SPACE Newsletter

NEWSLETTER for February, 2006 President’s Corner

I will be missing you guys, but you can be sure I will be back for the March meeting.

by Michael Current February, 2006

It's good to see that we have thirteen paid up members and with any luck we could have fifteen soon. I hope a couple of past dues will come back and join us again.

I have a feeling, based on the number of articles I'm about to send to Mike Schmidt, that this Newsletter is running long. So, I may have a good excuse to keep this column short. My Atari hobby has taken a crazy amount of my time the past couple months, between going through stuff obtained at SPACE auctions, stuff obtained on a several little eBay auctions, extensive work on certain parts of the FAQ and Vendors lists, and who knows what else? It's been a lot of fun though, there's always more to learn about our little Atari 8-bits!

It seems that the Club members would like to keep the audio form the monthly meetings, and I was outvoted so I suppose Nolan will begin to catalog the meetings. The space on Nolan's hard drive is getting eaten up severely with these meetings and it was suggested that he put them on cd's. Next month you will probably here more about this, and if my son, Tony, comes to the meeting as he has planned I will here what transpired from him.

Digitizing of old SPACE Newsletters has taken a back seat lately. At this writing, the SPACE web site now includes online full-text SPACE Newsletters back to March of 1990. SPACE home page counter update: as of 1/27/06, 11:00pm: 4,891 page views since June 7, 2003. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday February 10, 2006.

Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For January, 2006

Seven members were present for the January 2006 SPACE meeting. The weather has really been unbelievable, and the more days we have like this are more days we don't have to worry about the cold or the real high heating bills. I suppose we are going to get payback from Mother Nature sometime soon, but I for one can wait a lot longer. I will be MIA next month, and I have turned the keys over to Glen for the February meeting. Jackie and I will be in Florida visiting Mickey, and this is one vacation we really needed to take. Thanks to our kids Xmas presents we have lots of Disney dollars to spend.

Now on to the treasury for the month ended January 31, 2006: Beginning balance as of January 1, 2006:

815.73

Receipts for January 2006: Dom's

+21.00

Expenses for January 2006: BBS

-10.00

Ending balance for January 31, 2006:

826.73

As you can see with the little expense we have each month we are continuing to grow our Treasury. We will be getting the bill for the last half of 2005 for the rent which will be $150.00. Because of the renewed interest in our monthly Dom’s (thanks to Glen) we are generating a lot more income each month. Glen has almost exhausted some of the prior month's Dom’s and he will be trying to replenish his stock. I am very glad to see members’ buying the Dom’s each month as this is a really important part of our Club and Glen puts in a lot of his time in producing them. I thank all of our members who have continued their support for the Club and I want to personally thank you for rekindling my interest in the Club. I was starting to feel that SPACE was on it's last legs, but now I can see a bright future for this Club and I can't wait to see you all at the March 2006 SPACE meeting. Happy New Year. **********************************************

Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For January, 2006

Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For December, 2005

The January 2006 SPACE Meeting began at 7:26 p.m.

The December 2005 SPACE Meeting began at 7:30 p.m.

Greg welcomed everyone to the meeting and then I briefly went over the minutes from last month.

We all were welcomed by the SPACE Officers and then I briefly went over the minutes from last month.

The SPACE Treasury did very well last month with a big jump from $699.73 to $815.73. There were two membership renewals and 1 new member. SPACE also sold 15 Dom’s and took in $36 in auction sales. The next room rental shouldn't need to be paid until sometime in July or August 2006. The only thing paid out was $20 for the BBS - This is for two months as Greg will not be here for the February meeting.

The SPACE Treasury is doing well with a bank balance of $699.73 as of the beginning of December. The only thing paid out was $10 for the BBS.

There was another great DOM this month put together by Glen. It features machine language games on side A and BASIC games on side B.

In BBS News there was nothing much to report. Normal hit statistics for the main BBS website counter, Telnet and Dialup BBS listings had roughly 100 hits each. The Dialup and BBS Listings were manually reviewed and updated where necessary. Last month's meeting audio was also uploaded to the SPACE BBS website. Five new users have signed up for the SPACE Forum; however there have been no postings since mid-September. The SPACE PDA website has also been updated to reflect recent changes.

As of this month SPACE has 13 paid up members. In BBS News the monthly counter statistics are as follows: Website - 3,072; Telnet BBS Listing - 3,081; Dialup BBS Listing - 1,482. Last month's meeting audio has not yet been uploaded but will be along with tonight in the upcoming month before the next meeting. Roughly 1.5 gigabytes - over 4,000 Atari 8-bit files - have been collected from various Internet sites.

