March 2009
NEWSLETTER for March 2009 President’s Corner by Michael Current March 2009 Auction this month! Don't miss this chance to add to your collection. You never know what we might have available. And, proceeds help support SPACE! I finally went and bought myself a new computer the other day, first new one in almost ten years. I decided to go as boring and mainstream as possible, a perfectly ordinary modern laptop PC, running Vista. How did this happen, after I spent all these years looking forward to switching over to the Mac platform? I'm not exactly sure yet, but basically I want to spend as little time as possible screwing around trying to make a new computer do what it's supposed to do. To switch to the Mac would mean a bunch of additional headache finding different ways to do various things that I've created routines for over the years. It would mean once again always being in the minority, and always wishing for better support (an experience we all well remember when the Atari was our main computer). It would mean fewer options for interconnecting with Atari computers. And, perhaps the kicker, it would have taken literally twice as much money. I still totally believe that Mac OS X is the superior platform, so maybe there's still a Mac in my future (when I have more money to burn). But for now, I'm just working on catching up by 10 years within the PC world.
going on the positive side but sadly in this economic downturn we are seeing some negative reports on the computer and gaming front. Circuit City is closing shop and now Midway Games is filing bankruptcy. I don't think we have even seen the tip of the iceberg yet as I imagine there will be more bad news coming by the time we meet in March. Our sitiuation on the other hand is holding steady with ten members and a very healthy bank account starting 2009. I plan to have anothe SPACE auction in March so I hope most of you can make the meeting. Glen has brought some great Doms the last few months and Michael, our president, has supplied him with a lot of good leads for future Doms. We have been selling an average of three Doms per month but we with this spectacular sofware we are seeing we should be selling a copy to every one of our members. This is some of the best 8-bit software you are ever going to find. Now for the Treasury report for the month ended February 28, 2009: Beginning bank balance as of Feb 1, 2009:
714.43
Receipts for the month of February: Memberships Doms
15.00 9.00
Total receipts for February 2009
24.00
No expenses for the month of February Ending bank balance as of Feb 28, 2009:
Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday March 13, 2009. **********************************************
Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For February 2009
We had six members for the February SPACE meeting on a cool but relatively quiet Friday evening. Not much
738.43
Now that the room rental for 2008 is paid and we probably won't see another room rental bill until the end of 2009 we have a lot of months to build on our bank balance. We have an auction in March and I have enough stuff for more auctions throughout this year. The Doms have been out of sight and I would think our Dom sales will increase as members see just how good this current 8-bit software is. Don't forget to renew your memberships as they come due and SPACE will have another banner year despite the economic situation. See you for the auction next month, March 13, 2009, another Friday the 13th!!!
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Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For February 2009
Now the Secretary's Report: Last month, I was reviewing Tempest Xtreem, exclusively being distributed by Video 61, and that I was astounded by the screenshots on Lance's site. Well, we got a taste of how the game is like at February meeting. It was an excellent conversion of the old arcade classic. It was basically like Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar, but 8bit. Nevertheless, it was very nicely done. I would highly recommend anyone to buy it for their collection. Lance was also saying that the Super Videl graphics card for the Atari Falcon was complete, and that the developers will develop an entire computer around it. Also, Rodolphe Czuba of Czuba-Tech has announced that the latest batch of CT60s being released to boost the older Falcons will be the last ones released. This is so Mr. Czuba can concentrate on the Super Videl architecture and the new computer that is coming out with that technology built into it. Also, There was one renewal of membership in February: myself. I was due since October 2008, and now I am paid up until this October. My apologies for the delay. That concludes the Secretary's Report for February 2009. Thanks for your attention. ******************************************** BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For January 2009
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.
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From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 7:00 AM Subject: New SainT release v2.13 25/02/2009 New SainT release v2.13 Some new features and better STE support (specific fullscreen, microwire, and others). “More Or Less Zero” demo by DHS is almost perfectly working. 2.13 + Best support for STE pixel scroll + Support 224 line size STE overscan + 0 byte line support + STE microwire support + F9 key to toggle breakboint under debugger (-debug option) SainT is an ATARI-ST emulator running on Windows (9x,NT,2000,XP) based machines. SainT was one of the first "cycle accurate" ATARI emulator. Cycle accuracy is very suitable to emulate ATARI demos. For those who don't know anything about demos, just know that's program pushing the hardware to the max. (more colors, more screen resolution, more speed, etc.). Of course SainT can run ATARI games too ! http://leonard.oxg.free.fr/ ******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 6:54 AM Subject: xa 2.3.5 is released What is xa? xa is a high-speed, two-pass portable cross-assembler. It understands mnemonics and generates code for NMOS 6502s (such as 6502A, 6504, 6507, 6510, 7501, 8500, 8501, 8502 ...), CMOS 6502s (65C02 and Rockwell R65C02) and the 65816. Key amongst its features: - C-like preprocessor (and understands cpp for additional feature support) - rich expression syntax and pseudo-op vocabulary - multiple character sets - binary linking - supports o65 relocatable objects with a full linker and relocation suite, as well as "bare" plain binary object files - block structure for label scoping xa's eventual companion disassembler is dxa, a moderately hacked-up version of Marko Mäkelä's d65
disassembler. This is still alpha and is available as a separate distribution until it is stabilized enough to be part of the xa suite. Version 2.3.5 (7 February 2009) xa 2.3.5 is released. This is a feature and bugfix release of the long-lived 2.3.0 series branch. xa should compile out of the box on just about any Unix or Unixy thing, and will probably compile on other systems that support ANSI C as well. Please see the README.1st file for more detailed instructions. What's new in 2.3.5 - Maintainer committed to insane asylum where he did the code work by tapping on the rubber walls in Morse code. - Bug with .bin being affected by the current character set fixed. - .aasc pseudo-op for true ASCII goodness. - Additional character set options (PETSCREEN, HIGH). - Documentation updated, continued work on the legibility overhaul. http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/xa/ ******************************************** ********************************************
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