September 2005
NEWSLETTER for September, 2005 President’s Corner
Treasurer's Report
by Michael Current September, 2005
by Greg Leitner For August, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
I can't believe I just wrote September in the subject box of this letter. Where did this year go? I have been so busy this year the months are just flying by. My four grandchildren and my job take up most of any spare time I have. I am lucky to be able to check my e-mail a couple of times each week. We had a very pleasant meeting in August with six members six members present and one other that stopped in on his way out of town. Pretty good for one of the more comfortable days we have had for some time. I had my central air on for more than thirty days straight and this Friday was the first day I turned it off. Maybe I can leave it off for a while. Here is the breakdown for the SPACE treasury for the month of August 2005: Beginning balance at August 1, 2005: Receipts for the August meeting: Memberships Dom's Total Receipts Expenses for the August meeting: BBS Ending balance at August 31, 2005:
493.73
45.00 12.00 57.00
10.00 540.73
As you can see it was a very good month for SPACE. Three membership renewals and four doms sold. This is a banner month for SPACE since we can't usually claim that we increased our membership count since the previous month, but we did. We went from ten to eleven paid up members in August. Congratulations to us. We decided to hold off on our auction until the October meeting. Since our meeting in September was so close to back-to school it was noted that some members might be short on bidding cash because of the expenses involved with their children or themselves. Since the goal is to make money for the Club, I think this was a good decision. Anyway it was voted on overwealmingly to wait another month. I hope this works out for all SPACE members. Anyway, I hope to see all in September. Have fun at the State Fair!!
Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For August, 2005
BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For September, 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 V. Alhart 1990.9
A few years back I bought a new toaster. It was a shiny chrome four slice Upandown model. Boy what a toaster. It wasn't too expensive but it sure could make toast. And fast too. It seemed that everyday I would discover a new type bread to try in my Upandown. There was white, rye, raisin, cinnamon, and hundreds of others. I had a wonderful time toasting and tasting them all, although raisin has probably always been my personal favorite. I told all my friend about the great little Upandown and recommend they get one too. It was a little hard to find one though. There were not many Upandown dealers and I don't remember ever seeing a an advertisement for their great toaster. But when the discount chains stopped carrying the Upandown I was really upset. Recently I wrote to Upandown and let them know my feelings and was surprised when they answered my letter right away. What they said was not what I wanted to hear however. Upandown had decided to get out of the toaster business and convert all their assembly lines to manufacture the Upandown Yo Yo. Now what do I do? I guess I'll have to go shopping tomorrow for a new brand of toaster. Sure my Upandown toaster still works fine, but with no factory support who will ever bake a NEW type of bread for me to try? I know, I know, I hardly ever toast anything besides raisin, but...? Sounds silly doesn't it? But that is about the same kind of talk I hear in the Atari user community all the time. "If Atari doesn't do something soon, I'll have to buy another brand of computer." Now with the rumor that Atari will no longer make or support the 8-bit computer line, it is even worse.
