SPACE Newsletter - August 2004

August 2004

NEWSLETTER for August, 2004 President’s Corner by Michael Current August, 2004 What a meeting! Wow! With virtually everyone who lives in the vicinity attending, the SPACE meeting/birthday party this year was the best meeting and most upbeat gathering we've seen in a long time. It seems like everyone left in a good mood. SPACE rocks! I've been supplying our Newsletter Editor with Atari news items for years now. I've long used two sources, 8-bit news from the comp.sys.atari.8bit and comp.sys.atari.announce Usenet newsgroups, and the Atari corporate web site. Plus the occasional direct e-mailing. Beginning this month, I've decided to make a tentative change to my approach. Instead of filling so much Newsletter space with Atari, Inc. news, I intend to instead include ST/TT/Falcon news from comp.sys.atari.announce. As we all know, Atari, Inc. have essentially no idea what an Atari computer is. They produce games for present-day home computers and game systems. Our club is the St. Paul ATARI COMPUTER Enthusiasts. Thinking back, I guess I originally only looked for 8-bit news because I've never been an ST user, and I always figured if someone else wanted to see ST stuff in the newsletter, they'd step forward and contribute. Plus I've long, long had the habit of tracking the Atari corporate story. But with this change, our newsletter will end up shorter, but more focused on Atari computer news. What do you think of this idea? Let me know! Even better, visit Nolan's SPACE Forum web site and post some feedback there! I've been remembering to return somewhat regularly myself. SPACE home page counter update: as of 7/30/04, 10:00pm: 2,049 page views since June 7, 2003. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday August 13, 2004.

Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For July, 2004

What an unexpected surprise. I was a little worried when it got to be about 7:15 and only six people were at the meeting and we were staring at a large Subway sub. Thankfully, members started arriving all at once and, before the official meeting

started at 7:30 we had fourteen people in attendance, including eleven members and three guests. This is how I remember our meetings from years ago, and I bet it has been quite a few years since we had fourteen people at a meeting. It was great to see our President, Michael, who made the long journey from Wisconsin, and Red who we haven’t seen in many months. The party went very well, and the food was delicious. Sorry I didn’t plan for more people. We just barely had enough food for one helping each, and many of us would have had seconds if there was more to go around. Maybe next time I will ask for RSVP so I don't get caught short again. I still have a hard time figuring how we got so many members to attend since the last two months only five members have been present. I guess the weather held out this time and there were no conflicts with the date. Anyway, thanks to all who came and made the night very enjoyable. I will remember this SPACE birthday party for a long time to come. Now for the details of our Treasury for the month ended July 31, 2004: Beginning balance for July 1, 2004: 662.92 Receipts for the month of July 2004: Membership renewals Dom sales Total receipts for the July 2004 meeting

90.00 39.00 129.00

Expenses for the month of July 2004: Food for the SPACE birthday party Ending balance for July 31, 2004:

55.67 736.25

As you can see, when the members show up our bank balance get's a big boost. Six membership renewals is probably the most we have had in a single month in the last five years. Our dom sales got a lift too. If can sustain this activity for the next few months I predict the Club's bank balance should reach at least the $800.00 mark. We have now paid the room rental for the first half of 2004 and I don't expect to receive the next rental bill until the end of the year. This means we have a very good opportunity to increase our bank account, and I know we will have enough items for an auction coming up before the winter months hit. Just when things were looking a little gloomy this month has really lifted my spirits. I feel this Club has a lot more to offer in the upcoming months, and I hope every member feels the same and attends as many meetings as they possibly can. Mark your calendars for August 13th, and weather permitting maybe everything will work out again and we have a repeat of July's meeting. Hope it happens.

Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For July, 2004

No Minutes Received.

BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For August, 2004

Many of the companies that wrote these programs are no longer in business, and many stores that handle 8-Bit software are dropping the Atari line due to slow sales. What's the answer? Well, Atari has proven that there is a market for their older software by re-releasing many titles that were popular four and five years ago. I would like to see Atari (or ANYONE for that matter) revive the APX (Atari Program Exchange) or something like it. The Antic Catalog was a good substitute, but is getting awfully thin in the 8-Bit area lately. The programs are out there somewhere. The need for those programs is here and now. We need only to get the two together. 8-Bit sales would increase, we would have all the support we need, and the 8-Bit Atari would once again be a force in the home computer market, if only some of that great software were available to all of us.

