SPACE Newsletter

NEWSLETTER for April, 2007 President’s Corner

Treasurer's Report

by Michael Current April, 2007

by Greg Leitner For March 2007

Auction this month! Yes, it's not deja vu, we're trying again to have an auction this month, after last month's was canceled. 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!

This month will pass quickly with all the hockey & basketball tournaments going on in March. I am hurrying this report so that I can get my 800XE in shape to handle the NCAA tournament teams and their positions in the ranking from 1 to 65. I use my old 8-bit Visicalc software to handle this job. About ten of us pick our teams in order of who we think will go the furthest in the tournament. At the end of each round I tally the score by adding the numbers of each team remaining in the field and then I add the rounds together and whoever has the lowest score wins the jackpot. It's a lot of fun and makes the games more interesting.

A couple weeks back I had a phone call out of the blue from Greg Goodwin, an avid Atari user and especially online BBS user from Dallas Texas, I believe. He seems to be one of the chief ring-leaders of a couple different regular Atari chat groups accessible over the Internet, and he was out to get me to join in that night. What the heck, why not?

Anyway. we had six members for the March SPACE meeting and because of the lack of bidders for the ST software we had for the auction we cancelled the auction until next month. So what we really need are ST users and some 8-bit items to include in the auction. We still have some magazines to auction off and the 1981 Compute's we have are in mint condition. Please come to the April SPACE meeting and bid to help support your Club.

It was an interesting process. I got my PC fired up, found a decent telnet client (Putty), and telnetted to an old-style BBS that was hooked up to the Internet. Swiftly created an account, logged in, and joined in the chat. Hung around for, I don't know, and hour or two? It was pretty cool how many names from the newsgroup were there "live", and apparently most of them show up every week. Oh, and then once I was in business, Greg called up our very own Vice President Nolan to get him in on the fun, and soon enough he was there as well.

Now for the Treasury report for the month of March, 2007:

So anyway, that was certainly an unusual experience. I can't say I'm inclined to return on a regular basis, can't exactly explain why, but I'm glad I did it once and maybe I'll do it again some day. You know what, I think it makes me appreciate SPACE even more, because I much rather chat with people about Atari stuff in person, than in a character-based chat box on a computer screen!

Ending balance at March 31, 2007: 761.59

Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday April 13, 2007.

Beginning balance at March 1, 2007: 737.59 Receipts for the March meeting: Doms +24.00 No expenses for the March meeting .00

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As you can tell there wasn't much going on at the March meeting but at least we picked up some Dom sales to increase our bank balance a bit. This is the time of the year we can really add to our treasury as the next rent bill is not due until after the middle of the year. I was hoping the auction would provide a few more dollars this month but we just didn't have the interest in the items that were donated. We need more ST users. We have programs that were very expensive when they were released, and someone will be able to have them for a song. Some of these programs are new in their wrappers. So please come to the April meeting and help the Club out and

get some great software for a deal you will likely not see again. See you all in April and have fun watching the great sports this month.

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

No minutes were submitted for March 2007.

******************************************** BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For April 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.

******************************************** A-T-A-R-I Answers, Tips And Relevant Information by: Paul V. Alhart 1995.1 UTIL.EXE Addendum Last A-T-A-R-I I talked a little about UTIL.EXE. This great utility by Charles Marslett configures you PC's floppy drive to read/write/format Atari double density disks. While using my PC at work to read several long Atari files I occasionally got a few read errors. I had back up copies of these files on the flip side of the same disk and noticed I never got any errors when reading these back up files. Ah Ha! I put a write protect tab on the disk and tried again. No luck. On a hunch a put a write protect tab over the sector index hole of the disk. This is the round hole hear the hub. Bingo! I was then able to consistently read all the files with no errors. With the index hole covered my PC floppy drive will still read & write properly to the Atari disks, but will not format them. I hope this tip will help other users of UTIL.EXE ATARI TOUCH TABLET CONVERSION I have never been able to draw. Back in elementary school where my favorite Aunt was the art teacher, I still failed art class. Never the less, a Koala Pad has been an indispensable

