May 2008
NEWSLETTER for May 2008 Still looking good. I hope to have another auction at the SPACE birthday party in July so plan for that.
President’s Corner by Michael Current May 2008
Nolan should be at the May meeting and maybe he can catch us all up on what's happening on the web-site. We need to catch up on our payments to him also which will be about $60.00.
Yes, it's April 26 and it's snowing outside, lovely!
That's about it for now. See you all in May.
Sorry I missed my opportunity to meet legendary SPACE member emeritus Joe Danko last month. Who knows what personalities will turn up this month??? You'll have to come to the meeting to find out!
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Looks like another long Newsletter, so I'll keep this short. Do check out Part 2 of the development of the Atari ST system by Landon Dyer. More great stuff!
Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For April 2008
Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday May 9, 2008.
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Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For April 2008
Mother Nature scores again!! What a lousy evening we had for our April SPACE meeting. It was surprising that six members were on hand for one miserable weather night. I guess it could have been a lot worse had it been a little colder and the precipitation had been snow instead of rain. Even though it snowed heavily at times it at least stayed warm enough to turn it all to slush. Anyway we had a nice little meeting and we also had a surprise guest. Some of you might remember an old member, Joe Danko. I was a member of SPACE right about the time Joe left and it was good to see him again. He stayed for the meeting and contributed in the discussions. Glen, who knew Joe the best, got to have some quality time together and catch up on days long past. Not much happening these days so there isn't much change in our treasury. Beginning balance as of April 1, 2008: Receipts for the April 2008 meeting: Memberships Doms Total Receipts No expenses to report for the April meeting Ending balance as of April 31, 2008
854.56
15.00 6.00 21.00 0.00 875.56
Well, Hello again, fellow SPACE members. We had a better turnout than usual at the last meeting (I believe seven showed up). It was a short, but productive meeting in the sense that a lot got addressed. Lance was saying that there will be new Jaguar games. They are Frog Fest, Bomb Squad, and Double Feature. There is also a new Lynx game from Songbird called Mega Pack. I will be watching these games closely myself. Lance also mentioned that the Coldfire computer is nearly done, and so are the PCI slots for the Atari Falcon 030 computer. Well, that concludes my Secretary's Report. Keep using that Atari, and thanks.
******************************************** BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For May 2008
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.
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 12:08 PM Subject: AtarICQ 0.172 is released AtarICQ 0.172 is released Apr 16, 2008 - 10:03 PM :: GokMasE It was originally planned to wait until this summers NAS (http://www.sak.nu/nas/) before releasing a new version av AtarICQ. However, after a rather hard hitting bug was recently discovered and fixed it was instead decided to get a new release out as soon as possible.
The biggest noticeable addition to aICQ 0.172 is the ability to view GIF images as background in the contact list. This was made possible through a cooperation with PeP, who has been kind enough to supply a very, very nice OVL that decodes and processes the GIF data. Cheers for that!
