August 2005
NEWSLETTER for August, 2005 President’s Corner
Treasurer's Report
by Michael Current August, 2005
by Greg Leitner For July, 2005
Hi again, the dog days of summer are here, and fall is just around the corner! It seems the Atari Flashback 2 is generating a fair amount of excitement among Atari retro gaming fans. Unlike the first Atari Flashback, which ran software emulations of 2600 and 7800 games, the Atari Flashback 2 contains about 40 real, original Atari 2600 programs running on real Atari 2600 hardware. No cartridge port, but I understand that there are real Atari joystick ports. Sound interesting?? I believe the Atari Flashback 2 is to be released this month. It's probably not very noticeable, but I spent some time the other day on the SPACE web site improving some of the graphics. The club logo at the top of the (recent) newsletters, the map to the meeting location, and a couple of our mug shots used to be scans I made from the paper newsletter. It finally dawned on me that I could probably make better images by directly transferring and converting the images as contained in the electronic newsletter files that our Newsletter Editor Mike Schmidt sends me. Indeed, better quality graphics. I also retro-fit the graphics into past issues via multi-file search-and-replace with my PC text and HTML editor of choice, NoteTab Pro. Kind of a spiffy program, that, though I still miss BBEdit on the Mac. Then, since I keep a complete copy of the SPACE web site on my PC, it was a snap to batch upload all the changed files to the web server via my choice of FTP program, FileZilla.
I was more than pleasantly surprised when I saw the attendance at the July SPACE birthday party. We currently have ten paid up members and eight were able to make it to the July meeting. Two spouses and another guest made for a total of eleven bodies to partake in this our 23rd anniversary of SPACE. I must say that I was quite apprehensive when it came to the meal we would share this time since the Club wasn't going to supply the main course. It was very reassuring when I saw the food items starting to arrive. Just to name a few and I am very sorry if I leave out your dish, but here is a list. Lunch meats, cheese, buns, devilled eggs, mini corn dogs, chips, cookies, ice cream (banana splits), pop. I would call this party a complete success and I would welcome this format at the Xmas party. We had a wonderful time and it was great to sit and talk about just Atari related topics. Rich and his son, Roger, made the evening for me. It always amazes me the technical knowledge that they possess and share with rest of the group. I think we could have sat there for hours just shooting the bull about Atari, and that is what really makes the meetings for me. Well enough of that. Let's see what's going on with our SPACE finances: Beginning balance as of July 1, 2005:
592.73
While I was at it, I realized that the Microsoft Photo Editor program I use makes it easy to convert an almost-white background into "transparent", resulting in a pure-white image background for the web browser. Even better for the logo and the map.
Receipts for the July meeting: Memberships Doms Blank Disks Total receipts for July 2005:
30.00 30.00 1.00 60.00
Oh yes, following prompting from Nolan, the web site now has a "favorite icon" in place as well. I managed to create one out of the stylized "A" part of the club logo. Your web browser may use this in the bookmark list.
Expenses for the July meeting: Room rental for six months BBS for July Total expenses for July 2005:
150.00 10.00 160.00
Digitizing of old SPACE Newsletters continues at the pace of about one issue a week. At this writing the SPACE web site now includes SPACE Newsletters online full text back to Sept. of 1991.
Ending balance as of July 31, 2005:
493.73
SPACE home page counter update: as of 7/29/05, 9:30pm: 4,049 page views since June 7, 2003. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday August 12, 2005.
Now I have to give you the bad news. If we have ten current members who each pay $15.00 per year for their membership dues, and we sell only on the average three Doms per month our intake is only about $250.00 per year. We may have one or two auctions a year which could bring in another $50.00 or so, but that would only give us around $300.00 in income for the whole year. Our average monthly expenses are currently running about $45.00 per month for an annual amount of about $540.00. As you can see we would fall short of our expenses about $150.00 a year and would eat up our reserves in around three plus years. And this is probably a more positive outlook than actual since it depends on holding our memberships at the current level and selling the Doms each month.
