SPACE Newsletter

NEWSLETTER for August 2008 President’s Corner by Michael Current August 2008 Thanks to everyone for showing up, contributing to the pot luck, buying DOMs, bidding in the auction, and helping clean up afterward. Adding to the excitement, a time-out during the auction so we could all step outside to look at the amazing clouds trying to form a tornado above us! It was a wild night outside, and a most excellent night inside at the SPACE party/auction meeting. Hopefully everone had a great time. Who could ask for more? Before our meeting I was out-bid in my attempt to win a collector's edition Yoomp! package (box, cartridge, disk, cassette, and manual), but the new game was featured on our July DOM along with a number of other cool new things like Fireball and the Lost Wallet demo. All for just the price of a $3 SPACE DOM! It made me almost completely forget about my Yoomp! auction result. Haven't our DOMs by Glen been great lately? If you're not buying a SPACE DOM every month you're really missing out! I've heard from Nolan a couple times in recent days, and I've seen the new SPACE web site he's working on start to take shape. It's looking very nice indeed! He's putting a great deal of time and work into it, hopefully we can all appreciate it! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday August 8, 2008. **********************************************

Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For July 2008

I can't believe this report is going into the August 2008 newsletter. This year is flying by and half the summer is already gone. We had a great birthday party in July with nine of our ten members present and three spouses. Against my fears that tacos might not be a good idea to bring as a main dish I was proven very wrong. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and there wasn't much leftovers. I guess we may have to repeat this

menu again some time. I will leave that idea up to the members to decide. Half of the meeting was spent watching severe storms approaching our direction and it turned out okay for us but others in places like St. Cloud and Willmar did not fare as well. On our drive home to Inver Grove we had quite a fantastic lightning show that pretty much ended right after we made it home. I hope everyone else had a safe ride home that night. Another great auction was held after the paty last month and it was a great success, Just about everyone left with a bargain. Here is how things shape up for our Treasury: Beginning balance as of July 1, 2008: Receipts for the July SPACE meeting: Membership renewals Doms Auction Total receipts Expenses for the July SPACE meeting: Newsletter-12 months Web-site-2 months Total expenses

871.56 15.00 9.00 59.00 ________ 83.00 81.18 20.00 _________ 101.18

It was very satisfying to see that in a month where we had larger expenses than normal we nearly made up that amount in receipts from our memberships, doms and auction sales. We only lost about $18.00 to our treasury and now we are caught up with our newsletter and web-site expenses. Of course we owe for our room rental at $25.00 per month but I don't expect that bill to come until the end of the year, and only then when I remind them to send me the bill. So as you can see we are still doing incredibly well and I see this Club being very self-sufficient for a long time to come. Think about it; last year at this time we had a bank balance of $810.51 and now we are doing even better. I thank all of you even though we are just ten and holding. Your continued support of SPACE in these troubled times is quite astounding,and we just keep going on and on and on. I thank you. **********************************************

Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For July 2008

- AtarICQ will keep track of which TABs were open upon the time of termination, and make sure they are there on next launch of the program. http://www.ataricq.org/

******************************************** The Secretary’s Report is at the end of the Newsletter..

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From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:37 PM Subject: SainT 2.11 04/07/2008 Finally a new SainT release J

BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For August 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, July 26, 2008 9:42 PM Subject: AtarICQ 0.173 Friday, 11. July 2008 Neues Release auf der NAS: AtarICQ 0.173 Auf der Nordic Atari Show wurde eine neue Version (0.173) von AtarICQ vorgestellt. Die wesentlichen Änderungen: - Program license changed to freeware (read more in HYP) NOTE: Naggings and registration procedure are completely removed. - A bug that caused RSC objects to be positioned wrongly under MagiC (only when the 3d-rendering of objects disabled), has been fixed. - There was a bug in the popup menu for opening TABs (CTRL+T), which would result in offline AIM users being listed as offline ICQ users in this popup. - If the width of contact window was set lower than 100 pixels, the width would be adjusted to 100 at next relaunch of the program. (NOTE: Smallest allowed width is now set to 40 pixels!) - A number of visual and functional glitches regarding the contact list behavior, redraws and its sliders has been fixed. - Several stability issues have been resolved, especially involving the log on procedure as well as contacts going online/offline. - A bug in the text buffer management has been fixed. The bug would prevent the text buffer from being limited to the value specified in "scrollback". - AtarICQ now remembers the path of the texture files next time you call the file selector to specify a new background image for contact list.

