October 2005
NEWSLETTER for October, 2005 President’s Corner by Michael Current October, 2005 Auction this month! Expect a good one! You have to show up to win! One book I had a chance to read this summer was Mindstorms by Seymour Papert (second edition, NY: BasicBooks, 1993). Are you aware of this book? From the back cover: "Mindstorms is the book that started the computer revolution in schools. Since its publication in 1980, it has been the bible for thousands of teachers who have sought creative ways to use computers in the classroom. The book chronicles the invention of LOGO, the first child-friendly programming language." The Atari 400/800 were quite popular in schools in the early 80's. While I think Logo was largely seen on (the more popular) Apple II's in schools, the Atari computers had Atari PILOT, a different language which incorporated the same "turtle graphics" as Logo. The schools in my town bought all Atari computers early on, and incorporated PILOT programming at the time. We also had community summer programs for kids that incorporated Atari PILOT programming, something I got a little involved in as well. The combination of PILOT and the graphics and sound capabilities of the Atari computers made for a great educational tool for sure. Wanting to have the more popular and prestigious Logo language available for their computers, Atari paid Logo Computer Systems to develop a version of Logo for the Atari, and Atari Logo finally came out in 1983. By this time Atari was already on the verge of backing off from their committment to education, and from their 8-bit computers altogether. As a result, I don't think Atari Logo was nearly the commercial success that Atari PILOT was. So while Logo is far better-known overall in the world of education, among Atari users most of us remember the turtle graphics of PILOT. After reading Mindstorms, I got motivated to get myself Logo to check it out, and so I bought myself a complete Ataro Logo package. You know what? Atari Logo is VERY cool! Logo itself is an incredibly powerful yet simple to learn language. And the way the Logo programming language and environment is implemented on the Atari, it's just so awesome that the 8-bit Atari has the power to implement such a innovative piece of software so well.
I did my best Atari programming in OSS BASIC XE, along with some stuff in PILOT and of course Atari BASIC. I now suspect that I would have done most of that programming in Atari Logo if only I was familiar with it! If you've ever dabbled in programming, but haven't tried Logo before, I recommend and urge you to check out Atari Logo! 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 December of 1990. SPACE home page counter update: as of 9/30/05, 8:45pm: 4,322 page views since June 7, 2003. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday October 14, 2005.
Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For September, 2005
By the time you read this we will have begun the third quarter of 2005, and I for one am thankful this summer is over. We might as well live in Florida if we keep having summers like this one. I want to thank the other five members who joined me for the September SPACE meeting. It was another hot and very sticky evening, and was still that way even by the time I arrived home at about 9:30PM. Saturday and Sunday following was more of the same and there isn't much you can do outside to enjoy. We had our Star City Days and thank God the parade was at 11:00AM on Saturday, and the fireworks were at 9:30PM Saturday night. Those were the only events we participated in this year because of the extreme heat. Well, we have much to do next month as the November elections are coming up in another month. Anyone who wants to run for any positions are very welcome. I for one will continue on in the same capacity if you so choose and I hope that Mike and Nolan will do so again as usual. But please if there is another member who wants to run or if you want to nominate someone I certainly encourage you to do that. We also have the auction next month, and I really would like to see all our current members present so that we can really get the bidding going. This could really be a boost to our treasury as we have some really great hardware and software to auction off. I would really hate to see this stuff go for just a $1.00 apiece.
Any way, now to the treasury report for this month. Beginning balance as of Sept 1, 2005:
540.73
Receipts for the Sept. meeting: Cd-rom's Dom's
20.00 15.00
Total receipts for the month:
35.00
Expenses for the month: BBS for September
10.00
Ending balance for Sept 30, 2005:
Greg welcomed everyone to the meeting and then the Secretary's Report for August 2005 was read. For last month's Treasury, we took in a total of $57. The only thing paid out was $10 for the BBS. This brings the SPACE bank balance to $540.73. We probably won't get the next $150 room rental until the end of the year. Also, newsletter expenses for the past year aren't expected until sometime December 2005 / January 2006.
565.73
Another excellent month for SPACE as we added another $25.00 net to our treasury. Thank you for your support. It was really nice to see that our ST cd-rom is still of interest, and Glen keeps coming up with great dom's. This month's dom is one of his best and every SPACE member should buy it. Okay, so let's recap next month. Don't forget to bring some moola for the auction next month, and please think about the elections for November. We still will have enough items to auction off for possibly the Xmas meeting in December. We can discuss this next month as I am open to having the second auction whenever we can all agree on it. So let's mix a little fun with business next month and I hope to see you all there.
Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For August & Sept, 2005
The August 2005 SPACE meeting began at 7:34 p.m. Greg welcomed everyone present at this month's meeting and then asked for the Secretary's Report for last month. For the SPACE Treasury, we took in a total of $61. This consisted of 2 membership renewals, 10 DOMs, and 1 box of blank disks. The last 6 months of room rental came in at $150. Also, $10 was paid out for the BBS. After all these were tallied the SPACE bank balance stood at $493.73. Another great DOM was prepared this month by Glen, our DOM Librarian. The membership count is holding at 10 paid-up members. In BBS news, there wasn't much to report this month - No activity to speak of on the BBS. Also, there hasn't been any activity on the SPACE Forum for the past several months. Last month's meeting audio was uploaded to the SPACE BBS website's Members Only section. Website counters as of August 2005 are as follows: Website - 2,692; Telnet BBS Listing - 2,513; Dialup BBS Listing - 1,251. In New Business.... Lance spoke of a new upgrade to the Atari Falcon. And in Old Business.... We discussed the auction which originally was to be held in September. It was decided by the membership to hold off the auction until October. The meeting adjourned at 7:56 p.m.
****************************************************** The September 2005 SPACE Meeting began at 7:31 p.m.
The DOM this month is from the Puget Sound SPACE folder. Included are 30 machine language programs on both sides of the disk. Side 2 contains a document reader program that contains full description and documentation for each game. The games included are as follows: Amazing, Boulder Bombers, Space Blaster, Cosmic Defender, Dark Star, Elevator Repair Man, Fill 'Er Up, Froggie, Livewire, Maniac, Beserk, Money Hungry, Moonbeam Arcade, Olympic Dash, Retro Fire, R.O.T.O., Round-Up, Shooting Stars, Syntron, Harvey Wallbanger, Bacterion, Bonk, Canyon Runner, Myriaped, Pac-Fake, Smush, Space War, Two Gun, Warrior, XPoker. The latest membership count is 11 paid-up members. In BBS News, there's been virtually no activity on the BBS this month. However, activity in the SPACE Forum is back up and there are 2 new users, with 21 total. Last month's meeting audio has been uploaded to the SPACE BBS website's Members Only section. A few updates to the BBS Listings were made, thanks to postings from the Atari 8-Bit Mailing List. More updates will be made in the next month. We discussed the possibility of switching the SPACE Forum to another type of system - Those present agreed with the change so tests will be made this upcoming month and a demo of the new site put online before the next meeting. The forum as it is now will stay until after the transition is complete. A more stable IRC server was set up for SPACE with a local Twin Cities ISP. Current website counters are as follows: BBS Website - 2,782; Telnet BBS Listing - 2,607; Dialup BBS Listing - 1,292. In Old Business.... Next month we will have an auction, with approximately 30 items. Some of the items included in the auction are: Koala pad, remote joysticks, 800XL computer, Printshop, 850 interface, Music Construction Set, Pinball Construction Set, PaperClip, and a lot of other software. There are so many items that a second auctioned is planned for either November or December. And in New Business.... We sold two SPACE CD-ROMs. SPACE now has a mascot - See enclosed photo for details :) The new Flashback system, based on the 5200 architecture, is rumored to have a built in FlashCard type slot. The meeting adjourned at 8:00 p.m.
capabilities of her interface the fix was simple. A jumper was placed across the two pins labeled "R OFF" on the P.R Connection circuit board. This disabled the R: handler. Recently another friend who was having the same problem called. He however, was using an Atari 850 interface. Sure, he could turn off the interface until AtariWriter+ had loaded. But if he forgot, the system would lock up and he would have to reboot from scratch. He also had to remember to turn off the 850 when returning from Proofreader or risk a program crash. An inconvenience to say the least. There is no jumper in the 850 to disable the R: handler so I decided that it was time to modify AtariWriter+ again. I located the code that tells the R: handler to boot and disabled it by making it's first instruction an RTS (Return from subroutine). Now the R: handler is not loaded by AtariWriter+ and the problem is gone. If required, the R: handler can still be loaded by using the RS232.ARX program provided with SmartDOS. This will eliminate memory conflicts with this DOS. (Most DOSs have their own RS232 handler loader program for this reason.) This modification will work the P.R. Connection and for other DOSs as well. To make the change yourself, use a sector editor and find the byte string [A9 50 8D 00 03]. It is located in the 21st sector of AP.OBJ (48K version) starting at byte $61. It can be found in the next to last sector of AP.OBJ (130XE version) starting at byte $68. Change the first byte [A9] to [60]. If you don't have a sector editor or the idea of modifying a program with one scares you, don't fret. Next month I will present you with a short "Type-In" BASIC program that will allow you to painlessly enable/disable AtariWriter+'s RS-232 handler loader routine as well as change the AtariWriter+ default screen colors of AtariWriter+. CORRECTION 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