Nothing Received This Month For The BBS Corner.

********************************************* A-T-A-R-I Answers-Tips-and-Relevant-Information by Paul V. Alhart paulalhart@hotmail.com There I was sitting at my Atari at 3AM trying to save my just completed masterpiece. I kept getting an ERROR 162 (whatever that means) no matter how many times I tried. I had left my BASIC Reference Manual at a friend's house, so I couldn't even look it up. As my fingers danced across the keyboard typing the word DOS, I got a bad feeling. What if there is no MEM.SAV on this disk? All my work would be lost. Now what? I grabbed for a fresh disk, only to find that I had none that were formatted. No formatted disks, ERROR 162s, and not able to go to DOS. What to do?

Any comments or opinions YOU may have on this subject would by welcomed by this newsletter and myself.

********************************************** --Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:02:51 -0700 The multitasking AES for (Free) MiNT called MyAES has been upgraded with new features. Highlights from the new release includes: * 256-colour icon support * Loadable keymaps (compatible with MagiC) * Window resize from all window borders * Real-time scrolling http://myaes.free.fr/

ENTER (pun intended) the Atari BASIC ENHANCEMENTS. [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org/] Sure, with the Atari BASIC Enhancements I could look up that error code, format a disk, and more. All without leaving BASIC, and more important, without affecting one line of my precious program. Now the world is assured of another great 8-bit program and I was able to get some sleep. Come and see the Atari BASIC Enhancements in action at the October meeting of The Atari Federation. They will be available for $2.00 a copy, $1.00 of which I will donate to the Federation. Another Opinion

by: Paul Alhart

It seems that no matter what you read or who you talk to you get the same story. There is NO SOFTWARE Support for the 8-Bit Atari anymore. True, we haven't seen the number of new products lately that we saw a couple of years ago, BUT... But what else do you want. There are currently several thousands of titles already written for the 8-Bit Atari line. I personally can't think of many programs I would like to see that haven't already been written. The current problem, in MY opinion, is that it is almost impossible to find most of these programs.

********************************************** --Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 21:37:38 -0700 Another update to the famous 8-bit music collection called Atari SAP Music Archive has been released. It adds 70 new songs and now the whole collection has exceeded 10 MBytes! Get 1840 POKEY tunes and players at the ASMA homepage. URL: http://asma.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org/]

********************************************** --Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 21:37:12 -0700 Anders Eriksson has announced: I just want to let you know that the MiNT kernel runs now also on the Coldfire. I wrote a detailed description of how I ported the kernel to this platform. You can read it at:

http://acp.atari.org/articles/mcf5407eval/mcf5407eval.html

* Moonlander

There is also a summary about the TOS-dependencies of MiNT (at least the needed things for the startup), I stumbled across.

A remake of an old Atari classic game. This one also needs 25MHz bus or a SuperVidel, same reasons as above. * Yeti3D

All in all, I must say that I liked the fact that MiNT leaves the hardware initialization for timers, keyboard etc. to TOS. This enabled me to perform these initializations in a Coldfirespecific way in advance and then calling the MiNT kernel. (very much like a PC BIOS, that sets the system to a well defined state) Frank told me that he wants to make MiNT take over the whole system and kick out all dependencies to the underlying TOS. This means, to include all drivers that are needed for MiNT's startup (keyboard, screen, timers etc.) into the MiNT kernel. I would like to keep MiNT behaving like it does now. The great advantage for now is, that MiNT makes no assumptions about any devices except the CPU.

Well as a little bonus, an updated version of the Yeti3D engine, now with better lowres mode (centered graphics etc). These portings are all using the latest SDL versions, so they should be using the fast C2P routines from Mikael Kalms/TBL. Gildor also tells us that the games runs _much_ better in MiNT than TOS (MagiC untested). Wolfenstein 3D: http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/wolf3d.zip Spear of Destiny: http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/spear.zip Moonlander: http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/lander.zip LTris: http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/ltris.zip Yeti3D: http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/yeti3d.zip

My current execution environment for the MiNT kernel is very small (ca. 600 lines of code). It supports character output and keyboard input (over a serial connection). There is no block device support yet.

[This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org/]

Thank you all for your great achievements with MiNT!