part of my computer hardware for many years. No longer do I draw stick figure birds and such, but instead use the Koala Pad for tasks like drawing electrical schematics to accompany my A-T-A-R-I columns. A back up pad seemed like a good idea, but I was never able to find one. I did however find an Atari Touch Tablet at a garage sale. It looked clean and the price was right so I took it home and pluged it in. That's when I learned that there is a slight difference between the Koala Pad and the Atari Touch Tablet. The vertical output is reversed. Using my Koalapainter software, when I moved the pen up the cursor moved down. Also, the button on the pen performed the function of the right tablet button. I would prefer it to perform the function of the left button. Many software packages like Print Shop let you select which input device you are going to use so this is normally not a problem. Since I didn't get any software with the Touch Tablet, and was quite happy with the Koalapainter software I was already using, it was a problem for me. The touch tablet got put away and forgotten for some time. The Rest of the Story Last Christmas Santa decided to let me buy myself a new oscilloscope. Like a kid with a new toy I started probing everything I could find. One of those things was that forgotten Atari Touch Tablet. In the process I discovered that I could modify it to emulate my Koala Pad. It could be hard wired to emulate the Koala Pad but I chose to add a TPDT switch so I could go back and forth between the two. I am not going to present you with a step by step procedure at this time. I will however tell you what needs to be done. If there is enough interest I'll include a step by step in a future A-T-A-R-I. The touch pad plugs into connector CN3. Pins 2 & 3 need to be reversed. NOTE: pin 1 is nearest the center of the PC board. I found the easiest way to accomplish this was to remove CN3 from the board, fold pins 2 & 3 back out of the way, and reinstall CN3. Use hook up wire to connect pins 2 & 3 to the PC board CN3 traces 3 & 2. This takes the vertical problem. The pen is connected to the PC board at CN4. You will need to cut the trace that runs from CN4 to the switch logic. Looking at the solder side of the PC board the trace to cut runs down from the right edge of CN4 and is about 1 inch long. Solder a piece of hook up wire to the CN4 side of this cut trace. Directly below CN4 you will find 4 solder pads in a vertical line. Connect the other end of the wire to the right most pad which is the left switch logic. ATARIWRITER+ Judging by by mail, none of my A-T-A-R-I columns generate as much interest as those that deal with AtariWriter+. Over the years these columns have appeared in Antic, AIM, and AC and have included many useful tips as well as several type-in programs to modify the AW+ disk. Things like presetting the Global defaults and screen

colors, disabling the RS-232 loader, speeding up the key repeat rate, and adding your own custom screen fonts and printer drivers are just a few of the topics that have been covered. Due to popular demand, all my past AtariWriter+ related articles and type-ins have been gathered together and put on disk. The AtariWriter+ Companion contains 10 informative full length columns and 6 ready to run BASIC programs. See what you have missed. See what amazing things you can coax AtariWriter+ to do. Order your copy of The AtariWriter+ Companion today for only $5 from: Paul V. Alhart 524 North Zee St. Lompoc, Ca. 93436 ********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 2:06 PM Subject: ST>ST Magazine issue 139/140 is available --Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:24:38 -0800 ST Magazine issue 139/140 is available. This issue is very late and we are sorry for this. Due to the big delay, we decided to make a 48-page issue (instead of 36). By the way, issue 141 will be ready very soon (end of February).

From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:08 AM Subject: Updated MyIDE Image Manager and MyIDE Config --Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:53:49 GMT I just posted the updated versions of these two programs on my website. http://jeffersonsauctioneering.com/atari/ The MyIDE Image Manager has had some significant changes, at least under the hood. I've moved the image table to the last image slot of the hard drive and taken the descriptions out of the image table so that I only use the Mr. Atari descriptions. This makes the image table smaller, but it does increase the time taken to search or scroll a screen at a time through the image list. Since there is more disk seeking going on, I sped up the screen scrolling considerably in this version. I'm still undecided whether or not only using the Mr.Atari Image Manager descriptions was a good idea or not. I dislike the speed hit searching and sorting takes, but I suppose it makes things easier overall.

All ST Magazine issues (except 132) are available at 16/32 Systems. Don\\\'t miss the special issue about the 20th anniversary of the Atari ST.

Anyway, let me know what you think. Here's the complete list of what's new:

And for console lovers, ReVival will be available soon at 16/32 Systems because the latest issues are now translated into English (issues 29 to 32). Of course, ReVival also speak about Atari consoles!