I’m totally busy since a long time with job and family. Anyway I succeed to released a new SainT featuring a cool feature: read your original Atari disk using your PC floppy drive in real time J Read new features. Download here ! http://leonard.oxg.free.fr/ What is SainT ?? SainT is a Windows based cycle accurate ATARI-ST emulator, written by James Boulton and Arnaud Carré. You can read the online documentation to get more information. http://leonard.oxg.free.fr/SainT/SainTDoc.html Download SainT v2.11 (1.01Mb) !! http://leonard.oxg.free.fr/SainT/SainT211.rar 2.11 * Bug fix for raw floppy mode support on some machines * -floppy option now reset ST and starts emulator automatically (press F12 to go back to menu)

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:46 PM Subject: D-Bug back with new game fix D-Bug back with new game fix July 2nd, 2008 CJ / D-Bug writes: We've been a while, but here is Epic (ST/STe/MSTe/TT/F030/HD) Some notes for this for Falcon users - the game will randomly lock up if you use the mouse or the joystick, so please use the keyboard. Sorry for this, but after many hours in the code, I decided to boot it out the door 'as is' and maybe return to it later. All other Atari owners, just play as usual with your input device of choice. (CJ recommends a PeST with a Microsoft Optical Mouse) » Download the fixed Epic (Updated archive!) http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/epicv2.zip » Visit the D-Bug site http://www.dbug-automation.co.uk/

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:44 PM Subject: Releases at NAS 2008 Releases at NAS 2008 June 29th, 2008 NAS 2008 has been, and there are a couple of releases. First out is PeP with a new NES emulator for high end Atari machines.

http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/bits56.zip » At Pouet.Net http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=50882

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:47 PM Subject: NeXT are back with 16 years old GFA Basic demo NeXT are back with 16 years old GFA Basic demo July 21st, 2008 Snippet from the readme file:

PeP writes: I've released a preview of my experimental NES emulator for 060-equipped machines. It's based on a heavily modified version of NESCore, a nice open source NES emulation library. .tSCc. also released a new game for the Falcon. Eight players can battle at once.

This demo was started around 1991 while my group was trying to finish out giga demo, the Phaleon Demo. Since I did all the tools used to make the Phaleon using GFA Basic, I had a pretty good idea of how to write some decent code. Now well, university, beer, and other factors plotted to make sure the demo would never be finished. So in 1992 it was abandoned.

kRadD writes: Finally after more than 3 years, I released my game Grenzüberschreitung at the NAS: Grenzüberschreitung (engl.: crossing the border) is the first ever released game written in lua for the ATARI. It's also the first game ever that uses 2 Teamtaps to allow 8 players to participate on the falcon. The game itself is a tron clone for 8 players. The game was released 2005 at the Outline, and after rewrite it 2-3 times so finally this is the Version 1.0. Thanks to all people who helped me: DaFreak / Liquied Sky Records (for an finally unused cover, which was used more than a year at competitions), 505 for the music, Samurai / Inter for the final cover, Reservoir goods for the GodLib, lua.org for lua, Bitmaster for the mod player, Christos for beta testing, and all the players who participated in the last years in Grenzüberschreitungs competitions and give a lot of feedback. » Download the NES emulator by PeP http://files.dhs.nu/files_util/penes-0.0.1a.tar.gz » Download the game by .tSCc. http://files.dhs.nu/files_game/gu_1_0.zip

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:46 PM Subject: Bits back on the ST

And in 2008 I finally managed to find the various floppies and hard-drive backups containing parts of what should have been a 10 minute long something demo with partial fullscreens, etc... » Download 'Forgotten Bits' by NeXT http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/frgtnbts.zip » Pouet.Net page http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=51032

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:50 PM Subject: NAS2008 is finished NAS2008 is finished - photos, results & releases :: Jun 30, 2008 - 08:08 PM :: GokMasE :: Yet another NAS has passed and all of us who attended had a great time. This year we had 8 player games going, Jaguar gaming, a Coldfire experiement board booting up a patched TOS, standard ST, MegaSTe and Falcons as well as accelerated models, and more.