Anders Eriksson has announced:

Greetings, Norman

One of the better video players for Linux called MPlayer has been ported to Atari SDL. The port is made by Didier Méquignon, known for Aniplayer and his CT60 FlashROM and utilities. With MPlayer we can now read data off DVD's (not yet encrypted DVD's, an Extendos upgrade is needed and planned to take care of that).

http://acp.atari.org/articles/mcf5407eval/mcf5407eval.html [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org/]

********************************************** --Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 21:36:14 -0700 Anders Eriksson has announced: Gildor, who brought you the Yeti3D engine port to Atari continues his porting frenzy. We've gotten no less than four complete games ported from other platforms to the Atari. Ok ok, which ones? Here goes..

********************************************** --Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 21:35:08 -0700

The system requirements are hefty to say the least; 100MHz CT60 is a minimum spec machine to handle this :) The application works together with (Free)MiNT and MagiC in a GEM-window or fullscreen mode. http://files.dhs.nu/files_util/MPlayer-1.0pre4-atari.zip [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org/]

* Wolfenstein 3D

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Ported from the original, so everything's there as it should be. Demo levels included in the archive.

WINTER HAVEN, FL - The editor of The Atari Times (http://www.ataritimes.com/) has announced the availability of the 2002 Year End Issue and the Newsletter Compendium at CafePress.com.

* Spear of Destiny A Wolfenstein 3D spin-off, very similar but different levels and some new stuff (textures with transparency for instance). * LTris Well the name says it all really. You need a 25MHz bus for this one, or a SuperVidel; it needs 640x480 16bit hi color graphics.

The 2002 Year End Issue is 104 pages and includes articles that appeared on The Atari Times website from the 2002 year. The Newsletter Compendium is 92 pages and is a collection of the original 11 paper issues that were distributed for free in 1996-7. Both books include news, features, reviews, and previews for all Atari home systems that have appeared on the website. These include articles for the Jaguar, Lynx, 7800, 5200, 2600, home computers, and even the arcade systems. Each book is in black and white with a wireo binding and an excellent color cover. Gregory D. George, editor and writer for The Atari Times commented, "Like the previous two books now available on

CafePress.com, this material is often requested by readers. I'm excited to finally be able to offer the entire contents of The Atari Times in print form." Continued Mr. George, "These books have been updated and are better than ever. I'm greatly pleased with the quality job CafePress.com offers. The covers are beautiful, the print quality is absolutely outstanding, and the binding is even better than I could have hoped for." The pricing of the 2002 Year End Issue and Newsletter Compendium is $13.95. All four Atari Times books can be purchased at http://www.cafepress.com/ataritimes More information about The Atari Times books can be found at http://www.ataritimes.com/store/books.html

Second, I implemented a native DirectX sound interface for the win32 platform. The SDL sound output utilized in previous releases had a major latency problem not allowing game play and sound in sync, fixed by the new sound frontend. For linux, this has never been a problem, though, ALSA is the front-end of your choice. Thus, happy gaming for all of you. I'm awaiting a couple of new ideas for the next release then... (-; So long, Thomas

********************************************** --Subject: ST>CT60 Bootpic replacement --Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:49:25 -0700 Anders Eriksson has announced:

The Atari Times is a web-based newsletter devoted to all Atari game systems. Updates to the site are on a weekly basis. Visit http://www.ataritimes.com/ for Atari related news, previews, reviews, and feature articles.

For the CT60-users out there: I just released a small utility that can replace the startup-picture on CT60 machines.

END PRESS RELEASE

********************************************** --From: Thomas Richter --Date: 12 Jul 2004 09:04:23 GMT Hi, the new 1.37 release of the Atari 8 bit emulator for linux and windows, atari++, is available for download at its usual location: http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~thor/atari++/ This version fixes two apparent bugs of the latest 1.36 release. It does not introduce any new features, though: - Fixed a bug in the flashrom cart emulation; these carts could not be disabled properly. - Fixed a bug in the directxsound wrapper class that did not disable itself correctly in case no SDL library was available. Thanks for all the reports!

All you need is an original ct60tos.img and a valid Targa file. It's tested on the latest CT60 flash with good result. http://ctpic.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org http://www.atari.org]

********************************************** --Subject: EMU>Hatari version 0.50 --Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:47:32 -0700

Version 0.50 of the Atari ST emulator Hatari for Linux and other systems has been released. Release notes for this version: - A lot of internal code cleanup and bug fixes.

