SPACE Newsletter

NEWSLETTER for December, 2004 President’s Corner

Treasurer's Report

by Michael Current December, 2004

by Greg Leitner For November, 2004

At last month's SPACE Annual Meeting we held our elections. Only the incumbants ran, unopposed, for each of the four elected positions. Each volunteer position will continue to be held by the incumbant as well. The complete roster is listed on the back of this Newsletter. Thank you to each person listed, for your service to SPACE over the past year, and for the time and effort you've promised for another year. We all know the club would not survive without these dedicated people continuing to put their hard-earned personal time into SPACE on such a regular, ongoing, and long-term basis. Hats off to Greg Leitner, Glen Kirschenmann, Mike Schmidt, and Nolan Friedland!

I was really baffled by the low turnout for the November SPACE meeting. Not only did we have our elections, but we also had an auction and planned our December SPACE Christmas party. It is really hard for me to understand why hardly no one would attend such an important meeting. Anyway, the current officers accepted their positions for another year, and Nolan and Glen will continue to run the BBS, DOM and Membership. It was great to have Michael Current, our President, preside over the November meeting. No one misses Michael as much as I do, and he provides so much Atari info that it boggles the mind. With his knowledge he adds tremendous input into any Atari or other computer related topics. I can't wait until Michael makes it to another SPACE meeting. Now you know why it is so important to have Michael as our SPACE President.

Last month's auction also came off well, though it might have been better with a few more people around in order to make the bidding a little more competitive. Still, a lot of stuff changed hands, and with all the proceeds going to SPACE I think it has to be considered another success. We've exhausted our supply of things to auction off again, so it may be a while before the next auction, unless or until the club receives another significant donation of equipment. Don't forget the time of year, because you know that means it's time for the SPACE Christmas party! Submarine sandwiches are planned, see Greg's article for details and for what additional items are still needed in order to make the party a success. Hoping for another big turnout! Celebrate the season with your friends at SPACE!

We had five members present and one old member who attended. Hey Mike Weiss, how about joining up again? We've really missed you, but thanks for coming and please come back for our Christmas party next month. The auction went well, but we really could have used a few more bidders to make things more interesting and competitive. Even so we took in $30.00 net for our treasury, and that leads me into the treasury status for November. Beginning balance for November 1, 2004:

777.25

Receipts for the November meeting: Memberships Dom's Auction Sales Total Receipts for the November meeting:

15.00 51.00 30.00 96.00

No expenses paid at the November meeting:

0.00

SPACE home page counter update: as of 11/26/04, 9:30pm: 2,530 page views since June 7, 2003.

Ending balance at November 30, 2004:

Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE Meeting and Christmas Party, Friday December 11, 2004.

It's hard to understand how this Club can do so well with just a few members that attend, but you can see the results. Just think if all our members showed up and at least bought a Dom. We could see results like this every month.

873.25

Next month we have our Christams party and I will provide the pop and the Club will take care of the sub, potato salad and cole slaw. Lance is bringing chips and Glen the ice cream. We could still use paper plates, plastic silverware, napkins and

possibly another dessert like cookies. Please make an effort to attend the Christmas party. I hope to see you all there.

Currently there are 14 paid up members. Glen had another great DOM for the club.

Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For October And November, 2004 Here are the Minutes for October: The meeting opened at 7:30 p.m. Greg welcomed everyone to the meeting and then began by reading the Treasure’s Report. As of the start of this month’s meeting, the SPACE Treasury stood at $740.25. Four DOM’s were sold last month with $20 being paid out for two months of the BBS. The current membership count stands at 15 paid up with one outstanding. For the DOM this month, there are four pinball games from the Page 6 folder. The BBS is going well. There were a lot of visitors to the BBS in the last month. It was discussed to make the SPACE forum open to all users and not require registration was discussed. We decided to go ahead with it, but to keep an eye out on the forum.

The BBS is going great with a lot of calls and hits to the BBS website. More information on the BBS will be presented at the December meeting. SPACE held its annual elections, with the following results The current officers accepted their positions for another year. Nolan and Glen will continue to run the BBS, DOM and Membership positions. The Christmas party is next month – Friday, December 10th, 2004. Greg will provide the pop and SPACE will take care of the sub, potato salad and coleslaw. Lance is bringing chips and Glen the ice cream. We could still use paper plates, plastic silverware, napkins and possibly another dessert like cookies. This should be a great meeting to attend; hope to see everyone there. This concludes the minutes of the SPACE Meeting for November 2004. Most of the content of the minutes for November courtesy of Greg Leitner, SPACE Treasurer.

BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For December, 2004

Nothing Received This Month For The BBS Corner. No Old Business this month. In New Business – There will be an auction at next month’s meetings. Also, the annual SPACE elections will be held. There was discussion about the problem with saving a web page as text. A computer show is coming up on October 23rd. SPACE will plan the Christmas party at November’s meeting.

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Meeting adjourned at 8:30 p.m.