If your 8-bit Atari is still serving you well, as mine is, what do we care what Atari Corp does? Atari built a good machine and we bought it. After the warranty ran out Atari had no more responsibility to support you or me than Upandown did. So there won't be much NEW software written for the 8-bit. Ther hasn't been much written for sometime now. But there has already been so much software written for the 8-bit Atari that you and I together probably couldn't find the time to boot it all, let alone use it all. The real problem here , as it has always been, is not Atari's lack of support, but finding the already available software you need. Here is where user groups come in. Virtually every user group has a disk library available to it's members. My guess is that groups on the East Coast have a much different selection of programs than the groups in the Mid-West or on the West Coast do. We are all Atari users none the less and we DO have a common tie. AIM. If AIM were to start an 8-bit DOM using software from all the member group's libraries, we would all benefit. Just making your group's library listing available to the other groups through AIM would be a good start. The bottom line is this. If your Atari is doing what you want it to do, Keep it and Keep using it. Don't worry about what Atari is doing ( or not doing). Support your user group, Support AIM, and they both will Support you and your trusty old 8-bit Atari. Do you still use a "TRANSLATOR" to run some of the older disk based software on your XL/XE Atari? I really like my 1200XL, but at the same time I really hate having to use the TRANSLATOR to boot up certain software. What to do? I Translated the offending software to run on my system and filed my Translator Disk away in the back of a drawer somewhere. You can do the same. In the beginning, Atari said, "If programmers use the PUBLISHED VECTORS into the Operating System (O/S), their programs will run on ANY 8-bit Atari Computer." (IF is such a big word.) To make a long story short, some programmers did not follow this rule, but to save a few bytes, jumped right into the O/S. This was fine before the XL/XE machines came along with a different O/S. The published vectors are still the same as Atari promised, but they point to different locations in the new O/Ss. The following list gives the published vector location and name followed by the "ILLEGAL" O/S entry points that are pointed to. If you find that a program Jumps to F3F6 to open the screen, (20 F6 F3) and you have an 800XL, change the code to (20 8E EF). Remember: Low byte/High byte. I have found this to be the most common ILLEGAL jump. The next most common are the "K: Get/Put" calls. I spent many hours Peeking into my operating system with a lot of help from Compute's Mapping The Atari to come up with this list. It now saves me lots of time and hopefully will help you also. Note: Translated software will only run on the O/S that it has been translated for, so keep an original copy as back-up.
VECTOR
800
XL/XE
1200XL
200 202 204 206 208 20A 20C 20E 210 212 214 216
VDSLST VPRCED VINTER VBREAK VKEYBD VSERIN VSEROR VSEROC VTIMR1 VTIMR2 VTIMR4 VIMIRQ
E790 E78F E78F E78F FFBE EB0F EA90 EACF E78F E78F E78F E706
C0CE C0CD C0CD C0CD FC19 1A23 19E6 EAEC C0CD C0CD C0CD C030
C0E7 C0E6 C0E6 C0E6 FC0C E929 E88A E8C9 C0E6 C0E6 C0E6 C054
222 224 226
VVBLKI VVBLKD CDTMA1
E7AE E905 EBEC
C0E2 C28A EC11
C019 C2A3 EA2E
E400 E402 E404 E406 E408 E40A E40C
E:OPEN E:CLOSE E:GET E:PUT E:STATUS E:SPECIAL E:JUMP
F3FC F634 F63E F6A4 F634 F63D F3E4
EF94 F2D3 F24A F2B0 F21E F2C3
EEF8 F17E F18F F1F5 F174 F17C EECD
E410 E412 E414 E416 E418 E41A E41C
S:OPEN S:CLOSE S:GET S:PUT S:STATUS S:SPECIAL S:JUMP
F3F6 F634 F593 F5B7 F634 FCFC F3E4
EF8E F2D3 F180 F1A4 F21E F9AF EF6F
EEED F17E F0D6 F0FA F174 F903 EECD
E420 E422 E424 E426 E428 E42A E42C
K:OPEN K:CLOSE K:GET K:PUT K:STATUS K:SPECIAL K:JUMP
F634 F634 F6E2 F63D F634 F63D F3E4
F21E F21E F2FD F22D F21E F22D EF6F
F174 F174 F242 F17D F174 F17D EECD
E430 E432 E434 E436 E438 E43A E43C
P:OPEN P:CLOSE P:GET P:PUT P:STATUS P:SPECIAL P:JUMP
EE9F EEDC EE9E EEA7 EE81 EE9E EE78
FEC2 FF07 FEC1 FECB FEA3 FEC1 FE9A
EC63 ECA3 EC62 EC6C EC44 EC62 EC3A