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 12:06 PM Subject: Links Atari Web Browser for MiNT released Links Atari Web Browser for MiNT released Apr 02, 2008 - 05:29 PM
Example screenshot: http://www.ataricq.org/20080415-aicq.png
Didier MEQUIGNON announced on usenet:
A somewhat thorough complete list of changes:
Hi,
* Implemented support for loading graphics via external load modules in form of dedicated overlays. (Look into the preferences dialog to set this feature up properly)
I have compiled and build GEM interface to Links, you need a fast atari 020-060 with FPU with/without graphic card, under MiNT. My archive is here (binay and sources):
* Caching of background images implemented. By default AtarICQ will use a subdir (/cache) in its own workdirectory for storing the data. To change this, you need to tweak the cache dir within preferences dialog. * After loading the GFXGIF.OVL the CPU cache will now be flushed before the client calls any functions within the OVL. Applies also to aicq.ovl! * When put in compact mode (F10) the contact list will now use the native sliders of the AES, including a SIZER widget. * Clicking the CLOSER widget on contact list while holding ALTkey, will trigger aICQ to remove the window TITLE. * More optimised redraws of the TABs, resulting in much less flickering when toggling between open TABs. * Cookie jar is now read utilizing Ssystem() under MiNT. Under TOS/ MagiC, the old method is still used. * Under large gfx resolutions the scrollback setting could easily be defaulting to a much too small value, in case the message window height was increased. A check for this is now added after reading the config file. This problem could be noticed as a very serious scrolling problem, causing aICQ to lock up pretty good. * In case COLOR_SELECT is not specified in the environment, AtarICQ looks if COLSEL.PRG is present in its workdir. (This prg is included in the zip file as of the 0.172 release)
http://didier.mequignon.free.fr/files/links-2.1pre33.m68kmint.tgz More infos about Links here : http://links.twibright.com/ Good tests ! Regards, Didier. -Didier MEQUIGNON Aniplayer download: http://aniplay.atari.org CT60 package download: http://ct60conf.atari.org CTPCI: http://ctpci.atari.org
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 12:05 PM michael@mcurrent.name Subject: Hatari version 1.0.1 released Hatari version 1.0.1 released :: Apr 01, 2008 - 07:46 AM Atari ST emulator (source code only) What's new in this version:
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 12:07 PM Subject: joe 3.5 for m68k-atari-mint released joe 3.5 for m68k-atari-mint released Apr 02, 2008 - 05:32 PM :: lp :: 436 Reads ::
* This is just a bug-fix release, without new features. * Fixed some compile problems on non-unix-like systems (like MingW). * Fixed crashes in Spec512 emulation code ("Dan Dare 3" and little endian ARM). * Blitter source address is not incremented anymore in operation mode 0 and 15. * STE small overscan video effect is now displayed on the left side instead of the right side (fixes "Just Musix 2" menu for example). * Hatari now works on 256 color displays right again. * Fixed PSG mirror register emulation (fixes e.g. sample sound in "Ooh Crikey Wot A Scorcher" demo).
Bernd Mueller announced on usenet:
http://hatari.sourceforge.net/index.html
Find the new release on the official AtarICQ website: http://www.ataricq.org/
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Hi there, I've just build joe for MiNT. A very small, easy and fast texteditor ( http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/ ). Get a copy from here : http://ragnars-world.homelinux.org/atari/joe/ bye Bernd
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******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 12:03 PM Subject: Christos releases STOT intro Christos releases STOT intro April 20th, 2008 Christos writes:
11 days before Outline 08 STOT would like to inform you about our activities there. And for a scene party what better way than a small intro? » Download "Stotro" from Christos http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/stotro.zip
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 11:59 AM Subject: The Atari ST, Part 2 The Atari ST, Part 2 Blog post by Landon Dyer, March 12th, 2008 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1000 My memory of the ST project is scattered and biased, but here’s how I remember it, starting in July of 1984. There are a lot of details missing; for the most part I remember the bits that I worked on, but the other folks on the project almost certainly remember different or conflicting stuff. Forgive my omissions in advance; it’s been a while. July: Tramiels buy Atari and consolidate the people that they don’t lay off into a single building. The “ST” plan is bandied about, but nobody knows a whole lot. August: The ST hardware becomes clearer. We evaluate other OSes, etc. September: Work starts in Monterey, near the Digital Research campus. October: Work. We get (rented) houses in Monterey. November: More work. We barely see those houses. December: Much more work. The ST boots TOS for the first time. January: CES (with STs running CP/M-68K). Decision made to move to new file system (GEMDOS). February: 16K boot ROMs written (a couple-week side effort). March: Even more work. Two weeks to crunch TOS to fit into 192K. April: ROMs actually work (do you know how long it takes to burn 192K of ROM, not to mention UV-erasing older chips?) May: ROM TOS 1.0 shipped. Phew! Well, and there are some details. ---The other engineer was screaming at me: “If you’ll be patient with me, I’ll be patient with you!” He stomped away to his office. Not his real office, which he would have been delighted to stomp back to. His real office was in Digital Research nirvana, in the buildings that we were forbidden to visit. Instead he had to be happy with stomping off to his crappy shared office in the building where he was temporarily relocated, where he had to work with . . . us. The pushy Atari guys. The hicks from Silly Valley who just wanted stuff to work. We’d been in the satellite building next to the DRI campus for several months. Early prototype hardware was still maybe a month away (though we didn’t know that then). The pressure to get something working was intense, and the truth about what we had purchased from DRI was becoming clear: The software wasn’t technically sweet, and getting it running on the Atari hardware wasn’t a matter of just doing a port because large parts of GEM simply weren’t finished.
