May 2007
NEWSLETTER for May, 2007 President’s Corner by Michael Current May, 2007 I can report that Nolan raised me on the phone the other day, and we worked together to formulate some basic plans for the SPACE web site. He has just moved the site to a different web host, and we agreed on some basic priorities for where to go from here. If one or the other of us shows up to this month's meeting, maybe we can fill you in on some more of the details. And we'll have some questions for you as well. I finally submitted my thesis prospectus this week, and initial reaction was favorable. So apparently I'm geared up to write a masters thesis this summer. Hopefully after that, I'll finally find the time to do some real stuff with the Atari again. And make it to SPACE meetings on a more regular basis the way I'd like to. We're thinking of you, Al!
Receipts for the April 2007 meeting: Auction Sales Dom Sales
11.00 12.00
Total Receipts for the April 2007 SPACE meeting:
23.00
No expenses for the April meeting Ending balance as of April 30, 2007:
784.59
Looking pretty good right now but what about the future? If we don't have the current members support to buy monthly doms, and they don't show up for auctions, what then? Memberships aren't going to cut it for long when we are down to eleven. We are okay this year but let's give some thought to the future. I hope to see more members next month.
******************************************** Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For April 2007
Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday May 11, 2007. Well, Spring has sprung after all! I hope everyone is doing well. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Alan. Best Wishes, Al, and a speedy recovery. Anyway, on with the report...
Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For April 2007
–Auction Update–
Well we held the auction in April with just five members present to bid, and we took in $11.00. Many of the items did not go and so they will show up again in our next auction, maybe at the July SPACE Birthday Party when typically more members attend. I was shocked to hear about Al Nobel. I hope we see him again real soon. We sure miss you, Al. Let's all keep him in our prayers. Things have been a little quiet lately the last couple of months without Nolan around to update the web-site. And now with Al suffering a masvie heart attack things could become even more stale. Al brought some new life into the Club, and it was fun to see the rare Atari items he would discover. I am getting a little worried again about our membership and the attendance each month. Glen puts in a lot of time with the Dom and it would sure be nice if more members were around to enjoy the fruits of his labor. With that said here is the SPACE treasury for the month ended April 30, 2007: Beginning balance as of April 1, 2007:
761.59
It looks like good fortune had shone on the April auction. Lots of items were sold (I think over $11.00 worth). The auction was very successful. Let's hope that future auctions are of equal success. –Concerning the DOM Demo– Thanks to Glen for showing the DOM demo from Europe in April. I saw it and I thought it was very impressive. It is amazing what the Atari can still do, a very dynamic machine indeed. –Coldfire Update– Lance was saying that TOS was almost completely rewritten for the new Coldfire evaluation board. According to sources, it's coming from Europe and has a clock speed of 800 MHz. I can only guess how fast it will be with TOS powering it, but I know the speed differential will be extreme. –Some Unrelated News...– Lance also stated that he heard on PBS that Apple might be switching back to the PowerPC, after the recent switch to Intel on their Macintosh line of computers. This is because of reports of software conflicts with the new Intel chips. It will be in the form of
an upgrade card that would convert the MacIntel back into a G5 PowerPC. Gee, I wonder why... Well, that's my report, keep using that Atari.
******************************************** BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For May 2007
doesn't have the all the bells and whistles of a $35000 machine, and it is limited to about 200KHz resolution, but it does make trouble shooting hobby project logic circuits a lot more fun. With a little modification to the interface it could even be used as an automotive engine analyze. My Atari also performs as a television color dot/bar generator and an audio continuity tester. Others use their Ataris to control lights, model trains, thermostats, and virtually anything else you can think of. So stop thinking of your Atari as just a great word processor or superior game machine. Think of all those other time & money saving things it could be doing for you. Program Information
************************************************** 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 1995.12 Alternate uses for your Atari We all know how great our Ataris are for word processing, modeming, teaching, keeping records, printing labels & signs, games, etc. Mine is used everyday for some task or other. I'd be lost without it. To add to this dependence, new uses for my Atari keep cropping up. Recently my kids brought over a home video of my Grandson at Christmas time. I knew right away I had to have a copy. But not just a plain copy. With the help of my Atari I would 'soup it up'. The Atari's RF output can be recorded directly on a VCR. The monitor outputs (audio & composite video) can be used instead for an even sharper picture. Just plug them to the Video/Audio jacks on your VCR. There are video title programs available, but not having one, I set out to do it my way. I selected a few MicroIllustrator pictures to use and used The Tablet Typist to add text to them. Fader II allowed me to dissolve from one picture to the next. A nice effect but I wanted sound too. I remembered that the music on the Atari States & Capitols cassette always reminded me of the music you hear in a movie theater at intermission. But how to get it to the VCR while running Fader II from disk? Those data I/O sounds would not do either. No problem. A jumper made from a short piece of wire was all that was needed. I just jumpered pins 8 & 10 on one end of an I/O cable and plugged the other end into a spare I/O port of my system. This allowed me to operate a 410 or 1010 Atari cassette machine manually without the need of a CLOAD command. The music audio track was fed straight into the computer via an I/O cable and added to the RF output. A short BASIC program let me have a 'Cast of Characters' scroll up the screen at the end of the video. ___________________ I/O plug pin out: / 12 10 8 6 4 2 \ / 13 11 9 7 5 3 1 \ ---------------------At work I have access to a lot of high tech test equipment. One of my favorite items is a Logic Analyzer. Wouldn't it be nice to have one at home? Well why not, I thought? I built a simple interface that plugs in to the joystick ports and dusted off the old MAC 65 cartridge, and the Atari 8-bit Logic Analyzer was born. Granted it
The Tablet Typist - by Matthew Ratclif ( Analog Magazine 2/87 ) This program allows you to add multi colored text to uncompressed (62 sector) MicroIllustrator files. Fader II - by Patrick Dell'Era ( Antic Magazine 5/85 ) Fader II will load a series of compressed & uncompressed MicroIllustrator files in the order they are are found. After displaying a picture for a user set length of time a dot by dot dissolve of the screen takes place ending up with the next picture being displayed. 8-bit Logic Analyzer - by Paul Alhart ( available for $5 ) Captures 8 inputs over a selectable time period and displays data in graphic or digital form. Allows for word sync at beginning or end of capture period. Included with program is commented MAC 65 source code, documentation, and instructions for building the logic probe interface for about $10. Public Service Announcement When an Atari dealer went bust I inherited several boxes of photo-copied program documentation. He must have copied everything that came through his store. There are docs for a couple hundred Atari 8-bit programs. If you have obtained some used software with no documentation I may have just what you need. For a list of available docs send a SASE to: Paul V. Alhart 524 North Zee St. Lompoc, Ca. 93436
********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 8:43 PM Subject: atari++ 1.52 released --Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:31:25 +0200 Hi folks, A new release of the C++ based atari 8 bit emulator has just been released. You find it at its web page at: http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~thor/atari++/ Credits for this release go to Waldemar Pawlaszek for detecting and fixing several bugs in the 65c02 emulation code, thus the CPU emulation for the advanced member of the 6502 family has been reworked heavily.