E440 E442 E444 E446 E448 E44A E44C
C:OPEN C:CLOSE C:GET C:PUT C:STATUS C:SPECIAL C:JUMP
EF4C F02B EFD6 F010 F028 EF4B EF41
FCE6 FDCF FD7A FDB4 FDCC FCE5 FCDC
ED1A EE03 EDAE EDE8 EE00 ED19 ED0F
E450 E453 E456 E459 E45C E45F E462 E465
DISKIV DISKINV CIOV SIOV SETVBV SYSVBV XITVBX SIOINV
EDEA EDF0 E4C4 E959 E8ED E7AE E905 E944
C6A3 C6B3 E4DF C933 C272 COE2 C28A E95C
C2A9 C2B9 E4DF F74E C28B C019 C2A3 E739
E468 E46B E46E E471 E474 E477 E47A E47D E480 E483 E486 E489 E48C
SENDEV INTINV CIOINV BLKBDV WARMSV COLDSV RBLOKV CSOPIV PUPDIV SLFTST PENTV PHUNLV PHINIV
EBF2 ECD5 E4A6 F223 F11B F125 EFE9 EF5D
EC17 C00C E4C1 *F223* C290 C2C8 FD8D FCF7 F223 ** EEBC E915 E898
EA34 C00C E4C1 FCE1 C34B C37B EDC1 ED2B FCE1 5000 CAAE CAEB CA34
*SLFTST*
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:34 PM Subject: 8BIT DIS6502 1.6 released --From: Slor --Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:22:19 -0700 Version 1.6 of Eric Bacher's interactive 6502 disassembler has been released. This release is a port to Win32 with a few bug fixes and a number of new features. You can now find the latest version at its new home: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dis6502/ We hope those of you who remember DIS6502 from back in the 16-bit Windows days will grab this new one and give it a run. Make sure you take a look at changes.txt for release notes, and please enter any bug reports or feature requests in the project tracker on SourceForge. Thanks! -Slor ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:38 PM Subject: 8BIT>Raster Music Tracker 1.21 --Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:23:27 -0700 RMT 1.21 - Raster Music Tracker with enhanced mouse control etc. You can get it from the RMT website. Changes in RMT 1.21 ------------------- Enhanced mouse control: * Set cursor position in trackedit area, songedit area, instrument parameters / envelope / table area, info / speed area. * Octave selection by mouse (click to "OCTAVE x-y" text). * Volume selection by mouse (click to "VOLUME x" text). (Also you can turn on/off "respect volume" option there.) * Instrument selection by mouse (click to "XX: instrument name" text).
* Envelope GO/LEN parameter setting area (click to mouse L/R button).
**********************************************
* Table GO/LEN parameter setting area (click to mouse L/R button). (Areas' locations - see the screenshots.) - New hotkeys: SongEdit: * Enter ... Exit from SongEdit section. * Home ... Move cursor to first songline. * End ... Move cursor to last songline. * PageUp ... Move cursor 4 songlines up. * PageDown ... Move cursor 4 songlines down. - New option in Config dialog (menu View - Configuration): * Don't use hardware soundbuffer (default is off).
From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:16 PM Subject: Atari USB Update -- Support for USB Floppy Drives
(Maybe it could help if you have some system sound related problems.)
We have new Pictures online at: http://www.strotmann.de/twiki/bin/view/Microusb/ProjUSBC onvFourPic
--From: Carsten Strotmann --Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 22:12:24 +0200 Hello, the USB Team, Thomas, Florian, Carsten (Harry was unavailable), worked this weekend (friday to sunday) in Carstens basment to create new USB Hardand Software for the 8bit Atari.
URL: http://raster.infos.cz/atari/rmt/rmt.htm What is new: [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 11:59 AM Subject: atari++ 1.43 available --From: Thomas Richter --Date: 1 Aug 2005 15:49:27 GMT Hi folks, please find a new release of the Atari 8-bit emulator for Linux and win32 on my web page on its usual location:
* a new Hex2Bin Converter (internal Tool) * a new Version of the USBTEST Tool * Support for USB (UFI) Floppies (DOS Driver hopefully available in End-September) More news can be found in the upcoming ABBUC Magazin (look for Hardware Contest) The new USBTOOL Version 0.5 will be available on Wednesday, 08/24/05, on the SourceForge Project Pages (microusb.sf.net). If you have access to an USB Floppy, an UFI/USB ZIP-Drive or any other Device compatible with the UFI/CBI Standard, please test with the new USBTEST and give us feedback.