Glen had yet another great DOM for the month. As of this meeting there are a total of XX paid up members.

No Old or New Business was discussed as we moved quite quickly to the food and auction we had planned for this month. The meeting adjourned at 7:45 p.m.

The archive - which is available at http://www.metrofreenet.org/~ilmarinen/atari8/ - has been accepted and listed at XLSearch (http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/xlsearch/). The SPACE Forum (http://www.ilmarinen.us/forum/) currently has 34 registered users however a lot will be removed due to bogus registrations. Several pictures and short movies from last month's Christmas Party have been uploaded to the SPACE BBS website (http://spacebbs.atari.org). Additional pictures submitted by SPACE member Allen have also been included. There was a somewhat lengthy discussion on the idea I proposed which was to delete all meeting audio that has been done so far in order to save server space. Several members wanted to keep the audio but the problem with declining server space still remained. By a show of hands it was decided that instead of it being deleted it should be backed up on CD whenever server space becomes an issue. In Old Business Greg reported that the room rental for the last half of 2005 has not been received. He expects to receive the bill any time now which will be in the amount of $150. And in New Business we discussed an 800 XE laptop that was developed. The meeting adjourned at 8:30 p.m.

Christmas Party Photos.

BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For February, 2006

************************************************** 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 1991.4 Creative programming using Atari BASIC's Immediate Mode What is the Immediate Mode? Just type in a command, WITH NO LINE NUMBER, and press RETURN. The command will execute IMMEDIATELY without disturbing any program or data you currently have in memory. Try this from BASIC: FOR I =1 TO 255: POKE 710,I: NEXT I: POKE 710,144 "RETURN" As you can see, more than one command can be placed on a line, just as in any BASIC program line. There are some obvious limitations though. You have to type in the commands each time you want to use them, and you can only type in as much as will fit on one "logical" line (120 characters max.) So where does the creative programming come in? Type in the above example again; only precede it with a line number before pressing RETURN. Notice that this time it didn't execute when you pressed RETURN. The line number tells the computer the command is a PROGRAM MODE Command and should execute only after you issue a RUN command. Now give this one line program a name and LIST it to disk. (LIST"D:TEST") Using a word processor, load this one line program and edit away the line number. Resave it to the disk using the ASCII Save option and you now have a disk based program that will RUN in the Immediate Mode when ENTERed from disk (ENTER"D:TEST")

********************************************

Now you can get creative. Your Immediate Mode programs are no longer limited to one "logical" line. They don't have to be retyped each time you want to use them. They will not interfere with programs or data residing in memory. Most BASIC commands can be used, including DIMension, Open & Close, GET & PUT, IF & THEN. Commands that reference a line number, like GOTO or GOSUB, can not be used within an Immediate Mode program, but GOTO could be used as an exit to a program line that is in memory. Immediate Mode programs can call other disk based programs. BASIC programs can call Immediate Mode Programs and use them as

disk based subroutines. End you Immediate Mode program with a RUN or GOTO command and a program in memory can be automatically restarted when your Immediate Mode program finishes. Some uses for disk based Immediate Mode programs could be for utility programs. I have written several Immediate Mode programs which I keep handy on my BASIC Programming utility disk. They allow me to look up an ERROR number, convert numbers between Hexadecimal & Decimal, look at disk directories, Lock/Unlock/Delete files, and more. All without ever leaving BASIC or the program I am working on. You may remember seeing some of these in my Atari BASIC Enhancements article that appeared in the May '89 issue of Antic. But now it's your turn to get creative. Write an Immediate Mode Program or Utility of your own. You will find that writing a program that does not reference any line numbers can be quite a challenge. Be sure to LIST it to disk and edit out the line numbers after you have it debugged and RUNning. Feel free to send me a copy of the fruits of your labors. I would love to see what other 8-bitters are doing. Also, with your permission, I will share your efforts with my readers in future A-T-A-R-I columns or possibly on an AIM 8-bit DOM.

- Several improvements of RMT Atari assembler routine - it is 5 bytes shorter now and save some a few CPU cycles. - New speed/size optimalization options: FEAT_INSTRSPEED (it can save up to 21 bytes and some CPU cycles) and FEAT_CONSTANTSPEED (it can save 28 bytes and some CPU cycles). (Coders, you have to use new rmtplayr.a65 and rmt_feat.a65) URL: http://raster.infos.cz/atari/rmt/rmt.htm [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 10:00 PM To: kirschg@netzero.net; Schmidt, Mike; hunmanik@earthlink.net Subject: 8BIT>ASMA 3.0 milestone released --Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:57:46 -0800

Paul Alhart 524 North Zee St. Lompoc, Ca. 93436 ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 5:21 PM Subject: 8BIT>Raster Music Tracker - RMT 1.22

After many days of listening, checking, adding songs and removing the bad ones the new ASMA is out! It contains 2006 tunes for New Year 2006. 128 new tunes, many better rips and credit fixes. Big thanks must go to Miker, Fox, and Raster. ASMA is the biggest and only archive of Atari 800-series songs.

--Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:08:52 -0800 Enjoy the listening! Raster Music Tracker - new version RMT 1.22 is out. http://asma.atari.org/ Changes in RMT 1.22: [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] - Block effect/tool "Volume humanize" improved - better random values. ;-) - New block effect/tool (menu Block - Effect/tools or Ctrl+F or toolbar button"FX") function: "Volume set/remove". It allows to set volumes or remove whole note events according to the current volume values. - New function in Song menu: * Make track's duplicate and put it to actual song pos. (Ctrl+M) (It also check if track is used more times in song. If doesn't, message box with question appears.) RMT routine changes

********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 10:01 PM Subject: AtariMagazines.new: RSS feed, more Compute! --Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:57:02 -0800 AtariMagazines.com has added the full text of 16 issues of Compute! magazine: January 1982, April 1982, May 1983, July 1983, April 1984, May 1984, June 1984, July 1984, August 1984, September 1984, October 1984, November 1984, January 1985, June 1985, December 1985, and December 1989.

In addition, we've added an RSS feed that tracks the latest happenings at the AtariMagazines.com What's New Page: http://www.atarimagazines.com/new.rss Enjoy! Kevin -Kevin Savetz - comp.sys.atari.announce moderator Curator of Classic Computer Magazine Archive http://www.atarimagazines.com & AtariArchives.org http://www.atariarchives.org & Retro Roundup http://www.retroroundup.com ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 10:23 PM Subject: PC Virus Celebrates 20 Years of Havoc This article appears in: Volume 8, Issue 4 Atari Online News, Etc.

Jan 27, 2006

PC Virus Celebrates 20 Years of Havoc Walaika K. Haskins, newsfactor.com

Between 1990 and 1998, the computer world suffered from all kinds of new viruses, even those that could change their appearance with each new infection to thwart antivirus software. This era also saw the birth of e-mail-borne malware and Microsoft Word viruses. Currently, there are some 150,000 viruses circulating in the wild. "In 20 years, viruses have moved from floppy disks to file viruses, to e-mail viruses, to Internet worms, to targeted Trojan-horse attacks," said Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos. In the 1990s, viruses amounted mainly to electronic graffiti. Occasionally, the virus would cause financial harm, but only with regard to damage to computers. Today, viruses have become the bread and butter for a new breed of criminals and crime syndicates. "Compared to 20 years ago, [viruses were] mostly research and experimental," said Rob Ayoub, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Even when there was malicious intent, it was to prove who the better hacker was and who had the best skillset. A real key was looking for tag lines in the assembler code for the different hackers or groups."

This month marks a somewhat dubious anniversary for PC computer users: It's the 20th anniversary of the first PC virus. First discovered in the wild in January 1986, the Brain virus inspired hordes of hackers during the 1990s and, more recently, a whole new class of online criminal.

Most security analysts say that viruses written today have a much more malicious intent. Criminals can strike individuals and businesses in several ways, whether through extortion by threatening to hit a targeted company with a denial-of-service attack or through hidden malware and keyloggers that can gather personal or corporate information and lead to identity theft and a slew of other crimes.

Although the Brain virus has achieved a certain amount of notoriety as the first PC virus, its effects were not widespread because the only method by which viruses could be transmitted from one PC to another at that time was by floppy disk.

"With so many home users connecting to the Internet, there are many potential victims out there for the criminals to feast upon," said Cluley. "The greater connectivity has brought more opportunities for malware to spread and increased the number of potential victims."

No one can pinpoint the exact time the Brain virus was created, but the most popular theory is that it was created by two engineers, named Basit and Amjad, at a software firm in Pakistan.

According to Ayoub, the change in the nature of viruses reflects a change in the culture and the proliferation of technology in our daily lives. "The Internet changed how the viruses were distributed, but the driver for why it is more financial now is that [the computer] is so integrated in our daily lives," said Ayoub. "Fraud has been out their for years. Now, instead of bad checks, criminals acquire credit-card numbers online."

The virus reportedly replaced the executable code on a bootable floppy disk with the Brain code designed to infect each floppy subsequently opened on the PC. An American computer scientist, Fred Cohen, coined the phrase "computer virus" in 1983. Cohen defined a computer virus as "a computer program that can affect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a (possibly evolved) copy of itself." In 1990, Symantec launched Norton Antivirus, one of the first antivirus programs ever developed by a major software company. The move by Symantec spawned a new industry. In 1992, some 1,300 new viruses were created, a 420 percent increase from December 1990.