Byte 7C
************************************************** 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.
114 114 114 1E1 1E2 1E2 1E3 1E3 1E3 1E3 1EF
1E 54 78 1A 09 58 0D 2B 47 6B 4C
********************************************
RANA
BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For October, 2005
A-T-A-R-I Answers, Tips And Relevant Information by: Paul V. Alhart 1990.10 Sometime ago a friend was having trouble when using AtariWriter+ with SmartDOS. We found that her P.R. Connection printer interface was booting the RS-232 "R:" handler over parts of DOS. This caused lots of strange things to happen. It also would reboot the R: handler whenever returning to AtariWriter+ from the Proofreader, compounding the problem. Since she never used the RS-232
Selection
A: B: C: E: I: J: <RETURN> D: E: F: G:
Use Not used for printing 825 1025 1027 FX-80 IDS-480 JUNKI Blank 1020 1029 XMM-801 XDM-121
With a little help from my friends at Best Electronics, I have found a direct replacement head stepper band for the RANA Systems 1000 disk drive. The Atari 810 with MPI drive mechanism used the same band. Atari part # FA10034. Also, the head stepper motor (CB101145) and drive motors (FC100520) are the same as those used in the Atari 1050s with the Tandon drive mechanism. Best Electronics (an AIM advertiser) is one source for these parts. Give Best a call, and be sure and ask for a copy of their latest catalog.
PS: I am still looking for a source for Drive Belts for the Rana. If you know of one let me know and I will pass the information along to my readers.
- User labels can be exported in xasm format to be loaded in Atari800Win emulator. - System labels can now be unloaded from the Label menu.
While I'm on the subject of RANAs. Would you like yours to have a "Write Light"? Trak drives have a LED that lights whenever data is being written to the disk and your RANA can too. You might be surprised how little time the drive is actually writing data. Connect an LED in series with a 330 ohm resistor between +5 volts and the junction of U7-8 & U10-13. NOTE: The cathode of the LED should be toward U7-8. The LED can be mounted wherever you choose. I converted the semi useless "Power" indicator on my RANAs to be a Write Light. To do this J8 has to be unsoldered and removed from the board. With the connector removed, cut both ground traces that connect to J8 pin 11. Replace J8 and run a wire from J8-11 to U7-8. You might also want to replace R1 (330 ohm) on the front panel display board with a 160 ohm resistor to make the LED a little brighter and easier to see.
Fixed bugs: - Opcode $B6 produced a bad disassembly. - When $00 address was referenced, an L0000 was used but not defined in the disassmebly listing. This label is not used anymore. - 5200 files are loaded through the 'load ROM file' instead of the 'load binary file'. - Some Oric files could not load properly because the header of the last segment did not match the size of the file. This is not any more considered as an error. - Dialog box for loading sectors from a .ATR is now working fine. --Slor
You can find more RANA tips as well as schematics, alignment instructions & waveforms, and repair hints in my book, The Rana Repair Guide. To order your copy, send $18.00 (check or M/O) to: Paul V. Alhart 524 North Zee St. Lompoc, Ca. 93436
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 8:33 PM Subject: Dis6502 1.9 released --Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 16:48:26 GMT Dis6502 1.9 released This is a major release and perhaps the last for a bit, including segment and byte modification as well as a small assembler:
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 8:38 PM Subject: Dis6502 1.7 released --From: Slor --Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 14:12:45 -0500 Lots of enhancements for this one - download at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=145747 Version 1.7 Thanks to Steven J. Tucker for giving us many ideas. New features: - The dump popup menu has an option to guess byte type. This option tries to follow the flow of the program beginning with the byte selected by the user. All data in the flow of the program is marked as code. - There are two other options in the dump popup menu to select next block of unknown type and to change the remaining data to bytes. - An option has been added to display Zero-Page instructions with absolute addressing mode as bytes. These instructions use 3 bytes instead of 2. - The disassembly now centers the selected line and displays it with a yellow background. - Disassembly window has a popup menu which offers options like find, find next, select definition of a label, select all references of a label and rename a code label (Lxxxx). - Double click on a line in the disassembly window jumps to the definition of the label found in the instruction. - The disassembly popup menu has an option to return to the previous position after a jump to a definition or to a reference. - Mouse wheel is now supported and scrolls the window under the mouse cursor. - The File menu now supports ROM file loading and raw file loading. Only ROM with no bankswitching are loaded. - 2 sub-menus have been added in the File menu to open recent files and recent workspaces.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=145747 New features: - Bytes in the dump window can be edited. - A small assembler is included in the dump window. - A log window displays log and error messages. No more message box. - Segment properties (start address and type) can be modified. - Added an option to split a segment - Added an optin to remove bad segments (generated by xmodem padding). - Ability to generate relative labels for an address range - New dialog box to customize default path for all kind of files. - Output format is now saved in INI file - The address of a label is displayed as a comment when selecting a line in the disassembly window. --Slor