At the February meeting I demonstrated the new and improved SEARCH SYSTEM II data base program. The current version is 2.2 and it is now available from the club's 8-bit library on disk #44A. It is 100% compatible with any data files you may have created under ANY earlier version of SEARCH SYSTEM II.

Here are the Minutes for November: * Secretary's Note: I wasn’t able to attend the November meeting, but I contacted Greg and received a copy of the Treasurer’s Report along with notes of what happened. * The meeting opened at approximately 7:30 p.m. Greg welcomed everyone to the meeting. There were five members present and one old member. It was great to see Michael Current, SPACE President, preside over the November meeting. The SPACE Treasury stood at $777.25 as of the November meeting. One membership was sold, 17 DOMs, and $30.00 in auction sales for grand total of $96.00. No expenses were paid this month bringing the balance to $873.25.

A-T-A-R-I Answers-Tips-and-Relevant Information by Paul Alhart 1989.3

Documentation is included on the disk. It may be Copied to the S: screen or a P: printer from DOS or loaded onto your favorite word processor. Some of the enhancements over earlier versions include: - Support for Drives 1-8. Including RAM-Disks. - Viewing/Printing of data files with or without sorting them first. - Optional Search Limit to allow much faster data retrieval.

- Gone is the fancy animation of the title screen that just made you wait thatmuch longer before getting started. - SEARCH SYSTEM II is now a stand-alone program. It no longer requires a special AUTORUN.SYS. It can be RUN from a menu program or right from BASIC. Any Atari compatible BASIC will do. BASIC XL, Turbo BASIC, etc. New Business: I have been giving some thought to a "ATARI FEDERATION HACKERS CHALLENGE II". Nothing is definite yet, but I have been giving it some thought. First, I challenge you to give me some ideas for a new HAckers Challenge. It would be nice to have something that the 16-bitters could work on too. I know they only use their machines for games and stuff, but maybe a Challenge would get them hacking too.

--From: Matthias Reichl <usenet-200410@hias.horus.com> --Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:32:34 -0800 A stupid bug sneaked into the 4.01 release of MyPicoDos: in the standard SIO version, written by the initializer program, the screen is corrupted and MyPicoDos is therefore quite unusable. The highspeed version and the bootable ATR images are not affected by this bug. The new version 4.02, which fixes this issue, is now available on my homepage http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/ so long & sorry for any inconvenience, Hias]

********************************************** Challenge II would not have to be disk based as the original challenge was. It could be like a text adventure. Maybe you could write code to try and stump me. How about Best short program contest? There are several possibilities, but I do need your ideas. If you would like a Challenge II in this life time, get your ideas to me. Let's do it.

********************************************** --From: Matthias Reichl --Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:44:43 -0700 Version 4.01 of MyPicoDos is now available on my homepage http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/ MyPicoDos is a "gamedos" which supports loading BAS/BIN/COM/EXE files, Dos 2.x/MyDOS disks with 72065535 sectors in SD and DD and MyDOS subdirectories. New features in this version are: - optional long filename display with integrated editor in the initializer program - separate highspeed and standard SIO versions - highspeed SIO is automatically disabled when loading a file from a "slow" drive - automatical basic on/off switch (can be turned off by pressing "shift") - support for BiboDos QD disks with 128 files - completely rewrote loader programs to minimize memory usage - new disk density recognition code fixes several compatibility problems eg with XF551 - lots of bugfixes and other improvements so long, Hias

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Subject: Atari introduces Atari Flashback Classic Gaming Console BEVERLY, Mass.--Nov. 18, 2004--Harkening back to the nascent days of the video game explosion, Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR) today announced that its Atari® Flashback(TM) Classic Game Console will hit store shelves the week of November 22nd. A new retro-style, stand-alone console unit configured with 20 classic Atari games, Atari Flashback includes Asteroids®, Centipede®, Breakout® and Atari's previously unreleased thriller, Saboteur(TM). Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Atari 7800, the Atari Flashback will be available exclusively at Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Gamestop for a suggested price of $44.95. "Atari is synonymous with video games and the Atari Flashback faithfully brings back the sights, sounds and addictive play of games that started an entertainment revolution," said Wim Stocks, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Atari. "Retro gaming offers a unique blend of nostalgia for older fans and coolness for younger fans, making Atari Flashback this season's perfect holiday gift. The bottom line is classics never go out of style." Resembling a modified replica of the Atari 7800 console, the Atari Flashback plugs directly into the TV via composite (RCA) cables, includes two joysticks and is the only retroconsole to feature multiplayer gaming, with such notoriously challenging head-to-head games such as Canyon Bomber(TM), Asteroids®, Centipede®, Desert Falcon(TM) and Sprintmaster(TM). In addition to featuring 20 classic games that defined a generation of players, Atari Flashback includes one exclusive from-the-vault classic, Atari's Saboteur. Never before released, Atari's Saboteur follows the adventures of the noble Hotot in his quest to sabotage the production of the evil Master Robot's warhead and save his galaxy from total annihilation. The complete list of games found in Atari Flashback includes: •Adventure(TM)

•Air Sea Battle(TM) •Asteroids® •Battlezone® •Breakout® •Canyon Bomber •Centipede® •Crystal Castles® •Desert Falcon(TM) •Food Fight(TM) •Gravitar® •Haunted House(TM) •Millipede® •Planet Smashers(TM) •Saboteur(TM) •Sky Diver(TM) •Solaris(TM) •Sprintmaster(TM) •Warlords® •Yar's Revenge

For complete product information and the order form go to:

For detailed information on Atari's entire product lineup, please visit www.atari.com.