"FBI computer crime survey of 2,000 public and private organizations released last week found that, in 2005, nine out of 10 organizations experienced "computer security incidents." Viruses topped the list of attacks with nearly 84 percent of respondents saying that they had been adversely affected, with spyware coming in second at just under 80 percent. The financial impact of attacks from viruses and worms accounted for some $12 million in losses out of total losses of $32 million. While the Internet has developed into a prime avenue for hackers to distribute malicious software, it also has become a

way for security vendors to neutralize viruses more quickly, particularly through the automatic-update features in most antivirus software.

From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 9:58 PM Subject: ST>GemPLAY 1.00

"When I first entered the antivirus industry, updates were sent out on a 5.25-inch floppy disk," Cluley remarked. "A lot has changed in that time."

--Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:56:09 -0800

********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 9:59 PM Subject: ST>060 happy versions of Groumf Tracker, GemGT2 and Capy

GemPLAY, ACE, MOD, GT2, AON, SNDH and XLR8 player v1.00 released. GT2 bug finally found, so v1.00 is out now, enjoy! URL: http://yescrew.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] **********************************************

--Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:56:29 -0800 After some delay, new version of Graoumf Tracker is released! Main feature in v0.8890 is 060 compatibility. Background to GEM is also slightly improved, but it still makes some problems in MiNT, while it works perfectly in TOS. Following fixed GT2 replay, there are also new versions of puzzle game Capy and GemGT2 player. All applications require Falcon030 computer. URL: http://yescrew.atari.org/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]

From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 5:19 PM Subject: ST>mxPlay 1.0.0 released --Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:06:33 -0800 Miro Kropacek has announced: I wish you merry (post-) Christmas time. We've got great news for you, there's new audio media player! It's not just some simple replay routine but full-featured player comparable to famous XMMS or Winamp. And for your Atari!

********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 5:18 PM Subject: ST>AtarIRC v2.04 released --Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:05:09 -0800 Lonny Pursell has announced: Also just in time for the new year. - gui library completely reworked for XaAes keyboard navigation - nearly all dialogs updated with newer object types (these objects require N.Aes, XaAes, or MagiC or compatible AES) - new option to redirect /whois output to the console tab - 2 minor bugs fixed Have a safe and wonderful New Year Atari users. ;-)

Main features: - modern user interface - fully skinable GUI - compatible from the simple TOS to the latest XaAES - best d&d / va-start / long name support you've ever seen - memory protection friendly - multitasking support, windowed dialogs - universal plugin API which allows you to take any kind of replay routine and to adapt it to mxPlay - it's free! - open development, anyone can contribute / bugfix - recursive directory/file adding with auto detection for supported formats - and a lot of more... You can download it from sourceforge.net area (follow link below) or take a look at http://atari.sk. Some "normal" home page is on the way, we're really busy so be patient... after this step will atari.org registration follow. Just for your information, the homepage will be at mxplay.sourceforge.net and mxplay.atari.org, respectively.

URL: http://www.bright.net/~gfabasic/ Once again, all the best and we’re looking for your comments! [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] Greetings, ********************************************** Miro Kropacek, mxPlay maintainer URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mxplay [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]

********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 5:22 PM Subject: ST>STYMulator v0.1 --Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 22:09:38 -0800 gRzEnIu has announced: Grzegorz Tomasz Stanczyk aka gRzEnIu has released a STYMulator. STYMulator is a new chip music player for GNU/Linux. It's based on ST-Sound GPL Library so supports YM music format dumped from ATARI 16-bit machines. URL: http://atariarea.krap.pl/stymulator/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 5:27 PM Subject: USBDOS 0.1 - Tool to access FAT32 File system on an USB Storage --From: Carsten Strotmann --Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:43:28 +0100 Hi, A preview of a new tool to access a FAT32 File system on USB Storage can be downloaded at Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=111428 &package_id=175280 Source code and short Command Summary USBDOS Program is available in the MicroUSB Wiki: http://www.strotmann.de/twiki/bin/view/Microusb/ProjUSBC artUsbDos The current version is not really useful for Users. It is more a preview what will be available in the next weeks. This tool will be expanded in the next weeks and will hopefully evolve in a full DOS for USB FAT32 Devices. It will be possible to copy File from USB Device to the Atari and back in the next versions. This version can be used to explore the Device and to list the Root Directory on an USB Storage. Best regards Carsten Strotmann MicroUSB Project for Atari XL/XE **********************************************

**********************************************

********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** **********************************************