SPACE Newsletter - September 2006

September 2006

NEWSLETTER for September, 2006 President’s Corner by Michael Current September, 2006

we all had our fill. The July party always seems to be our best attended meeting and it was a rewarding one as well. Here is the breakdown of the financials for the month ending August 31, 2006:

Auction time this month! Don't miss another exciting opportunity to donate your un-needed Atari gear, and bid on and win Atari stuff that's new to you! With proceeds going toward the SPACE treasury, so everyone wins! Did you take on Paul Alhart's The Atari Federation Hackers Challenge, presented on last month's SPACE DOM and described in the A-T-A-R-I column we ran in our Newsletter? Well, the A-T-A-R-I column in this issue of the Newsletter presents the complete solution, so consider yourself spoiler-alerted! Gee, I'm feeling fortunate that I don't own a laptop computer with a Sony-made lithium-ion battery. The over-heating issues caused by quality-control issues with these things have forced Dell to recall 4.1 million batteries, and Apple another 1.8 million. I think we just bought a round of Dell laptops at work; I almost got one, but I put them off for another year. I was just thinking, not only do I own no laptop, but I also don't have a Palm Pilot, or a Blackberry, or a portable MP3 player, or a cell phone, or anything else that comes super-tiny. Oh yes, I own a Sony brand Walkman portable am/fm radio/cassette player. Remember those? It uses AA's. I think those are safe! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday September 8, 2006.

Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For August, 2006

Thanks to the seven members who attended the August 2006 SPACE meeting. It was a beautiful Friday evening for this time of the year and I can't blame anyone who wanted to take advantage of the nice weather. I was glad to hear that everyone had a great time at the SPACE's July Birthday Party. The food was great and

Beginning balance as of August 1, 2006:

630.09

Receipts for the August SPACE meeting: Doms

+18.00

Expenses for the August SPACE meeting: BBS for the months of Aug. & Sept. 2006 -20.00 Ending balance as of August 31, 2006:

628.09

As you can see we had a break even month for August as our bank account only lost $2.00 for the month. This was due to the fact that we paid Nolan for two months BBS service. Nolan may not be able to make it to the September meeting. Since there are no other expenses now due for next month we should see an increase after the September receipts are counted. Next month we are planning another of our SPACE auctions. There isn't a lot of stuff this time around, mostly magazines, books and odd Atari literature. We do have some 8-bit games and programs and thanks to a member donation also have an Atari ST color monitor. Anyone who wants to donate to the Club for the auction can still do so at the beginning of the September meeting. I hope we get most of our members for next month to get the most out of the auction. And it makes it much more fun. That's all for now. September will be here before long. Kids all back in school, the county and state fairs will be history, and the year end is fast approaching. What happened to the days when you could just sit down and relax for a while? Oh well, I guess I better get over to my daughter's house and cut the lawn, gather up the grandkids and head for the Dakota County Fair in Farmington. Hope to see you all next month.

Secretary's Report By Nolan Friedland For August, 2006

No meeting minutes were Received.

******************************************** BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For September, 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 1992.4 This month I have several subjects to cover to bring things up to date. Lets start a few month back. In the December 91 issue of AIM I introduced MagiCalc XL. You can find this program on the March 92 AIM 8-bit DOM. Due to popular demand, I have since created a new version of MagiCalc. MagiCalc 800 looks and operates exactly like MagiCalc XL, but was written for those of you using Axlon type memory upgrades. (Switching address $CFFF). As an added bonus, I have included a short BASIC program with MagiCalc 800 that allows you to pick which extended memory bank MagiCalc 800 will hide itself in. MagiCalc 800 is shareware and will appear on a future AIM DOM. As with MagiCalc XL if you can't wait you can order directly from me. The registration fee is $6. For $10 I will include the complete, heavily commented, MAC65 source code. Please specify which version (XL or 800) when ordering. I want to take this opportunity to say "Thank You" to Jake Olbrich of RACC. In my A-T-A-R-I column (AIM Feb.92) I told you about my handicapped friend Jeff. In response to that article, Jake donated several disks of educational software. He also included valuable information regarding other sources of educational software that can be used by the disabled/handicapped. This is just one more heart warming example of the thoughtfulness of people in the Atari community. Thanks again Jake. In A-T-A-R-I (AIM March 92) I told you about The Atari Federation Hackers Challenge and the Challenge appeared on the AIM DOM that month. If you are still working on the

