SPACE Newsletter

NEWSLETTER for March, 2007 President’s Corner by Michael Current March, 2007 Auction this month! As usual, bring in your Atari or Atarirelated items, and be on the lookout for great deals! Proceeds to the SPACE treasury! Auctions along with membership dues and DOM sales are our sources of income, so the more you participate, the more the club can continue financially. But as we've learned from so many years of experience, as long as everyone does participate, the club will continue to do fine! It won't necessarily amount to anything, but I finally made my first post on the AtariAge web site the other day. AtariAge.com is the clear traffic leader when it comes to webbased discussion forums dedicated to the 8-bit Atari. (At least those that are in English!) I actually had set up an account there a while ago, just hadn't felt motivated to post about anything. I still feel like the technology of Usenet is a much more effective medium for discussion than the typical web forum. But there's no question there are more users of the top web forums that there are comp.sys.atari.8bit readers, so I feel the need to pay attention to both now. Anyway...what I felt the need to respond to was a question from a guy from, I believe, Slovenia, who was looking at space.atari.org and wondering if our SPACE DOMs are available online. I posted to mention our usual scenario where a few members have joined remotely and purchased DOMs remotely via one of our members who is able to take credit cards. Who knows, maybe posting like that will attract some people to SPACE who somehow don't know we're here! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday March 9, 2007.

I guess everyone would like to see another auction so it was decided that we will have one in March. It will be mostly ST stuff but I still have some Atari related mags left over from the last auction. Anyone who wants to contribute to the auction next month will be most welcomed. Here is the Treasury for the month ended February 28, 2007: Beginning balance for February 1, 2007:

696.59

Receipts for the February meeting: Membership renewals Dom sales

30.00 21.00

Total receipts for February

51.00

Expenses for the February meeting: Web-site

10.00

Ending balance for February 28, 2007:

737.59

As you can see it will only get better for the next few months as we have already paid the room rental for the last half of 2006. Our next room rental bill will probably not come until around July 2007 for the first six months of this year. We have a real good chance of surpassing the $800 mark by this summer. I don't know how we continue to do this with only about ten members but we do!! Congrats and thanks to all of you for your strong support. Make sure to keep those memberships up to date, and please buy a dom each month. Don't forget the auction next month. See you all then.

******************************************** Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For February 2007

Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For February 2007

Wow! How long can this cold spell last? Our Friday SPACE meeting in February was a cold one as has been the last week or so and will continue for at least another week. I was very pleased to see six members present for the meeting, and even though it was a short meeting we all had a good time.

Not much came in as far as money is concerned. A few DOMS sold; no memberships. Sold 5 DOMS. Got room rental bill of $150.00. Last year, there were two back-to-back bills of $150.00, which had taken a toll on the treasury. Treasury had $845.09 at end of December. Treasury has $696.59 at the moment. Greg was pretty optimistic about current balance, considering the amount of members we have he thought we were doing pretty well.

DOM Report:

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Glen showed a unique graphics program which he identified as Dreamscape, which was on side A of the DOM. Side B shows a series of 9 picture files from Seattle SPACE.

A-T-A-R-I Answers, Tips And Relevant Information by: Paul V. Alhart 1994.9

Membership Count: Membership count is at 10 at this moment. Online Report: Nolan did not have much to discuss as far as the online report was concerned. Web site is still being sorted out at this time, but is functional. He talked about moving an old database to the Web site. Web site URL is officially www.spaceweb.us. Nolan did admit Web site still needs work. One member came up with an idea of putting e-mail addresses of elected SPACE officials on site. Greg suggested people look at the Web site and throw in their input on how it should look. Lance had an idea of linking to the Web site his Video 61 business so people could buy Atari stuff and have access to it, which Greg seemed interested in seeing people have that option. Old Business: There was mention of an Atari ST upgrade, but Lance had no word of that coming out any time soon. It is still in the works. It is, when completed, to plug into the cartridge port and provide USB and Ethernet for the STe computer. New Business: Lance mentioned the new 800 MHz Coldfire evaluation motherboard is almost done, as well as Ethernet cards for Falcon and, again, STe. Auction planned for March. Lance suggested that it was the best time for an auction. It was asked if there were any electronics shows coming up, but no one had heard of anything. End of Line.

