, CBM 510 and . GEOS. . - Command line response files are now supported to aid those people working with "operating systems" that have a serious command line length limit. - A new plasma graphics demo written in pure C (by groepaz/h.itmen). - And lots of other minor changes ... There is still no support for the following features: * Floats and bit fields. * studio file routines on most systems. The 8 bit Ataris are the first machines that do have full file I/0 support. Please note that the complete CBM family doesn't have studio file support! * The 80 column mode on the C128 is not supported by the conio library. Available packages: As usual I will provide the complete sources and several binary packages, including RPMs for RedHat Linux. Linux is the primary development platform, so the sources do compile out of the box on Linux machines. Please note that there are now separate RPMs for the compiler proper and the target specific libraries. To develop for one of the predefined target systems you need the compiler RPM package *and* one of the target machine packages. Binaries for DOS and Windows will follow or may already be available at the time you read this. OS/2 packages will again be available, but since there are almost no downloads for OS/2, so the host platform may get dropped in the near future (again). As with the RPM packages, you need the package for the development system (Windows, etc.) *and* one of the target machine packages. Download:

More information and a download link, please visit the cc65 web page at: http://www.cc65.org/ Thanks to all who sent feedback and suggestions and of course to anyone who helped developing cc65 ! Ullrich von Bassewitz uz@musoftware.de ************************************************** Subj: Official Cleveland Free-Net Atari SIG archive Date: 10/27/01 2 :09:47 PM Central Standard Time From: mcurrent@carleton.edu (Michael Current) --From: Kevin Savetz <savetz@northcoast.com> --Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:16:03 -0700 I am proud to announce the launch of the Official Cleveland Free-Net Atari SIG Archive. http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/ The Cleveland Free-Net, a free dialup and telnet BBS offered through Case Western Reserve University, was home to an active group of Atari users. The Atari SIG (special interest group) had information about every Atari platform, including 8-bit computers, 16/32-bit computers, Jaguar, Lynx, and Portfolio. The Cleveland Free-Net was shut down on September 30, 1999, but before it was, a complete backup of the Atari SIG was made. Working with the folks who ran the forum, we have endeavored to preserve both the feel of the SIG and the information it contained. This is an amazing resource that exceeds 200 megabytes of data - much of which isn't available elsewhere. "The Atari SIGOps hoped to preserve this extensive information resource we had built over the years. We approached www.atariarchives.org and Kevin Savetz with the idea of a permanent web archive of our SIG, and we couldn't be happier with the result." --Michael Current, mcurrent@carleton.edu, former 8-bit Atari SIGOp, Cleveland Free-Net Atari SIG. Among the highlights: - A Time Capsule of Atari news items from 1986 - 1999 http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/12/03/ - Atari 8-Bit Technical Reference Manual and upgrade guides http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/J 2/02/664 ST-related newsletters, including Z *NET and ST Report http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/06/08/ -A complete archive of Z*Magazine http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/ 12/05/02/ - Reviews of79 Lynx games http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/08/07 / Kevin Savetz <savetz@northcoast.com> Curator of the Digital Antic Project -http://www.atarimagazines.com & Atariarchives.org http://www.atariarchives.org Moderator of news:comp.sys.atari.announce -- Atari computer news

DISCLAIMER

CLUB OFFICIALS President: mcurrentece.rleton.edu Vice President:

Michael Current

(507)663-9029

Greg Leitner

(651)455-6550

greglltes1we"t!l'lf9"I!i!lds•cl'lll:aalt•t-lll Secretary: ,...TM,..,'-• UIII Michael Weist MikeLuvFooeJuno.com DOM Librarian: KirschgeNetZero.net BBS Operator:

(651 )777-6794

Glen Kirschenmann (612)786-4790 Nolan Friedland

frledndtcfreenet.org

(763)691-0626

Publlahcd by tho Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE), an independent organization 'With no business eJfWaUon 'With ATARI Corporation. Permission ls aranted to any slmllar organization 'With which SPACE exchanges newsletters to reprint material from th1a ne1r11letter. lre do however uk that credit. be 1lven t.o the aut.hon and t.o SPACE. Opinions expressed arc those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SPACE, the club officers, club memben or ATARI Corporation.

llemb'ership Chairman: Glen Kirschenmann (612)786-4790 SPACE Treasurer: Grog Leitner (651)455-6550 SPACE Newsletter Editor: Michael Schmidt (612)757-4192 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - mschm65612eaol.com

You can find the Club's home page at:

Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE) meets on thesecond Friday of each month at 7:30 PM

in the Falcon Heights Community Center at 2077 West Larpenteur Ave. Doors open at 7:00 Pli.

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BBS Phone: {763)-691-0626 Sysop:

Nolan Friedland

Supporting: ATARI 8-Bit Computers

U of M St. Paul Campus

S.P.A.C.E. P.O. Box 120016 New Brighton, MN

Articles for Publication must be received by the Newsletter Editor two weeks prior to the Club's meeting.

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