Challenge you may want to stop here, for I am about to divulge its deep, dark, diabolical, hidden secrets. You must have noticed that things were not right when you first looked at the disks directory from DOS and found nothing there but DUP.SYS. The Challenge makes use of several hidden directories. They are accessed by changing the values stored in memory locations 4226 LSB & 4229 MSB to point to the sector where the directory is to be found. There default values are 105 & 1. Therefore the start of the Atari default directory is located at sector (105 +1*256) or sector 361. This is the directory where I put DUP.SYS, everything else is in other (hidden) directories. After the title screen you are given the prompt to "Let the Challenge BEGIN" At that time press and hold down the START key. At the READY prompt you will be able to LIST the program. Line 500 gives you the first piece of the secret message "THE ATARI FEDERATION". Line 510 tells you (in a rather cryptic way) where the current directory is located, how to get to the next directory, and the name of the program you will be using. Type (POKE 4226,110:LOAD "D:CLUE"). If you RUN "D:CLUE" you will be presented with a Graphics 7+ screen which will just make you see red. Instead, after CLUE has been LOADed, LIST it and change the first number in LINE 35 from 64 to a 4. This will change color register 1 to a gold color. Also change LINE 40 to read (40 FOR I = 1 TO 2000: NEXT I: STOP). This will keep the picture on the screen longer and keep the program from sending you back to DOS. Now type RUN to see the next part of the secret message. (BRINGS YOU). Now LIST the program again and get your next clue from LINE 42. Type NEW to clear CLUE from your computers memory and set up to use the directory hidden at sector 720. Type (POKE 4226,208:POKE 4229,2). Now you are ready to (ENTER "D:ROOM"). Don't type (RUN) yet or you will get the message ERROR9 AT LINE 9. LIST the program and you will see why. There is nothing but DATA statements and the instruction ? A$ in line 9. The trick here is that you are not in the ROOM you ENTERed anymore. ROOM is a magical little BASIC program written with Immediate Mode commands (No line numbers). ROOM DIMensioned and put the next part of the secret message into A$. It also changed the directory locations again and sent you to another ROOM, the program you just LISTed. As soon as you ENTER "D:ROOM" type ?A$ or type GOTO 9 to see this part of the secret message. (MORE FOR YOUR ATARI). But what about all those DATA statements, and where is the next clue? Change line 9 to (9 READ D:?CHR$(D);:GOTO 9). Now type RUN and you will see that all those DATA statements are the next clue which is (RUN "D:around". The problem here is that DOS wont allow you to have lower case characters in a filename. To get around this POKE 3822,123. This patches DOS to allow all alpha characters from A-Z & a-z. Now type RUN"D:around" and you are on the final leg of your quest. Answer all the questions correctly and you are done. The correct answers are: 720 5

SECTORS PLAYERS (The missiles can be combined to form a 5th player.)

2 64 65536 6502 14 0

YEARS FILES BYTES CPU = $0E 0 PAGE

That wasn't so hard now was it? I had a lot of fun putting together the Challenge. I had even more fun listening to the exploits of my fellow club members as they tried to solve it. Most of them learned a great deal about their Ataris in the process. I hope you did too. By the way, did you really want to see what was in all those hidden directories. Without DOS you couldn't just ask for a directory list like you were used to doing. Instead type in and RUN this short BASIC program to see the contents of any directory you are using. 10 DIM A$(20):OPEN #1,6,0,"D:*.*" 20 TRAP 30:INPUT #1,A$:?A$:GOTO 20 30 CLOSE #1 Paul V Alhart 524 North Zee St. Lompoc, Ca. 93436 ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:42 PM Subject: 8BIT>Raster Music Tracker 1.24 --Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:26:57 -0700

--Date: 20 Aug 2006 23:04:45 -0700 Hello, Release 3 of Memo Pad, my ATASCII file viewer and converter for Windows, is ready for downloading. In this release I have added preferences for changing the format of the byte offset and byte values displayed in Binary view mode. You can download Memo Pad at http://joyfulcoder.com/software/memopad/ Thanks, Eric ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:43 PM Subject: ST>Cecile released under GPL --Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:53:39 -0700 Originally distributed on the Centek website, Cecile is a harddisk driver for Atari or compatible systems. David Godec has kindly decided to release the sources for Cecile under the General Public License, GPL. After the sources for AHDI surfaced recently, the sources for two Atari harddisk driver are now available. However, Cecile is the first one to be released under GPL. To read more, please visist The Orphaned Projects Page:

New version 1.24 of cross-platform music program "Raster Music Tracker" is out. Main changes: support for mouse-wheel control, bookmark support, new speed/size optimalizations in RMT Atari player routine, etc. 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: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:40 PM Subject: EMU>St-sound ported to gp2x --Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:25:46 -0700

URL: http://topp.atari-users.net/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:41 PM To: kirschg@netzero.net; Schmidt, Mike; hunmanik@earthlink.net Subject: ST>GFA-Basic Compiler/Linker update --Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:26:22 -0700 GFA-Compiler (revision 10) GFA-Linker (revision 7)

BODY: ST-Sound GP2X is a YM/SC68/SNDH music player for the GP2X handheld. It uses the STSound engine from Arnaud Carre (http://leonard.oxg.free.fr) for playing YM files and SC68 for SC68 and SNDH files. The GUI is based on Aylet.gp2x by ParkyDR.

- Bug related to $X with VAR fixed - Bug related to $X with FUNCTIONs fixed - Norwegian translation added (thanks to Ozk)

URL: http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,6,1678

It's now possible to properly link DRI object files to and type of PROCEDURE or FUNCITION, with or without pointers (VAR).

[This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** URL: http://www.bright.net/~gfabasic/ From: Michael Current [hunmanik@earthlink.net] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:44 PM Subject: Memo Pad - Release 3

[This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]

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