Theoretically you can write very portable code in C. As long as you stick to certain rules and have a reasonable degree of paranoia you have a good chance of your code running on different platforms, with minimal effort. The best way to do this is to have your code running, from day one, on several different machines using several different compilers. DRI had not done this with everything, and the resulting issues ranged from simple errors that were caught by the compiler and were easily fixed, to deeper issues that required design work if the code was going to run on anything other than an 8086. It was slow, frustrating, and there was a lot of friction. And some yelling. That’s a dismal picture of the DRI / Atari relationship. Very often, things worked great. Some of the DRI guys were hilarious and fun to work with. But we all had our faults. If the worst of the DRI engineers thought they were programming gods who could code no wrong, then the worst of the Atari engineers were pushy bastards who just wanted stuff to work. Sometimes things clicked, but sometimes we were like scorpions in a bottle. I forget what the “patience” argument was about. The other engineer was right, or I was right, or maybe we were both horribly wrong. An hour later we apologized to each other and sat down and just got the job done. But a couple of years later, long after we had returned to Atari’s Sunnyvale office, we still remembered that argument in lunchtime banter. ---The Atari side of the ST software team roughly broke down into six small groups: Graphics. Two or three guys took the DRI-specified graphics layer and wrote font renderers, blits, linedrawing and other primitives. In my opinion the graphics guys were having the most fun, and since they were video game programmers (well, technically speaking, ex video game programmers now) they were running architectural rings around the rather pedestrian graphics abstractions that DRI had decided on. The graphics primitives on the ST had interesting extensions, and GEM only used a subset of what was available. Porting Getting GEM working. Two or three more of our people were helping get GEM onto the 68000. This wasn’t just “compile, debug, rinse, repeat” deal, since GEM wasn’t really finished. These guys worked really closely with DRI engineers every day, and they were probably the most frustrated of us all. BIOS (drivers) and OS (two guys, including me). Straight-forward systems bringup stuff. Lots of work, but mostly hohum. Infrastructure: Build wrangling, source management, odd-and-ends, and pithy observations about the nature of humanity as it pertained to its use of computers, and in particular, nasty habits in source code. We didn’t use source control. I’m not sure we even used diff. Mostly we had several directories-full of source files that were compiled by a guy who knew how to do it. Rustic, but it worked. Applications. Well, application, we had a guy working on porting the DRI Basic. It was pretty much a disaster, though the work eventually did get done. I have vague memories of an engineer hired by the Tramiels who didn’t do a very good job — I think he ran into a bunch of portability minefields, got discouraged and beat up on by management (we hadn’t truly grokked the unpolished and unported state of a lot of the DR software yet). He wound up quitting or being fired, and I can’t remember which.