Thomas

- Added a dialog for creating new blank floppy disk images.

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- The source code has been optimized for better emulation speed.

--From: Thomas Richter --Date: 5 Jul 2004 09:30:57 GMT Hi, and another release of the Atari++ emulator for windows and Linux is ready for download at its usual URL: http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~thor/atari++/ This time, we're going for the 1.36. Basically, two important features have been added. For one thing, emulation quality should have improved quite noticeably since I fixed two noteworthy bugs in the Antic emulation concerning the timing. This means that, for example the "Numen" demo will work fine now. Make sure that you select "XE" as emulated machine and pick "4" as the number of "XE memory banks" in the MMU emulation since the emulator threads memory expansions that go into the 0x4000 area as "XE type RAM banks".

- Hatari now supports RS232 emulation. - Some bugs in the 68000 emulation have been fixed. - The emulator now checks for double bus errors and stops the emulation if necessary (instead of crashing the emulator). - Timer-D is now patched correctly again. - The old font has been replaced by two new fonts so that the GUI now looks better in high resolutions. - The fonts are now linked into the executable. - Added support for DIM floppy disk images.

--Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:34:05 -0700 http://hatari.sourceforge.net/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org http://www.atari.org]

********************************************** --Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:34:37 -0700

The WinDom mailing, formely hosted by Free (a french ISP), is now hosted by sourceforge (as CVS depository). The old mailing list will be destroyed on september. Details on WinDom web page.

Czuba-Tech annouced a couple of days ago that they have a finished design for a a combined network and USB card for Falcon expansion bus and TT/MSTe VME ports. Users of CT60 are directed to the EtherNAT project which has the same type of components, but using the (faster) CT60 bus. Czuba-Tech is now taking orders, and if enough of them are met, the production will begin.

http://windom.sf.net/

http://www.czubatech.com/CTLink/english/welcome.htm

[This news item courtesy of Atari.org http://www.atari.org]

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--Subject: EMU>New SainT v1.70b - Released 7/20/04 --Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:47:00 -0700

--Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:33:19 -0700

BigNick0

The software "Eureka" is updated and released on its WEB page. It is a "2D Graph Describer and 3D Modeller". It is updated nearly every month, if I found significant improvements for it. You will have to fetch it at:

has announced:

I guess this one slipped through the cracks... Here you have it from versions.txt:

François LE COAT has annnounced:

1.70b

http://eureka.atari.org/eurka408.zip That is the Complete Common Edition

* Stupid MFP writing wrong bus error fix. some demos could have crashed in previous version ( 1.70 )

http://eureka.atari.org/eurka020.zip Is the Complete 68020 Edition

1.70

http://eureka.atari.org/eurkafpu.zip Is the Limited FPU Edition

* MFP emulation core totally re-written ! Now support cycle accurate reading ( Overscan Demos by Paulo Simoes ) * "Line disabling" technic emulated ( Overscan demos by Paulo Simoes ) * "StopLine" fixed ( B.I.G demo by TEX low border fixed ) * Fixed STE DAC monos sound bug (quality improved !, try BrainDamage Demo sound!) * SainT does not take 99% of CPU when running in background in windowed mode. * Fixed cycle timing when reading in FC00 ( thanks to Paulo Simoes )

http://eureka.atari.org/eurklite.zip Is the Lite Edition, working on early ST with 720kb floppy http://eureka.atari.org/lib_dgem.zip Are Dynamic Libraries Extensions for Eureka http://eureka.atari.org/tiny045.zip Is the OpenGL Extension (requires previous package) There have been improvements done in the generation of metafiles (*.GEM) with SpeedoGDOS or NVDI. Bug tracking and optimizations. Those modifications are mostly inspired by the apparition of MyAeS (http://myaes.free.fr).

* Low border adds now 45 graphics lines instead of 43

I wish you big fun with all this new STuff !

http://leonard.oxg.free.fr/SainT/saint.html

-- François LE COAT / Author of Eureka 2.12 / http://eureka.atari.org

[This news item courtesy of Atari.org http://www.atari.org]

http://eureka.atari.org/

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[This news item courtesy of Atari.org http://www.atari.org]