We have already started the discussion on this problem and even though we don't have a long-term resolution to it we do know what's coming if nothing changes. Three years will go by very quickly and if the July meeting is any indication I don't think the current members are going to want to give up and that is very encouraging. After this meeting I can't wait for the August meeting. We have plenty of Atari stuff for an auction and we plan to have one in September. There is so much stuff that we will have to have another auction soon after that and hopefully before year end. I want to have as many members present as we can because there is a lot of good stuff to be auctioned off and it will definitely help the coffers if we can get some hot bidding. I know I am interested in some things and even though I want to spend as little as possible I am willing to go toe to toe with other members just to help the Club. That is the goal and I hope everyone feels the same. Let's hope for some great Minnesota weather and another nice evening for the August meeting. See you all there.
we would hold off the auction until more SPACE members can be present. The meeting adjourned at 8:15 p.m.
BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For July, 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.
******************************************** Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For July, 2005
The July 2005 SPACE meeting began at 7:34 p.m. Greg welcomed everyone to the meeting then I read the minutes from last month's meeting. For the SPACE Treasury last month we paid out $10 for the BBS and $150 for the room rental. One DOM was sold for $3. After the income and expenses were tallied SPACE's bank balance stood at $592.73. Glen reports that there are now 10 paid up members. August's DOM consists of the first two disks from the "SPACE" folder on the K-Products CD-ROM. In BBS News this past month, there hasn't been any activity to speak of on the BBS. The SPACE Forum is seeing lower activity than in previous months; however there is one new user registered. Last month's meeting audio was uploaded to the SPACE BBS website for members. The first SPACE Radio broadcast was created this past week and uploaded to the SPACE BBS website; however, it still is a work in progress. The new SPACE BBS address is now is use; Updated info will be sent to Michael Schmidt, Newsletter Editor, and our President, Michael, so that they may update the newsletter and SPACE website with the new info. A new Atari chat server was discovered this past month - It is available via Telnet at utoc.dyndns.org. It was checked out and seems to be a good server for those Atari 8-Bit users using a terminal program such as BobTerm or Ice-T. No special characters or strange login screens; just a simple login procedure. The SPACE BBS website counters as of the July 2005 SPACE meeting are as follows: Website - 2,617; Telnet BBS Listing - 2,400; Dialup BBS Listing - 1,203.
A-T-A-R-I Answers, Tips And Relevant Information by: Paul V. Alhart We may feel lost in the shadows lately, but we 8-Bitters are still around. And you might be surprised by our numbers. "Why then," you ask, "don't we get any support?" Think about it. Why is it so hard to find a new release on 8-Track tape anymore? Same reasons. There's more money to be made selling cassettes and CDs. Does that mean we won't see any new software for our 8-Bit computers? Although a sudden flood of new commercial software is about as likely as a come back of the 8-Track, there is still a lot of terrific PD/Shareware software being written. The biggest problem is in getting it to the users. One of the best methods is through a user group DOM (Disk Of the Month). AIM offers a DOM that provides the 16-Bit readers with some really great new software. Could AIM be persuaded to also offer a DOM for its 8-Bit readers? I know at least one club has written to AIM asking this question. I don't know what the answer will be or the reasons that there was no 8-Bit DOM in the first place. In hopes of encouraging Pattie & Bill, here are some possible responses to their possible answers. No 8-Bit equipment at AIM? Put a couple 8-Bit programs on the same disk as the 16-Bit programs. Antic used to put 16-Bit software on their 8-Bit disks. The user groups can then strip off the programs using a modem link or possibly by using Transformer. No 8-Bit software at AIM? Just ask. I would be glad to share some of the PD software I have written or collected over the years and I am sure there are many readers of AIM that would be happy to contribute also. No one is interested. OK 8-Bitters. Let them know you are out there and willing to help out by contributing if called upon to do so. AIM is one of the best things to happen to us and our Atari’s in some time. Let’s all work together and make it even better. ps: Thanks Pattie & Bill. AIM is super.