Morale (in the form of a very friendly german shepherd doggie, who was capable of playing frisbee far beyond human endurance; very useful for destressing). ---Before the ST hardware started to work, we had to use existing 68000-based systems for cross development. The graphics guys had Apple Lisas that were running CP/M-68K; the Lisas had nice bitmap displays which we used as “practice” STs. The disks on these machines took forever to come back after a crash (tens of minutes). For some reason the boot code on these machines had been written to display a bitmap of a fish. You’d hear a mutter or curse from down the hall (crash), then the creaky footsteps of someone walking around, cooling their heels and waiting for their “God damned” Lisa Profile drives to boot, then a triumphant yell “CarpDOS!” and typing sounds. The BIOS/OS guys had some Motorola VME-10 workstations that were (ahem) “Unix Ready!” (the boxes they came in said so, in large, proud letters) but instead we had them running CP/M-68K, and I’m sure they felt sad inside; I know I did. The VME-10 systems were very flaky; my own system died and needed repairs three times in six months. (A year and a half later, Gary Tramiel, the son who was heading the financial arm of Atari, asked us if we were still using the VME systems. By then we had moved all our development over to the ST itself, and the VMEs were gathering dust in a corner. “Hell no,” I said. “Fine,” said Gary, “Then we won’t pay the repair bill.” A good lesson in the Tramiel school of start-up economics). ---DRI had us housed in an old TV studio building (KMST, if you care) that was about a hundred yards from the rest of their buildings. The building was cold and creaky, and when it rained (which, during the fall and winter we were there, was a lot) the steps got pretty slippery. Typical workday: Get up and do the usual stuff (coffee!) in our rented house in Carmel, two blocks from the beach. Usually we could hear the ocean, and sometimes I’d get quick beach fix in, if it wasn’t raining. Drive five miles to DRI, go up the creaky steps without breaking my neck. Make awful instututional-style coffee from the horrid little mylar bags of Columbian bridge-sweepings (put two in, just to make sure the coffee isn’t totally crappy). Go into the office. Huh, the VME/10 won’t boot again. Flip power switch on and off for a while until it finally works (leave it on the rest of the day). Make a backup right now because (a) it’s a nice, warm fuzzy feeling, especially when you can’t trust your stupid workstation to even fucking turn on, and (b) was the one I did last night at 1am really any good? Flail about at drivers. Trace through file system code that mostly works, but sometimes doesn’t. Wish for working hardware. Try to decode the latest spec from the hardware guys. Stare at the ceiling (”That doesn’t make any sense.”) Stare at the wall (”That can’t possibly work.”) Write some more code anyway. ---There was a bug that had been causing all kinds of grief; some kind of simple botch. I’d spent half of the previous day working out exactly what was going on, and it turned out to be in some DRI code. I groaned. Not that guy again. The DRI engineer responsible for that part of the system was notoriously arrogant. I tried to explain the problem to him, down to the offending line of code, and he was objecting all the way. But later I overheard him saying to his office mate, “Hey, I found a bug in my code that could explain that weird problem.” This just drove us batshit.
I took a doggie break. One of the Atari engineers had a wonderful german shepard named Divot. You could take Divot outside with a frisbee and she’d play fetch until one of you dropped from exhaustion (and she could fetch for hours). It’s hard to get worked up about a screwed-up OS when someone is utterly dependent on you for the next frisbee toss. “He’s a bozo, Divot.” “Woof!” “So what if he came from HugeCorp and did systems programming on machines so big he couldn’t lift them; he’s a graduate of the Arrogant Jerk Academy and he doesn’t know how to interact with humans.” “Woof, woof!” [Speaking of interacting, throw the stupid thing already, okay?] I went back inside. Whereupon: Much more programming, a latenight run for chinese food of dubious quality, and work, work, work. One big happy family, hatching an operating system out of thin air and ego and fear. Oh yeah. ---CP/M-68K was an “Operating System” that had its roots in the 70s. About ten years earlier Gary Kildall had worked on some DEC PDP11 systems, liked them, and had been inspired to write a small OS for the very early 8080-based microcomputers. For years CP/M had been a defacto standard. Gary had started a company called Inter-Galactic Digital Research to further develop and market it. MSDOS had only been out for a couple of years, and DRI (renamed — sensibly losing the Intergalatic bit so that people, especially conversative suit-types, would take them more seriously) was vying for market share with a port of CP/M to the 8086, the CPU of the IBM-PC. CP/M-68K was a port the 68000, and was the OS that the Tramiels had contracted for. CP/M (in any of its variants) didn’t really do a whole lot. There was a simple flat file system. There was some character-at-a-time console output (useless on a computer with a graphical interface). And CP/M could load and programs. That was about it. (By modern standards it was missing: A heirarchical file system with directories, networking, memory management, processes and process scheduling, a notion of time, synchronization and locking primitives, a driver architecture, graphics, fonts, character sets . . . you get the idea). GEM was was bolted on top of this primitive base. Since