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 8:40 PM Subject: EMU>Atari800WinPLus 4.0 Full --Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 08:31:10 -0700 Vasco/Tristesse has announced: Jaskier/Taquart has just finished and published the final version of our beloved emulator Atari800WinPLus - version 4.0. "This is the final of my year's work on perfectioning the emulator" - as the author sais. http://www.atari8.info/dodajkomentarz.php?news=249&lang=en [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 9:07 PM Subject: New collection of disk utilities released --From: Preston Crow
--Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 12:51:07 -0400 http://www.crowcastle.net/preston/atari/ Back in the mid 80's, I wrote a sector editor in BASIC. Over several years, I incorporated additional features and tools, as well as re-wrote various routines in assembly language for speed. I should have released it back then, but now I've gone back through it and added a few extra features. I also re-worked all of the assembly language code. Features include: * Sector editor * Show the sector chain for a file * Disk copying * Single and Enhanced density support Sorry, no double-density support * Tachometer * Generate the world's smallest Autorun.SYS files
From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 9:09 PM Subject: ST>New XaAES development snapshot --Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2005 17:32:48 -0700 GokMasE has announced: For the first time since back in May this year, there is now a new development snapshot of XaAES available. Quite a few things have been improved and polished up and the new version is definitely worth a closer look! Amongst other things there is now experimental support for using texture backgrounds for window widgets as well as support for changing resolution from within XaAES. Add to that a comprehensive list of bugfixes and optimisations and at the end of the day you get a more mature and polished AES. Especially users that wants to use XaAES in monchrome mode should pay close attention to this release. Visit the Un-official XaAES Page to read more and download the development snapshot.
Enjoy! --PC http://xaaes.atariforge.net
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 8:43 PM Subject: SIO2Linux 2.0 released --From: Preston Crow --Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 12:33:08 -0400 http://www.crowcastle.net/preston/atari/ I've put out a new revision of the SIO2Linux (formerly femul) program. This is a simple Linux program for use with a SIO2PC cable. Features include: * No kernel modules. It's just one .c file to compile. * Creates dynamically-sized disk images--they grow to the last sector written. * Mount your local file system as a disk--files are mapped to sectors in a virtual image as you read them. Enjoy.
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 8:41 PM Subject: ST>JayMSA 1.08 free edition released --Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 08:31:59 -0700 Jan Krupka has announced: We are happy to announce that our floppy image tool JayMSA is freeware now. JayMSA is utility to view and depack files from MSA archive directly to harddisk without writing a floppy. Beside that JayMSA can create MSA archives the same way as original MSA program does. You can download new version 1.08 which is working in MiNT from Jay Software's website. http://jaysoft.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
[This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 9:10 PM Subject: ST>Paradox releases new STE demo --Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2005 17:33:36 -0700 Zweckform has announced: Paradox released the competition winning demo from Outline 2005 called "Pacemaker" . Its mainly aimed at STE computers with 2MB Ram and uses this hardware heavily. It also runs on Falcon030 computers with several limitatons. http://paradox.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 9:08 PM Subject: ST>Whirl programming language released --Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2005 17:32:09 -0700 Matthias Jaap has announced: Whirl is an esoteric programming language created by Sean Heber and ported to the ST by Matthias Jaap. The instruction set is rather limited: 0 and 1. But it is perfectly possible to create little programs with it! Source code, two example programs ("Hello World" and "99 bottles of beer") and a short manual are included in the archive. The program is distributed as a TTP application and should work on all ST computers, clones and emulators. http://www.jaapan.de/en/myprg.php
********************************************** [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]