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About Atari New York-based Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR) develops interactive games for all platforms and is one of the largest third-party publishers of interactive entertainment software in the U.S. The Company's 1,000+ titles include hard-core, genre-defining games such as DRIV3R(TM), Enter the Matrix(TM), Neverwinter Nights(TM), Stuntman(TM), Test Drive®, Unreal® Tournament 2004, and Unreal® Championship; and mass-market and children's games such as Backyard Sports(TM), Dora the Explorer(TM), Civilization®, Dragon Ball Z® and RollerCoaster Tycoon®. Atari, Inc. is a majority-owned subsidiary of France-based Infogrames Entertainment SA (Euronext - ISIN: FR0000052573), the largest interactive games publisher in Europe. For more information, visit www.atari.com.

PASTI Atari ST Imaging and Preservation Tools

http://www.atarimax.com/usbcart/ Highlights: - USB 1.1 Chipset compatible with 'Low' and 'High' Speed Devices. - Hardware and software designed by ABBUC, the largest Atari 8-bit Users Club in the world. - Open source software development. - Hobbyist oriented design, no surface mounted parts. - Highest quality color labels. - Early beta software already shows great promise. - PCB includes full layout for future 'slave mode' components. ABBUC will also have cartridges available for purchase by its members and possibly on thier web page as well once product starts shipping.]

--Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 17:54:14 -0800

Pasti is a package of sotware tools for imaging and preservation of Atari software. The two major components are the imaging tools and the emulation helper tools. The imaging tools produce a disk image file from an original disk. It works very similarly to standard imaging tools like Makedisk, but they can image virtually any ST disk including copy protected disks. Imaging tools are available for different hardware setups, including a plain Atari ST computer. Capabilities vary depending on the hardware. Specialized hardware is required for writing back images to a floppy disk.

SOFTWARE PRESERVATION © 2004, Atari, Inc. All rights reserved. ATARI, the ATARI logo, and classic Atari game titles and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Atari Interactive, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Our main goal is the preservation of Atari software in its original unmodified form. Original software is normally stored on diskettes with custom format or copy protection. Standard tools cannot back up or image them. But floppy disk recording have a limited life time. It won't take too long until all original Atari disks will be damaged and lost.

--From: Steven J Tucker --Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 23:33:17 GMT PASTI.DLL I happy to announce that in co-operation with ABBUC, the Atari XL/XE USB Cartridge is now available. The cartridge is professionally produced, with all open-source software.

Pasti.Dll is the emulation helper tool for Windows. It extends Atari ST emulators, adding support for extended disk images. These disk images support exotic, custom, and copy-protected formats. You can now use emulators to run ST software in its original uncracked form.

Pre-ordering begins now and ends with shipments starting 12/01/2004.

http://pasti.fxatari.com

Limited edition pricing is $39.99 per cartridge (about 31 Euro). After 12/01/2004 the price will increase to $49.99.

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--Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:33:32 -0800

--Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 09:08:28 -0800

GokMasE has announced:

The legendary graphics application Smurf has been released under GPL! The original authors from Therapy Seriouz Software have agreed to share the sources with the Atari community in order to allow the program to be developed also in the future. Sources will soon be available for anyone to download, but meanwhile read everything about the release here:

At last I got time to fix up documentation and stuff for the 0.161 release of AtarICQ! For those who don't know, AtarICQ is a GEM application that allows you to chat to your friends via the ICQ network. A STiK compatible internet connection is required and a 640x400 or better resolution is recommended.

http://topp.atari-users.net/ In this new release you will find these most noticeable changes and additions: * Possibility to set how long aICQ should wait until a message is considered to be read. AtarICQ will count the time from the moment that the user starts view a contact message with the message window topped! If you temporarily have another window topped, aICQ will reset the timer. * Lots of general changes and additions to preferences for a change. Check them out, should hopefully be logical to figure stuff out. If not, have a look in the HYP. * A _very_ nasty bug fixed, which would make AtarICQ crash upon certain AV-messages. Thanks to Martin Byttebier for patience during tests. * Internal handling of contact data has been reworked, allowing for better flexibility which might prove important for future additions. * The routine for unshading windows now uses WIND_SET(hdl&,22365,0,0,0,0) to allow it to work also with new XaAES. * Fixed a problem where TT-RAM would (if present) was reserved for the DMA sound buffer. http://www.ataricq.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]

********************************************** --Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:34:08 -0800 The webbrowser for Atari TOS compatible computers has been released in the new version 0.2.2. Most important changes are relating to the cache handling and the grafical user interface. http://highwire.atari-users.net/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org http://www.atari.org] **********************************************

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