the underlying OS didn’t support more than one task, GEM had a lot of its own stuff to enable things like “desk accessories” that could run concurrently with (say) a word processor. It was pretty clunky. None of us liked CP/M-68K. So when we heard that someone at DRI had been doing something much better, even though it was still unfinished, we unofficially jumped at it. GEMDOS started as a skunkworks project by a DRI engineer who had a reputation for being a loose canon. GEMDOS had a heirarchical file system that was compatible with MSDOS; it had a few other improvements, but this was the biggie. But in December 1984 GEMDOS was still being written. The STs that went to the CES show were running CP/M-68K. In late January, after a bunch of hand-wringing, Leonard Tramiel made the decision to go with GEMDOS. We’d had it substantially working for several weeks, and it looked like it was going to be fine. Notably we did not have any hard disks to try it out on, so all of our testing was done on floppy disk based systems — this would come back to hit us hard later.
---It was pretty clear that TOS was going to be late. But we had the boot code working fine, so we spent a few weeks doing a small 16K loader ROM. All it did was paint some pretty graphics, load a sector from floppy disk and run it. We sent the boot ROM images out without actually knowning if they’d boot an OS, but they worked fine. Around the time the boot ROMs were sent off, the software team was feeling pretty blue. Things were taking much longer than we had expected; there were lots of bugs to fix, there were missing features, there were features that would never make it into the product, and it was pretty clear that the Mac had us outclassed. Also, most of us were feeling pretty burned-out. Jack Tramiel called a meeting. We didn’t often meet with him, and it was a big deal. He started by saying, “I hear you are unhappy.” Think of a deep, authoritarian voice, a lot like Darth Vader, and the same attitude, pretty much. Sorry, Jack, things aren’t going all that hot. We tried to look humble, but we probably just came across as tired. “I don’t understand why you are unhappy,” he rumbled. “You should be very happy; I am paying your salary. I am the one who is unhappy. The software is late. Why is it so late?” Young and idealistic, I piped up: “You know, I don’t think we’re in this for the money. I think we just want to ship the best computer we can –” Jack shut me down. “Then you won’t mind if I cut your salary in half?” I got the message. He didn’t even have to use the Force. ---We got busy again and shipped the first ROM-based systems a month or two later. My memory of this has really faded, but a few things stick: TOS wasn’t going to fit even in the 192K of ROM. It was well over 200K (210? 220?) and still climbing. So for two weeks everyone dropped what they were doing and started removing code. It’s amazing how much stuff you can toss out if you really try. Our linker didn’t do dead-code stripping, but even if it had that wouldn’t have shown us the fat pieces of common code, the pathetic reimplementations of strlen and strcpy that were everywhere, and the useless crap and horrible layering that could be replaced with a few simple lines of code. [I’ve since found that removing code is a great way to improve an existing system; not only do you get rid of a lot of bugs, but the result is usually easier to understand, and often runs faster. Have a large, unwieldy project that takes forever to build and you have trouble making changes to? Wade in and start deleting. Become a ruthless of constructive destruction; if you accidentally nuke something critical, just resurrect it from the project depot. Software is great!] A little while after the first TOS ROMs shipped, Leonard Tramiel arranged a celebratory dinner for the engineers and managed to get Jack to come as well. About halfway through the meal (which was at a wonderful Chinese place called Fung Lum, in Campbell), Leonard started relating the story of how he and John Feagans had arrived at the Atari Coin-op building to interview people and see who they wanted to keep. “Then this voice called out over the intercom –” – oh, shit. One thing you need to know about Jack is that when he was twelve years old, he was in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. I’ve seen the tattoo. That he survived being there pretty much defined him, as far as most people were concerned. And –
“– and the voice called out, ‘Imperial storm-troopers have entered the base!’”. Jack hadn’t seen Star Wars, not ever, and didn’t get the reference. And to him, the phrase “Storm Trooper” has a completely different meaning. It took a little while for Leonard to convince Jack that it was really a funny thing, no, honestly, really it was a joke, okay? And I’m not sure that Jack really understood. But in the end he gave a little laugh; everyone else seemed to enjoy the story. I kept my job. I hung on for another couple of years before going to Apple. There were some nasty bugs in GEMDOS that were never really fixed (you can download the sources — I did, a number of years ago, and found the same set of unsatisfactory fixes that I’d come up with, but that I’m not sure ever shipped). I took an ST with me, but I didn’t ever do much with it. I don’t keep in touch much with the people on the ST team; some light email, but that’s about it. The ST community did really awesome things; some actual decent multi-tasking operating systems, a ton of music-related software and so on. It’s neat having had a part in helping all of that happen. I also know what I’d like to be able to do a second time around on a project like the ST. I’ve got this little list . . . .