In addition, the interface to the monitor/disassembler has been reworked as well to ease the integration of other members of this family. Have fun, Thomas
********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 8:44 PM Subject: 8BIT>Diskmag Flop 50 for Atari XE/XL --Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:22:37 -0700 New issue of Czech Atari XE/XL diskmag Flop has been published. You can find it for download at official website flop.atari.org URL: http://flop.atari.org/
you can enter filename without drive number (default drive is D: or D1:). Added is hexadecimal view of color and player position values. Source code output is richer with addition of Pascal declaration for player data. I don't know if there are any differences in declaring data types between several Pascal languages for Atari, like Draper, Kyan or Atari Pascal. If you are aware of those differences, please let me know. Every operation is intended with inverse text to know which one is in progress. Documentation and program download is available here: http://gury.atari8.info/sprite_engine/sprite_engine.htm. Any comments or suggestions most appreciated. Regards You are welcome to visit my site at http://gury.atari8.info/ You can try my player (sprite) editor called Sprite Engine. Please visit great Atari8.Info site http://www.atari8.info/
[This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
********************************************** ********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2007 9:07 PM Subject: EMU> mmSAP-1.6 SAP player --Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:08:55 -0700 mmSAP-1.6 SAP player for GNU/Linux is out. It is linked together with new SoTe's libSAP-2.0 more precise POKEY emulation engine. URL: http://mmsap.sourceforge.net/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2007 9:08 PM Subject: EMU>EmuTOS version 0.8.2 released --Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:09:19 -0700 After a long time without new release, EmuTOS 0.8.2 has now been released to the public. This release brings you various fixes and small improvements that have gathered during the past 1.5 years: - Mouse wheel direction is now Milan compatible. - Updated Finnish translation. - GEMDOS Pexec mode 50 PE_RELOCATE definedit gets raw TOS executable data and relocates it as if it was loaded normally. - Fixed possible system crash in HBL handler. - Cleaned up & fixed memory initialization code - New XBIOS functions for TT shifter: EsetShift, EgetShift - Fixed a bug in the ACSI driver (now works with Hatari!). - NVRAM checksum calculation was wrong - it\\\'s fixed now. - New XBIOS functions for Falcon Videl: Vsetmode (VGA only) and Vmontype. URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/ [This news item courtesy of Atari.org - http://www.atari.org]
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From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 8:35 AM Subject: cassio 0.2.1 5/1/07 Cassio - A tool for working with Atari 8-bit computer cassette image (.cas) files on Linux or other UNIX-like systems. cassio 0.2.1 has a few new features and bug fixes, it's worth upgrading if you're running 0.1.0 Also, 0.2.1 is available as an RPM package, for Redhat/CentOS/Suse/etc. Home page: http://www.urchlay.com/cassio/ Enjoy! Edit: Released 0.2.1 just now (was 0.2.0 an hour ago), adding the "auto-pause" feature suggested by a8isa
********************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 1:48 PM Subject: SIO2PC 4.21 --Date: 2 May 2007 07:52:28 -0700 Hello Atari people. I recently got an email from a guy who wondered why I still have revision 4.19 of SIO2PC available on my site when I had issued revision 4.21 years ago (April, 2000 to be exact). I guess I just didn't realize I'd gotten behind. I dug through several computers and found the revision 4.21 source and executible and have now put them up. It doesn't look like there were any big changes and no added features from 4.19 to 4.21 -- just minor tweaks. So if you use SIO2PC and it's working OK, you probably don't need to bother getting 4.21. I uploaded the "new" versions of both my distribution package and my source code.
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 8:33 AM Subject: Sprite Engine 1.0.1 5/1/07
Also, I've moved my web page a couple times in the past several years. The current location is
Hello there,
Regards,
Here is a new version of Sprite Engine. Loading (Control-L) and saving (Control-S) of your players is more comfortable now, because
Nick the SIO2PC guy
http://pages.suddenlink.net/wa5bdu/sio2pc.htm
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