April 2005
NEWSLETTER for April, 2005 President’s Corner by Michael Current April, 2005 I finally bit the bullet and replaced my dial-up Internet service with DSL. From a 56kbps dial-up modem to a 256kbps always-on service, the slowest level of DSL available. It's plenty fast to me! I'm enjoying it, discovering how my home computing habits will change when download times are no longer the issue they were. I need to cut other expenses to make up for it, though! I still have a couple other things to figure out, like where to move the SPACE web site. My new ISP offers a paltry amount of web store space, not enough for the content I have. Perhaps I'll have a plan by the time you read this. I wasn't able to make the meeting last month, but I gather the roads were a mess so it was probably for the best that I didn't try. This time, Nolan made an audio recording of the meeting, and set it up as a Windows streaming audio file for me to access and listen to. The first time I tried it, it had a weird reverb effect to it, just annoying enough to make it un-listenable. I've had other Windows media files sound the same way, so I had a hunch it was an issue at my end, either with my slow PC or with my dial-up network speed. Turns out, the file sounds great now that I have DSL! This way of keeping up with the meetings might work! I had three different fun Atari-related things happen to me all the same day the other day. First, I was contacted by someone at Twin Galaxies, the video game high scores people, who had found my web page of my Atari 8-bit game high scores and was asking if I could prove any of them. If I have time, perhaps I'll re-play some of the old classics just for the fun of getting published in their next book, to come out later this year. Second, I was called out of the blue by a women in the Atlanta Georgia area, who was looking for ideas about selling the room full of Atari computer stuff that her late husband had collected over the years. A very nice person. Finally, I won a little eBay auction for an Atari XE computers flyer that I had never seen before. The amazing thing about the auction was, I won with a tie
bid! Turns out that in a tie, the first bidder wins. Who knew? SPACE home page counter update: as of 3/25/05, 9:00pm: 3,416 page views since June 7, 2003. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE Meeting, Friday April 8, 2005.
Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For March, 2005
I can't believe that the next SPACE newsletter will be the April 2005 issue. Where has this year gone? I want to thank the four members besides myself that came to the March SPACE meeting despite the weather once again. It was one of the most bizzare evenings with blizzard conditions one minute and blue sky the next. I had a pretty good ride until just before I arrived at the meeting. I noticed the that Larpenteur Avenue looked a little glassy so I kept my distance from the car in front of me. It was a good thing because when I saw him brake I immediately braked slightly also and found my car sliding a little bit sideways. Oh well, that's life in Minnesota especially around tournament time. Here is the treasury status as of March 31, 2005: Beginning balance on March 1, 2005:
568.73
Dom sales for the month:
+12.00
Less BBS expense for March
-10.00
Ending balance on March 31, 2005:
570.73
As you can see not much happening right now at SPACE and this was a topic of discussion at our meeting. With only 11 members paid up you can calculate that we won't bring in enough funds to pay the room rent of $300.00 for the year. The dom sales are very important and Glen puts in a lot of time producing them. I just wish we could get every paid up member to buy the dom each and every month. That would get the Club another
$33.00 per month and with our membership renewals we would clear our expenses. This doesn't seem like it should be that much to ask. Come on! Only $3.00 per month and your $15.00 for the annual dues each year. Let's do it. Well the NCAA basketball is in full swing and that is where I will be planted this weekend from around noon to midnight each day, Saturday and Sunday. This year is almost impossible to pick so I am going to wait until after the Conference Championships this weekend before deciding which team I am betting on. We have a really cool betting league going each year where we pick the 65 teams from number one to the lowly number 65. Each round we add up the numbers that are left on your sheet and at the end of the tournament the one with the lowest number wins most of the pot with a small amount going to second and third places. I have to make all these calculations so I will be extremely busy the next couple of weeks. Let's hope the weather will be more favorable next month and we can get all our members to attend. And don't forget to renew those memberships if it's due, and please, please, please buy a Dom!!!
Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For March, 2005
In BBS News. There has been quite a bit of activity regarding the BBS and its website. The current hit counters that were reported are as follows: Web Site - 1914, Telnet BBS Listing - 1890, Dialup BBS Listing - 924. There were two new users that registered on the SPACE Forum - A lot of activity from David in Canada and the Vice President of SCAT. Both of the new SPACE website versions have been created and uploaded http://spacepda.atari.org/ and http://spacemobile.atari.org/. Several photos from the 2004 Birthday and Christmas Party were submitted to the Newsletter Editor for inclusion in this month's newsletter. Nolan, our BBS Operator came up with the idea of creating a weekly Internet radio program. This program would be recorded and then made available in two formats - Windows Media (wma) and MP3 - In this way all interested Internet users whether they have an Atari or not would be able to download and listen to the program. There was no Old Business to discuss this month. In New Business, there was a brief discussion on the use of Atari emulators. Greg mentioned that there are several back issues of IMAGE available for anyone that is interested.
The March 2005 SPACE Meeting began at 7:35 p.m. The meeting adjourned at 8:20 p.m. Greg welcomed everyone to the meeting and then asked that the minutes be read from last month. For the Treasury last month, we sold 8 DOMs at $3 each for a total of $24 and had two membership renewals at $15 each for a total of $30, for a grand total income of $54. Michael Schmidt, our Newsletter Editor, was paid $104 for a year's worth of newsletter expenses. Also, $20 was paid out for the BBS for this month and last month. As of last month our bank balance stood at $638.73 - With the additional income and expenses for this month we are now down to $568.73. There are currently 11 paid up members, with 2 more memberships that have the possibility of being renewed as well. Side A of this month's DOM contains 36 pictures created with Micro Illustrator shown in a slideshow format. Side B contains several German games and one cassette labeling utility from the "R_SAGA" folder.
BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For March, 2005
**************************************************
If anyone has any comments, suggestions, ideas, or submissions for the BBS Corner column or the SPACE BBS web site, you may email them to me, Nolan Friedland, at the address shown on the back of this newsletter under the "CLUB OFFICIALS" section. ********************************************
A-T-A-R-I Answers, Tips, And Relevant Information by Paul Alhart 1989.12 For the last few years Bruce Franke has served the Atari Federation by setting aside a special section on his BBS for our club's members. Thank you Bruce. The Reference Point and Spider's Place are both gone now though. Not only will we miss Bruce's chats and his "humor", but we also lost a service vital to our club's news letter. Jim Williams, SysOp of the Macquilibrium BBS, has graciously consented to set up a section on his BBS to fill this void. When you call the Macquilibrium leave a message for Jim that you are a member of the Federation. He will then grant you access to the Atari section. Don't forget to let him know you appreciate his support while you are at it. The Atari section allows public and private messages. Unlike the main message section these messages can only be accessed by club members. The Atari section also has File Up/Download capability. This is for newsletter articles and club related files. It is not meant to be used for software files. ASCII files must be terminated with a "Control K" to let the BBS know the Upload is cmoplete. Again, these files can only be accessed by club members.
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 9:09 AM To: kirschg@netzero.net; Schmidt, Mike; hunmanik@earthlink.net Subject: 8BIT>MyPicoDos 4.03 released --From: Matthias Reichl --Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:18:30 -0800 Version 4.03 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: - files and directories can now be selected using a joystick in port 1 or 2 - fixed the initializer program so that MyPicoDos works with the KMK/JZ IDE interface so long, Hias
After logging on to Macquilibrium type "J" to Join a section. Follow this with "ATARI" to get to our special area. You will come up in the Atari message section. "Q" Quit the message area to get to the File section or back to the Main section of the BBS. Jim and I have tested all this out and everything works quite well. It is a new section though, both for Jim and for us, so let one of us know if you experience any problems at all.
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 8:56 AM To: kirschg@netzero.net; Schmidt, Mike; hunmanik@earthlink.net Subject: ST>Atari STE fanpage has now real database --Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 10:25:28 -0800
Macquilibrium SysOp Jim Williams (805)-735-6964 300/1200/2400 baud 24 hours
ZWF/Paradox has announced:
**********************************************
Also sort funktions allow to see e.g. a year based list of the production.
From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 8:57 AM To: kirschg@netzero.net; Schmidt, Mike; hunmanik@earthlink.net Subject: ST>New ARAnyM release --Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 10:26:01 -0800 Petr Stehlik has announced: This major release (0.9.0beta2) brings first real working MMU implementation plus several new cool features and fixes. Now you can run MiNT with memory protection enabled, and even boot Linux/m68k! http://aranym.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
The once pure html list of the archiv was transfered int a mysql database, giving the user now the possibility to search for programms/ groups etc.
Many thanks to Gerhard Pfeffer for his work. http://www.atari-ste.com/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] **********************************************