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:07 PM Subject: cc65 2.12.0 released --Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:40:09 +0000 (UTC) I'm proud to announce version 2.12.0 of cc65. cc65 is a complete cross development package for 65(C)02 systems, including a powerful macro assembler, a C compiler, linker, librarian and several other tools. cc65 has C and runtime library support for many of the old 6502 machines, including - The Commodore VIC20, C16/C116, C64, C128, C116, Plus/4, 510 (aka P500), the 600/700 family and newer PET machines (not 2001). - The Apple ][ and successors. - The Atari 8 bit machines. - GEOS for the C64 and C128. - The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). - The Supervision console. - The Oric Atmos. - The Lynx Console. The libraries are fairly portable, so creating a version for other 6502s shouldn't be too much work. This is mostly a bugfix release, with larger changes in just a few places. The latter is especially true for the Apple ][ libraries, which have undergone major changes done by Oliver Schmidt. As usual I will provide the complete sources and several binary packages, including RPMs for RedHat Enterprise Linux 5. Please note that there are separate RPMs for the compiler proper, the docs, and the target specific libraries. To develop for one of the predefined target systems you need the compiler RPM package *and* one of the target machine packages. Be sure to download the documentation package if you're new to cc65. Precompiled binaries for DOS, OS/2 and Windows are available in ZIP archives. As with the RPM packages, you need the package for
the development system (Windows or whatever.) *and* one or more of the target machine packages, plus optionally the doc package. There's also a windows installer package. The target specific libraries and header files are selectable as components from within the installer dialogue. All packages are available from the MU software FTP server: ftp://ftp.musoftware.de/pub/uz/cc65/ More info on cc65 can be found on the cc65 web page at: http://www.cc65.org/ There is also a mailing list for discussing cc65 related issues (programming, suggestions, bugs, ...). See: http://www.cc65.org/#List for information on how to subscribe to this list. While I'm the main developer of cc65, it is actually a joint effort. I would like to thank the target library developers, all the people on the cc65 mailing list, all those sending suggestions and feedback, and even those bugging me for a new stable release:-) The CREDITS file is probably incomplete, but you know who you are. Thank you! Uz
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 9:25 AM Subject: Introducing The Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace --Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:33:37 -0700 (PDT)
Thank you, ----Erik Klein <http://www.vintage-computer.com> <http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum> - The Vintage Computer Forums <http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com> - The Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:43 AM Subject: ATARI BBS GATEWAY (links to all Atari BBS's on one BBS!) -From: "Greg Goodwin" <Greg.Goodwinp0.f2.n8.z8@fmlynet.org> -Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit -Subject: ATARI BBS GATEWAY (links to all Atari BBS's on one BBS!) -Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:57:17 GMT FamilyNet International Newsgate A long time & stable Dallas BBS, The Prison Board, has offered to provide a "Favorites page" for the Atari BBS users. Other users (like Tcropper) and I provided an up to date BBS list of the active Atari sites out there, and Rueben (PB Sysop) created a place you can go to, bring up an Atari telnet menu, and go directly to that Atari BBS. icon_smile.gif (Recently a Commodore BBS list has been added too.) Ever been curious to see the online world of Atari computers? Come check out the Prison Board BBS: 972-329-0781 (this number good for people want to try out Atari modems, and dialup means.) 216.62.20.217 (This IP number is great for Lantronix users, and has not changed for a considerable time.) [IP Still accurate April 13, 2008] (also telnet://rdfig.net)