Bits back on the ST July 3rd, 2008

PHOTOS: Photo gallery with pics by GokMasE from NAS2008 can be viewed here: http://www.ataricq.org/pictures/2008-0627/thumb.html

After some releases on other platforms, Bits have returned to the ST.

This years event was a pretty productive one, with some software and stuff being finished:

You know the deal, minimalistic sound, and graphics. The effect this time is the well known "unlimited sprites".

GFX: Bear used a Tabby on his Falcon to produce a nice piece of gfx for NAS2008: http://www.sak.nu/cutenews/data/upimages/NAS08.png

» Download Bits #56 "Unlimited blobs"

GAMES: PeP released preview of "PeNES", his experimental NES emulator for 060-equipped machines. It's based on a heavily modified version of NESCore, a nice open source NES emulation library. PeP says: "Don't ask me where to find NES ROMs etc. I have no idea." http://hem.passagen.se/shoggoth/penes/penes-0.0.1a.tar.gz kRadD released his new multiplayer game for 8 players, Grenzüberschreitung. http://www.npoi.de/download.php?view.4 GAMING: kRadD arranged a STOT competition for Kick Off 2, Speedball 2 and Grenzüberschreitung v1.0. http://www.npoi.de/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.32 http://www.npoi.de/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.33 http://www.npoi.de/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.34

DEMO: STOS Bestens karma - the one and only demo that was made at NAS! A beta version of the demo was shown, and it contained music-synchronized text. The music was made by J in Triplex and the STOS-code was made by Kl0tt. An official version will be released later. OTHER: AtarICQ goes freeware. The most noticeable change with the AtarICQ 0.173 release is indeed in the change of the program license - it has now become freeware. The application is by no means discontinued, the change just reflects the fact that the program now no longer has any restrictions or naggings. In fact, the registration process has been completely removed. Some other small tweaks and fixes were also added, like for example the new feature that aICQ will now recall which TABs were open during the last session. http://www.ataricq.org/ataricq/ Litchi-patches. Since Rajah was kind enough to supply GFA sources, GokMasE took the opportunity to tweak some stuff in the program, most noticeably the possibility to drag files from the remote window to desktop directory windows was added. http://topp.atari-users.net/litchgok1.zip (needs original archive at http://rajah.atari.org ) Thanks all who attended and made this years event a nice weekend! :) See you all next year.Regards,Swedish Atari Club http://www.sak.nu/

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:51 PM Subject: Port of x128 updated

Port of x128 updated :: Jul 05, 2008 - 12:55 AM :: GokMasE PeP reports that he has released a new version of his port of the Spectrum emulator x128. It now runs in fullscreen by default (use -window to run within a window). The author expects the emulator to reach 50 fps even without bus acceleration. http://hem.passagen.se/shoggoth/x128/x128-freemintrel4.tar.gz

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:52 PM Subject: Suska IP-core v.2K8A soon to be released Suska IP-core v.2K8A soon to be released :: Jul 09, 2008 - 02:00 PM :: GokMasE German developer Wolfgang Förster who is working with reproducing an Atari STe through FPGA reports that a new test release of their software will soon be available. In current condition it is possible to boot up TOS 1.0 as well as EmuTOS, reaching a working TOS desktop. According to Wolfgang it seems like all of the desktops functions are working nicely, but unfortunately the disk support is not working yet. The planned test release will be offered to the public since Wolfgang and the other developers hopes to reach interested people who can help with testing, suggestions and tracing of bugs and other problems. It is believed that most of the remaining problems are related to the CPU implementation. Read more on the homepage of the Suska project: http://www.experiment-s.de/en

******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 9:56 PM Subject: Suska IP-core v.2K8A available Suska IP-core v.2K8A available :: Jul 16, 2008 - 03:19 PM :: GokMasE We reported about a week ago that a test version of the Suska core software was about to be released. Now it has been uploaded to the projects website, where you can also read more about this very interesting project. Read the development blog or go to the download section http://www.experiment-s.de/en/blog http://download.experiment-s.de/SuskaIII%20Classic/Configware/

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Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For July 2008 Well, it's been another good year for the SPACE club, and we had an awesome party with plenty of food and fun. We had a successful auction after the party. A lot of software was sold at the auction that day. Looking back at the year, I'd say it's been great. Meeting with my fellow Atarians really is a special thing for me. So, I would like to thank everyone that is taking a part in keeping SPACE going, and I hope that is a long time. ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** ********************************************** **********************************************