******************************************** BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For March 2007

************************************************** 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.

Add Sound To Your Monitor (& other Neat Stuff) When I found a good deal on a composite video monitor at a garage sale I jumped at it. Only after I got home did I realize it contained no audio circuitry. What to do? I could have run the audio to my home stereo amplifier, but that was in another room and normally being used by my wife for such mundane tasks as playing music. After considering all my options I decided to add the audio circuitry to the monitor myself. This turned out to be quite easy and inexpensive. No, I didn't end up with a 100 Watt Hi-Fi Dolby quality stereo sound system. What I did get was audio comparable to that of most small TVs, And as a bonus, The monitor can now be used with a VCR. Following is how you too can add audio to your monitor. You will need the following parts. They are all available at Radio Shack for about $10.00. If you can scrounge a speaker from a dead radio you should be able to get by for under $5.00. LM386 Audio Amplifier IC 10K Ohm potentiometer 220uf @ 35V Capacitor 8 Ohm Speaker Chassis mount RCA Jack 2ea. foot long pieces of Shielded Audio Cable NOTE: The audio circuitry requires DC power that is between +4 and +16 volts and assumes that you will be able to obtain this power from your monitor. Of course you will need a soldering iron, some solder and some hook-up wire. I etched a PC Board to mount my IC, but you could glue the IC to the back of the speaker and solder the components directly to the IC or an IC socket if you prefer. So lets get started. Refer to the schematic in figure one as we proceed. Step 1: Remove the case from your monitor and find a suitable location for the speaker. It doesn't have to face forward and should be away from the High Voltage circuitry of the monitor. Step 2: If necessary, drill holes for the sound to come out, then mount the speaker. Step 3: Using a mulitmeter or schematic of your monitor locate a source of DC power between +4V and +16V as referenced to Chassis Ground. Step 4: Using hook-up wire connect this DC power source to pin 6 of the IC. Step 5: Connect one end of each of he shielded audio cables to the 10K pot. The two shields should both connect to one of the pot's end terminals. One center conductor should connect to the wiper or center terminal and the other center conductor to the remaining terminal. Step 6: Mount the pot in a handy location on the monitor. This will be your volume control. Step 7: Mount the RCA Jack on your monitor and connect the shielded audio cable that goes to the pot's wiper to it. The center

conductor connects to the center pin of the jack. The shield connects to the jack's ground solder tab. This jack is where your Atari's audio output will be pluged in. Step 8: Connect the 220uf capacitor between pin 5 of the IC and one of the speaker terminals. Be sure the + side of the capacitor is connected to pin 5.

From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 8:17 PM michael@mcurrent.name Subject: EMU>atari++ 1.51 released --Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:22:42 -0800 Hi folks,

Step 9: Connect the other speaker terminal, the remaining audio cable shield, as well as IC pins 3 & 4 to Chassis Ground.

a new release of atari++, the C++ based atari 8 bit emulator for linux and win has been released.

Step 10: Connect the remaining audio cable center conductor to pin 2 of the IC.

You'll find it in its usual location at:

Step 11: Put you monitor back together and your ready to test.

http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~thor/atari++/

NOTE: If your volume control seems to work backwards, reverse the wires going to the pot's two end terminals.

No major changes have been made in the 1.51 release, it only features a couple of cosmetical changes for the monitor output.

IBM Compatibility?

So long, Thomas

How many do you know that have given up the Ataries for IBM compatibles because they just couldn't easily move files between their Atari and the PC they were forced to use at work? I felt the PC tug many times myself. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to work on my A-T-A-R-I columns during lunch my hours and then bring the disk home to finish editing as an Atari file to be sent to the publisher? I used to send my files to a local BBS. The SySop would then put them on an MS DOS disk for me to take to work. To get them back to my Atari I would have to give the SySop an MS dos disk which he would then make available for me to download from his BBS. Sure it worked, but it could sometimes take a week or more to get my files from one machine to the other. BUT NOW, thanks to the programing genius of Charles Marslett, I just carry my Atari disks to work with me and pop them into the PC's floppy drive. IT's TRUE. With Charles' utility "UTIL.EXE" the PC's floppy drive is configured to act an Atari double density drive. Your PC can then format Atari disks as well as read & write files to them. Files are copied between your Atari disk and the PC's hard drive. You have the choice of a "straight copy" or automatically translating to/from ATASCII. Once the files are on the PC's hard drive you can boot WordPerfect or what ever software you what and go to it. When done, use "UTIL.EXE" to copy the files back on your Atari disk. Although Atari programs won't run on you PC or visa versa, you can download PC programs from any BBS with you Atari and they will run on your PC after being copied to the hard drive. Your Atari needs to have a true Double Density drive to use this program. A stock 1050 duel density drive won't do. If using a modified 1050, do not use the Ultra Speed sector skew on your transfer disk.

********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 8:14 PM michael@mcurrent.name Subject: ST>Yet Another Eureka 2.12 Release --Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:21:49 -0800 The software Eureka 2.12 is updated on its WEB page. It is a "2D Graph Describer and 3D Modeller". You will fetch it from http://eureka.atari.org/eurka702.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) This publication corresponds to 20th anniversary of its starting developments, that began at first months of 1987. Have big fun with this new STuff ! [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]

There can be problems due to head alignment. I've found if I first format the Atari disks on the PC drive I have fewer problems here. One source for this program is Compuserve. It is in the IBM file section. It is called ATARIO.ZIP. The ZIPed file contains the program, a doc file, and the source code. Also, I will try to get this program put on a future AC Disk Get a copy and LOOSE the Atari/PC BLUES.

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********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 8:13 PM Subject: Windows ATASCII file viewer --Date: 27 Jan 2007 15:23:11 -0800 Due to having nothing better to do (currently looking for work), have made slight update to my Windows ATASCII file viewer, so it now supports the international character set as well as the graphical one. http://www.leehanken.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/atascii/

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