Hello, I'd like to formally announce the new Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace located at <http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com>. There's some Atari stuff on there now! This new addition to <http://www.Vintage-Computer.com> will hopefully grow to become the preferred venue for buying and selling vintage computing and gaming gear on the net. The software used for the marketplace was chosen for its simplicity and features which make it a viable alternative to the other, more generalized, auction and sales venues on the web. Items can be posted in auction format (buy-it-now can be used for flatrate sales) with descriptions and a photo gallery for each. Bids on items within the last two minutes of an auction will extend that auction by 30 minutes, making sniping a thing of the past. NOTE: There are absolutely no charges for posting listings to the marketplace or for buying items listed there. The venue is completely free! I believe that the popularity of the Vintage Computer Forums and the Vintage-Computer.com site will help drive buyers and sellers to the new marketplace to the benefit of the entire vintage computing and gaming community. I encourage anyone interested or potentially interested in buying or selling vintage computing and/or gaming gear to please visit the new site, sign up and, by all means, tell your friends!
Trying to dial in with a stock Atari 300/1200 baud modem? You poor soul! But this has been less painful with a new feature. When you log in and the BBS asks for your log in name type "*[First name] [last name] [password]" and you'll skip over the log in screens and get taken directly to the main menu. Never has the online Atari world been so easy to access from your Atari computer. Simply call up the above system, get to the main menu, X for the internet menu, and then A for the Atari menu. From there, it is simply a matter of hitting 1 through 9 for the Atari BBS's. Atari BBS's in many cases run on real Atari computers like the one you're calling with. Both chats are there, and one BBS is listed that you will not see anywhere else. And the Prison board makes a great E-mail service too. icon_smile.gif You can E-mail the outside world with a real E-mail account, and if you wanted to surf the web on your Atari computer (especially 8-bits) there are telnetable locations with Lynx browsers you can hit from the Prison Board's telnet out feature. Let me know here if you have any questions, and many thanks to The Prison Board BBS for this awesome service. ----------------------------------Naturally a BBS sysop loves more users, but seldom have I seen a sysop that have bent over backward for his users that he would be a pretzel at this point. Changes that Rueben has added as of April 13, 2008 for the retro computer community, and all I had to do was ask nicely and give feedback that you've given on how to make it better: 1) Added the Atari BBS list
2) Opened up 300 baud support. (this is turned off on modern BBS's) 3) Paid for the licences to add more lines. I think he started with 3-5 lines. Traffic increased when we started this, and so more lines were needed. 4) Added the Commodore BBS list 5) Added links to the Atari chats on both atarinews and the IRC chat. 6) Added the ability to skip all log-in screens. (this added with 300 baud users in mind).
games company and a movie studio-based business model which also leveraged existing intellectual properties. During his time at Universal Interactive, he managed two of the most successful original game franchises of all time, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, and launched and managed numerous top selling and critically acclaimed titles including The Hulk, The Thing, and The Chronicles of Riddick. Following Vivendi’s acquisition of Universal Interactive, Wilson was named Executive Vice President/General Manager of Worldwide Studios for Vivendi Universal Games and also assumed leadership of Sierra and Knowledge Adventure.