There was no old business this month. In New Business we discussed the auction that SPACE will have in the coming months. The donation we received last month was tallied up this evening so now we just need to set a date. It was decided that
Oops Somewhere between my keyboard and the printing of the June/July issue of AIM some of my data got transmogrified. I hope none of you lost too much sleep trying to figure out the results. Here are the correct AtariWriter+ printer driver locations:
Sector 113 114 114 114 1E1 1E2 1E2 1E3 1E3 1E3 1E3 1EF
Byte 7C 1E 54 78 1A 09 58 0D 2B 47 6B 4C
Selection Use Not used for printing A: 825 B: 1025 C: 1027 E: FX-80 I: IDS-480 J: JUNKI <RETURN> Blank D: 1020 E: 1029 F: XMM-801 G: XDM-121
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:14 AM Subject: ST>new falcon game: H2O --Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:15:56 -0700 Finally a new Falcon game to enjoy, the super demo-crew EKO has released their long awaited H2O game. It's a bit similar to Lemmings in the way puzzles are solved. http://eko.planet-d.net/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 8:58 PM Subject: New book about the Battle between Commodore and Atari --From: Variant Press --Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 19:27:12 -0700
To read more about The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore, please visit: www.commodorebook.com ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:13 AM Subject: ST>Yet Another Eureka Release! --Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2005 16:34:54 -0700 François LE COAT has announced: "Eureka" is updated and released on its WEB page. It is a"2D Graph Describer and 3D Modeller". You'll fetch it at : http://eureka.atari.org/eurka507.zip That is the Complete Common Edition http://eureka.atari.org/eurka020.zip Is the Complete 68020 Edition http://eureka.atari.org/eurkafpu.zip Is the Limited FPU Edition 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) The main novelty of this release is the add of 43 3D FMU shapes coming from the K3DSurf software from Abderrahman Taha. http://eureka.atari.org/
New book about the Battle between Commodore and Atari Find out more about the battle between Atari and Commodore in a new book, "The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore". Learn how former Atari 2600/Atari 800 engineer Jay Miner developed the Amiga computer, and how Atari almost purchased Amiga. Find out how the Atari ST was partially designed by Commodore engineers while they were still at Commodore. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell even joined with Commodore to launch the Commodore CDTV, a precursor to the modern DVD player. The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore is a detailed history of the company behind the best selling computer system of all time, the Commodore 64. This book was almost two years in the making, using over 44 hours of interviews with Commodore engineers and managers. Title: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore: The Inside Story Pages: 624 Size: 6 x 9 inches ISBN 0-9738649-0-7 August 2005
[This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:12 AM Subject: Atari++ 1.42 stable --From: Thomas Richter --Date: 4 Jul 2005 11:03:17 GMT Hi folks, A new release of the Atari++ emulator for Linux and Win32 is available for download at its home page: http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~thor/atari++/ This makes again a new stable release (it's been time; the old stable was rather outdated). So what's new this time: - Fixed race condition when switching the resolution, could cause crashes. - Fixed Antic CHARBASE switches, did not keep care of horizontal scrolling correctly. - Fixed leaking key presses from the GUI to the core.
- Fixed PIA Port A handling, Port A input is nonbuffered. - Fixed Monitor backspace key on some broken ncurses implementations. - Added "graphical" single-step trace command for the monitor. - History of the monitor is now a tad smarter and buffers un-finished lines. - Fixed "dummy writes" for INC and DEC commands. - Fixed player horizontal split, did erraneously remove the old player. - Fixed timing of the pokey timers, should be more precise now. - Fixed XIO for serial baud generator, argument zero leaves baud rate alone. - Fixed serial input counter for concurrent mode - Fixed state parser, is now less sensitive to CF/LF vs. LF confusion. I especially want to thank Don Fanning and Sebastian Pachuta for their time reporting a couple of bugs in the 1.41 release. I hope they're more or less fixed in the 1.42 by now. Thanks, folks!