http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~thor/atari++/ Greetings What's new in this release? the MicroUSB Team - Too many people complained about sound problems; the main problem was a DC offset in the pokey output that too easily causes trouble with some sound cards and amplifies. This release fixes this issue by an (optional) high-pass filter. - The 1.43 release integrates a new optional host-system based RS-232 (R:) handler that does not require the usual HANDLERS.SYS bootstrap code, but can be patched into the Os to begin with. Note that you still need to enable the 850 interface box to use it. The old bootstrapping code remains available for backwards compatibility. - Keyboard emulation did not check for the pokey keyboard disable bit.
The mew USBTEST Disk with Floppy Support is now available on SourceForge, including the new Forth Sourcecode https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11142 8&package_id=137480 ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:43 PM Subject: ST>GFA-Basic Editor v1.20 released --Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:25:50 -0700
- The emulation of the Atari/InverseVideo key was broken. 1.43 fixes this.
Lonny Pursell has announced:
So long, Thomas
GFA-Basic Editor v1.20 released
The most important new feature in this release is the direct support for RUN! Software's new RUN!Only interpreter. The instant satisfaction you got from hitting the 'Run' button is back. Many other new features and corrections, too many to list here. Please see the documentation for details. URL: http://www.bright.net/~gfabasic/html/gfa_apps.htm [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:42 PM Subject: ST>Clogged Up game released GUILDFORD, UK -- August 21st 2005 - Reservoir Gods are proud to announce the release of their latest game for Atari Platforms: "Clogged Up". "Clogged Up" is a brain challenging escape-em-up. It can be played as a single player game or you can compete with a friend in multiplayer battles. With graphics from Sh3, Sarah & Exocet as well as nine spanking SID tunes from MSG, "Clogged Up" is a treat for the eyes and ears.
From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:31 PM Subject: ST>HypView 0.35.2d released --From: Gerhard Stollb --Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:21:02 -0700 Version 0.35.2d of the ST-Guide clone HypView has been released. Latest changes: - Bug fixed: form_popup in N.AES 1.2.0 - New info dialog with more info about the hypertext. - Support the keyword REFONLY from ST-Guide - HypView works better with PlainTOS http://home.ewr-online.de/~gstoll/ ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:30 PM Subject: ST>Now taking pre-orders for PS2 to ST mouse converter --From: exxos --Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:19:56 -0700 Hi all,
"Clogged Up" runs on all Atari ST based machines from the humble STFM to the CT60, where extra hardware is detected it uses it.
http://www.cps-electronics.co.uk/web/PS2.htm
Boasting 300 different levels set over seven unique worlds, "Clogged Up" will keep you glued to your Atari until the clogs come home.
We need to get at least 25 orders to make the project worthwhile! Tell all your friends and don't miss this fantastic adapter!
"Clogged Up" is available for download at http://www.reservoir-gods.com
The adapter is 100% plug and play with adjustable 4 adjustable speed settings, have a FAST mouse in ST HIGH RES! Ditch your old brick mouse and go for the smooth PS2 option!
ABOUT RESERVOIR GODS: Formed in 1994, Reservoir Gods have been responsible for a slew of titles for Atari machines. From puzzle games "Tautology", "SkyFall" & "Static" through to arcade games "Double Bobble 2000", "Chu Chu Rocket" & "SuperFly". Their demos include "Grimey", "Hallucinations" & "Mind Rewind". They also produced the art package "GodPaint", the diskmag "Maggie" & emulators for GameBoy & NES.
We are now taking orders for the PS2 to ST mouse converter.