FamilyNet <> Internet Gated Mail http://www.familynet-international.org
Prior to his time at Vivendi, Mr. Wilson previously held games marketing positions at Philips Media and business development and marketing roles within The Walt Disney Company and Universal Studios. He began his career at Arthur Andersen & Company. Mr. Wilson holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. *** 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: FR0010478248 – Eurolist Compartment B) and has two principal subsidiaries: Atari Europe, a privately-held company, and Atari, Inc., a United States corporation listed on NASDAQ (ATAR).
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:49 AM Subject: Atari appoints Jim Wilson CEO and President ATARI, INC. APPOINTS JIM WILSON CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND PRESIDENT --Industry Veteran to Oversee Interactive Entertainment Company-New York, New York, March 31, 2008 – Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR), announced today the appointment of Jim Wilson as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President, effective immediately. Mr. Wilson is assuming the responsibilities of CEO which have been overseen by Curtis G. Solsvig III, Atari, Inc.’s Chief Restructuring Officer since October 2007. An industry veteran, Mr. Wilson has more than 15 years of executive management experience with video game and entertainment companies, including Vivendi Universal Games, Universal Interactive Studios, and Sony Wonder/Sony BMG. Mr. Wilson brings a proven management style to Atari, Inc. with a track record focused on successful development and execution of strategic objectives and profitability goals, including the development and launch of video games and numerous branded entertainment properties, franchise development and content delivery across multiple distribution channels. “Atari, Inc., with its world-renowned brand and strong library of game franchises, has a tremendous opportunity in North America. I look forward to working with the Atari team and shareholders to lead Atari, Inc. into its next phase of growth,” said Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson’s hiring is the next key step in the restructuring of Atari, Inc. Since October 2007, Atari, Inc. has entered into a series of transactions with its majority shareholder, Infogrames Entertainment S.A. (IESA), aimed at stabilizing and focusing the Company’s distribution efforts. Further, through its primary lender, BlueBay High Yield Investments, S.A.R.L., Atari, Inc. has been able to reestablish its credit facility with a $14.0 million limit, which is currently fully utilized to fund Atari, Inc.’s ongoing operations. With David Gardner and Phil Harrison leading IESA, Mr. Wilson, as CEO of Atari, Inc., will be an integral partner in shaping the future of Atari worldwide. Mr. Eugene Davis, Chairman of the Board of Atari, Inc. commented, “Jim has spent his career in and around the interactive entertainment space. His passion for this industry, coupled with his leadership skills and first-hand operational execution, make him the ideal person to lead the future of Atari, Inc.” Most recently, Mr. Wilson served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Sony Wonder, Sony BMG’s home entertainment business, where he focused on developing and managing products from key partners such as Sesame Workshop, World Wrestling Entertainment, and Classic Media. Prior to Sony Wonder, Mr. Wilson served as President of Universal Interactive, where he built a leading
The Atari Group is a 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, V-Rally, Test Drive, etc.) and international licenses (Dragon Ball Z, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.). For more information: http://www.atari.com
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:55 AM Subject: More Than Games New Items -Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:48:55 -0600 Hello, Rix Computer Activity Tools: I have released several more NEW items at my site.... SIO BOB is a break out board for the SIO port. Gives access to the lines. AND... PEEKER is the first board for SIO BOB. Shows activity on the data lines. Also works with Spider. http://morethangames.a8maestro.com/proda8/adv-ek0112.htm. 14 items. SPEEDIER: Type 2...Same speedier but in a hood for db25 to RJ45(ethernet type cable), so makes a much smaller set. http://morethangames.a8maestro.com/proda8/adv-eh0106.htm. 1 item. Ricks' Electronics Entertainment Emporium: Simple Mixer..mixes several computers, MP3/CD/Tape plyers thru 1 set of powered speakers. AND... Skinny Mixer...For car radio or portable speaker use, mixes 2 items. http://morethangames.a8maestro.com/prodmisc/adv-lh0001.htm. 2 items. More items soon. Rick D. MTG DO NOT REPLY TO a8maestro"a t"a8maestro.com. Use mtg2008" a t " a8maestro.com instead.
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