- moved image table to last image slot on drive (not compatible with myideman 3.3) - created utility to convert image table from version 3.3 to version 4.0 - removed descriptions from image table, uses only Mr.Atari description - removed ability to number disks by pressing 1-9 (useless feature) - faster screen scrolling! - cosmetic changes in utility menu, removed Sync START description option - fixed sort function to ignore case - can minimize screen while sorting, to help speed up sort - better progress indication in sort screen

Link to 16/32 Systems: http://www.1632sales.zenwebhosting.com/acatalog/ST_Magazine.html Link to ST Magazine web site: http://stmagazine.org/ - Note our web site includes fresh news about Atari computers Thanks for reading :) ST Magazine team URL: http://stmagazine.org/

version 4.0 (02/20/2007):

PS. I will be releasing the source code soon, on the website, but just want to clean it up a little first and add some comments here and there. -Shawn Jefferson http://www.jeffersonsauctioneering.com/atari/

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

********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 2:07 PM Subject: ST>Working USB driver for Atari ST/Falcon sighted

--Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:24:09 -0800 Coda has got his USB mouse driver working on a Netus-Bee prototype. A video of it in action can be found at http://hardware.atari.org/news.htm He is also apparently investigating a fix for USB printer support as well. I hope the benefits of this work should also translate to those people who have got an EtherNat as well. :-) URL: http://hardware.atari.org/news.htm [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org] ********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 8:03 PM Subject: Atari news INFOGRAMES ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES: · THE DEPARTURE OF BRUNO BONNELL · THE APPOINTMENT OF PATRICK LELEU AS CHAIRMAN AND CEO Lyon – France, April 5th 2007 – Infogrames Entertainment announces today that at a meeting held on April 4th 2007, the Board appointed Patrick Leleu Chairman and CEO of the Group following the departure of Bruno Bonnell, founder and Chairman of the company. Bruno Bonnell leaves his positions as Chairman, CEO and Director of Infogrames Entertainment and he also leaves all his positions within Atari, Inc. and the Infogrames group of companies. Over the last years, Infogrames has implemented a global debt restructuring plan which successfully ended on March 2007, allowing the group to strengthen its financial structure and redevelop its business. The Board of directors and Bruno Bonnell have agreed to take this opportunity to launch new dynamics of change for the group. Bruno Bonnell stated: « It is with understandable emotions, but also reassured about its future, that I leave Infogrames after 24 years spent to build this group with the support of all its teams. Together, we have been able to show its strength and capacity to innovate, even in the worst situations. Time for business developers has logically come, after the entrepreneurial period. It’s now time for Infogrames to conquer and progress on a market as promising as interactive entertainment business”. The Board wants to pay tribute to the determination of the founder of Infogrames, who, with his entrepreneurial skills and his exceptional vision of the industry, allowed Infogrames to become one of the worldwide leading players within the video gaming industry. A director of Infogrames since January 2007, Patrick Leleu was previously the CEO of Bouygues Telecom between 1994 and 2001 and then Chairman and CEO of Noos (a cable

network operator) between 2001 and 2005. His ability to develop companies on fast-moving markets and his unique experience within mass-market products and digital entertainment will be key credentials for Infogrames. Patrick Leleu, the new Chairman and CEO of Infogrames, comments: « I want to thank the Board to put its trust in me. I am convinced that Infogrames holds the assets, talents and teams to get back into the industrial competition and recover its dynamics of growth». About Infogrames Entertainment and Atari Infogrames Entertainment (IESA), the parent company of the Atari Group, is listed on the Paris Euronext stock exchange (ISIN code: FR0000052573) and has two principal subsidiaries: Atari Europe, a privately-held company, and Atari, Inc., a United States corporation listed on NASDAQ (ATAR). The Atari Group is a major international producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment software for all market segments and in all existing game formats (Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony) and on CD-ROM for PC. Its games are sold in more than 60 countries. The Atari Group’s extensive catalogue of popular games is based on original franchises (Alone in the Dark, VRally, Test Drive, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc.) and international licenses (Dragon Ball Z, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.). For more information: http://www.atari.com ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** **********************************************

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