Chris ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:41 PM Subject: ST>RUN!Only v1.00 released
URL: http://www.reservoir-gods.com/ --Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:24:10 -0700 ********************************************** Lonny Pursell has announced: GFABASIC has always had the big disadvantage to be a "dirty" program. But these days are finally over! Lonny Pursell has made a GFA editor called GBE. It looks and feels very similar to the original and is a clean GEM app, but has
one important thing missing: The RUN! button. Who else than RUN! Software could have made this run button work. So RUN!Only is a so called runonly interpreter, very much like the one that used to be shipped for a while by GFA themselves. The big difference though is, that it is a clean application and even runs with MiNT's memory protection. See documentation for further detail. http://www.run-software.de/runonly.htm
This is a bug-fix update. Soon after the release of V3.60 some errors were noticed, two of them rather serious, and they have now been fixed. Upgrade from V3.60 as soon as possible is advised. Beware that any icons created in V3.60 by dragging objects from directory windows to the desktop may have corrupt or missing object path information. Have in mind that substantial changes were made in TeraDesk since V3.50; although the program has been tested as much as reasonable, it is possible that some newly created bugs has passed unnoticed. If you observe any anomalies, please let me know.
[This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 12:00 PM Subject: ST>TeraDesk 3.60 is available
See the history file and the hypertext manual for more information.
Have fun. **********************************************
--From: Djordje Vukovic --Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 16:47:43 -0700 Version 3.60 of TeraDesk open-source desktop is available at:
From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 12:01 PM Subject: ST>The ETHERNAT Ethernet/USB card for CT60 is FINISHED
http://solair.eunet.yu/~vdjole/teradesk.htm TeraDesk is currently the only open-souce desktop available for 16-bit and 32-bit Atari computers. Developers' goal is to maintain TeraDesk as a small, simple, fast and reliable desktop, which can run on any TOScompatible Atari computer, clone or emulator and which can be be functional and competetive in the modern multitasking environments and all flavours and versions of TOS-compatible operating system(s), while keeping, as much as reasonable, familiarity with the original TOS desktop. Several new features have been added since the last published version, mostly in the areas of handling file attributes and access rights, and manipulation of desktop and window icons. Also, some bugs have been fixed. Users are advised to read the documentation before running the program ;) Some features of TeraDesk may not be immediately obvious. Have fun. ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 5:33 PM Subject: ST>TeraDesk 3.61 released --From: Djordje Vukovic --Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:21:43 -0700 Version 3.61 of TeraDesk open-source desktop is available at: http://solair.eunet.yu/~vdjole/teradesk.htm
--From: hencox --Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 18:57:56 -0700 Hi! We're very happy to announce that the ETHERNAT is finally finished!!! The 100Mbit ethernet part is working fine and though we have no finished driver for the USB part yet, the enumeration test by Jan Thomas shows that it will work fine once the USB stack has been written (also by Jan). For more technical details read the (soon available) news on our homepage: nature.atari.org. Now we need to know exactly how many boards we're going to produce, because it affects the price we need to ask of you. We have done some more detailed calculations on the final price. Have a look at this: 200 orders => 120 EURO/board 150 orders => 125 EURO/board 100 orders => 138 EURO/board Shipping costs will be added to this. The prices are including Swedish VAT (25%) and apply for all EU customers except companies that are VAT registrated in their respective countries. For all customers outside the EU instead the following prices apply (VAT for your country will probably be added by your customs): 200 orders => 96 EURO/board 150 orders => 100 EURO/board 100 orders => 111 EURO/board HINT: To avoid the 25% Swedish VAT within the EU, let a VAT registrated company buy all the boards for your country
from us and distribute them within your country. Contact us first if you run a company and want to do this. Swedish customers may pay us in SEK instead of EURO. More info on that later. Now please send us an email (to "hencox at hotmail dot com" or "henrik at gildaelectronics dot se" or "torbjorn at gildaelectronics dot se") and state exactly how many boards you want. Please don't write anything else, this is not yet your order! And we want this email even from our closer friends in the atari community, because we can't be sure that you want a board just because we know you... :) We know that we've already asked for your interest in this product several months ago, but we need to get a fresh picture now. Because Rodolphe Czuba has experienced that 10-20% of all who state that they will buy a board never goes through with it, please be honest when you write this email. You have two weeks to register your interest (until August 23rd 2005). After that we'll post information on how to prepay us for the boards. Regards Henrik and Torbjörn ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** **********************************************