time. The archive is handled by LotekStyle/.tSCc. and can be downloaded on Atari.org server. URL: http://fading-twilight.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:16 AM Subject: ST>MagicMac X updated --Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:51:08 -0700 Nils Feske has announced: The MacOS version of the commercial multitasking OS Magic called "MagiC Mac" has been updated to version 1.2. You can download the new version on the website of the software house ASH. URL: http://www.application-systems.de/magicmacx/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
So long, Thomas
********************************************** ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:01 AM Subject: AtariArchives.org user-supported project --Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 17:12:49 -0400 We're trying something new that will hopefully mean we can make more great material available much more quickly: user contributions with a specific goal in mind. Here's how it works: You can make a contribution with PayPal for a specific project at AtariArchives. If the target amount is reached, we'll be able to outsource the OCR/HTML work to get material online quickly. If not, you get your contribution back in full. Our first user-supported project: Of the 30+ books available at AtariArchives.org, one of the most popular is Computer Animation Primer by David Fox and Mitchell Waite. However, that book is currently available only with full-page images. If successful, this fundraiser will allow us to make the full text available. This would be much more useful, searchable, and easier to read. Users will be able to copy and paste excerpts for reports, etc. Want to make it happen? Contribute $8 or more at https://www.fundable.org/groupactions/computeranimationprimer Thanks Kevin
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:16 AM Subject: ST>Fading twilight - excerpt 9 --Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:51:45 -0700 Nils Feske has announced: The Atari music archive "Fading-Twilight" has been updated with the release of Excerpt #9. This one features again a big load of Atari related music by numerous authors, which are partly very exotic this
From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:22 AM Subject: ATARI AND ACTIVISION INK LICENSING AGREEMENT FOR ATARI(R) FLASHBACK 2 NEW YORK, July 12 -- Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR) announced today that it has signed a licensing agreement with Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) to include two of their classic video game hits, Pitfall! ® and River Raid® in Atari's forthcoming Atari® Flashback 2. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Atari's first home game console, PONG, Atari Flashback 2 features more than 40 classic games, including arcade classics, previously unreleased titles from the Atari vault and rare homebrew games created by fans and supporters of Atari's early console models. The follow-up to the holiday 2004 hit, Atari® Flashback Classic Game Console, which shipped more than 550,000 units to retail, Atari Flashback 2 is modeled after the pioneering Atari 2600 console and features the same wood grain paneling that inspired a generation. The Atari Flashback 2 includes two classic joysticks for multi-player competition, and vintage controls. The plug-and-play system requires no batteries and fits into the A/V jacks of any standard television set. "The release of the Atari Flashback 2 is perfectly timed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Atari's first home game console, PONG and with the addition of Activision's two legendary games, Pitfall! and River Raid joining the lineup, Atari Flashback 2 is poised to become the definitive retro-gaming experience available," said Wim Stocks, Executive Vice President, Sales, Marketing, Licensing and Distribution for Atari. "Moving forward, we hope to license additional best-selling classics from other publishers for inclusion on future Atari Flashback products." Pitfall! was released in 1982 and went on to become one of the all time favorite video games with its unique side-scrolling platform game play and remarkable visual effects, while River Raid places gamers in the cockpit of a jet where they must compete against an ever-dwindling fuel supply in a race to hit targets and pick up fuel. The Atari Flashback 2 game line-up includes more than 40 games spanning a variety of 8-bit genres. In addition to home arcade classics such as Missile Command(TM), Combat(TM) and Asteroids(TM), the system features innovative new games from self-taught "homebrew" developers -- a dedicated fan base of the 8-bit
architecture that has kept the original spirit of Atari alive by developing original games and sequels to some of their favorite games. The Atari Flashback 2 also feature prototypes of previously unreleased games that have been taken from the 2600 vault, including unreleased games such as Aquaventure and Combat 2. Adds Dave Anderson, Senior Director of Business Development for Activision, "Pitfall! and River Raid have long been icons in their respected genres and we are excited to reintroduce these great Activision classics via the Atari Flashback 2." Developed by Atari, the Atari Flashback 2 is scheduled to ship in August for under $30 at retailers nationwide.
********************************************** SPACE 2005 Birthday Party Photos. Courtesy of Nolan Friedland