June 2009
NEWSLETTER for June 2009 President’s Corner by Michael Current June 2009
well. So Atari, Inc. and Atari Interactive, Inc. are now subsidiaries of Atari SA of Lyon, France. There will no longer be any company going by the name of Infogrames. The corporate web site is now http://corporate.atari.com/ . Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday June 12, 2009.
"Are you ready for the digital TV transition?" Are you ready to be done hearing that? I don't pay anyone for my TV, I watch my TV for free over the air, so I've been following the digital TV transition somewhat closely. In the La Crosse TV market, there were 7 local broadcast TV stations, 4 full power and 3 low power. Our 4 full power analog stations (CBS, ABC, FOX, PBS) were all broadcasting digital channels alongside analog channels up until last February. The original national transition date was Feb. 12, before the feds pushed the deadline back 4 months. Ours was one of the markets that stuck with the Feb. date, sort of. On Feb. 12, our CBS and FOX stations turned off their analog signals. The ABC station would have, but the FCC forced them to stay on the air for another few weeks so that citizens who weren't ready for digital TV yet still had a way to be reached. They broadcast nothing but digital TV instructions for several weeks, before finally pulling the plug on the analog channel. The last full power station, PBS, stayed on the air another couple months, but they too now broadcast digital only. Today, we still have our 3 low power analog stations, FamilyNet/ION, TBN, and NBC. Our NBC station is a translator station of KTTC from Rochester. They have plans to change the translator channel over to digital some time soon. I can't wait! To be able to watch Wimbledon and other NBC programming on a clear picture over the air would be really nice. The TBN station owns a construction permit for a digital station, but no one knows if/when they're actually going to build something. They have no local office. Finally, the FamilyNet/ION station is a local, low-power station that has trouble staying on the air at all, so I wonder if they're ever going to make it over the digital. They do have new owners, so they may have plans. Eventually even low-power stations are going to be required to stop broadcasting analog, so something will have to happen. I understand in the Twin Cities market the full power analog stations are all still on the air, but will turn off on June 12. If you watch broadcast TV, it's a fun time to look forward to! A bit of fresh Atari news. Infogrames Entertainment of France, the parent company of Atari, Inc. in the USA as well as Atari Interactive, the subsidiary that owns the rights to the classic Atari properties as well as the Atari name itself, has just decided to adopt the Atari name for the parent company as
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Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For May 2009
A dreary Friday evening for our May SPACE meeting. A much needed soaking means the grass now needs cutting and that's my next step after finishing this article for the Newsletter. Six members were present for the May meeting and that's pretty good considering it was Mother's Day weekend and fishing opener. Not much going on in the Atari world or the computing world in general. I will make this very short as this month was basically a carbon copy of last month. We paid out $10.00 for the May SPACE web-site and we took in $9.00 on the sale of three dom's. So the Club once again lost only $1.00 to the treasury, and our balance is now $775.43. Once again the majority of our members are in favor of having tacos as the main dish for our SPACE Birthday Party so I guess that is pretty much final. We will need some extra to go with the meal which we should talk about at the June meeting. Also, I have in the plan another SPACE auction for the July meeting and party. It will mostly be ST and 8-bit software, but I may have a few 8-bit hardware items to kick in too. Michael said he may have some things for the auction which could include some PC hardware. Our membership count was at eight this month so we really need our members to keep up with their renewals. I would like to see our membership in double digits again and it also gives the Club $15.00 for each one. The Club is doing very well and with the auction coming up in July we should be able to get our bank balance over the $800.00 mark. If you missed the May dom that Glen put together you need to buy this one. It has two games on it that are quite different. One is a very good Tron type game and the other is a very brain-teasing game with mis-direction and mirrors. This one is going to drive you nuts.
Hope to see you all next month at the June 2009 SPACE meeting. Mark your calendars for June 12. 2009.
Target configuration as always, Falcon 060 without bus speeder should do. The more megahertz the better :)
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And as a bonus you can even watch in on VGA/60 Hz. But beware, all effects are fixed for 50 Hz so better to watch it on TV or VGA/50 Hz!
Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For May 2009
At the latest meeting, there was again talk of the SPACE Birthday Party in July. There will be an auction of mostly Atari 8-bit and ST hardware and software. Next month, I am again planning to bring my Jaguar to the meeting, unless something happens, for Lance is still eager to demo some stuff for the Jaguar. I think it will work out this time, however.
Anyway, that concludes the Secretary's Report. Sorry for it being so short, there was not as much to report on this month. I am hoping to have more to write about as the months go by. Thanks.
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And honorable mention: thanks to Xerus for being really _outstanding_ tester, without him you would get much worser release! » Download Starstruck http://files.dhs.nu/party/outline2009/tbl-starstruck-falcon.zip » At Pouet.Net http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=25778 » Watch a 50 FPS video of Starstruck on the Falcon http://dhs.nu/video.php?ID=232 » Visit MiKROs homepage http://mikro.atari.org/ ******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 9:04 AM Subject: Updated No Fragment CD's Updated No Fragment CD's
May 25th, 2009
Lotek Style of .tSCc. writes:
BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For June 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.
Lotek Style of tSCc has released two new CD-Roms from his NO FRAGMENTS series. This it's archive ONE and TWO refixed! Archive ONE has lots of new demos on it as it is a 700 MB CD this time (first one was on 650 MB) and many of the MSA files have been repacked using compression ON! So there are over 200 new files on there now.
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Archive TWO has just some replaced MSA files that were damaged before.
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 9:03 AM Subject: Starstruck lands on the Falcon
» Download at Atari.Org No Fragments mirror http://nofragments.atari.org/
Starstruck lands on the Falcon
May 25th, 2009
MiKRO of Mystic Bytes writes: Hi guys, everyone ready for some cool news? =) Outline visitors already know, the rest is hopefully keeping fingers crossed.... yes, Starstruck (the final version!) is here right NOW. In my opinion this is tough, tough, tough rival for Silkcut, I cannot decide which one rulez more :-)
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 9:02 AM Subject: New Atari crew born New Atari crew born
May 24th, 2009
Morden of Reboot writes: "reboot" is a new group consiting of four individuals, coming together to create new software for the Atari Jaguar, ST and Falcon.
We have loads of enthusiasm, and lots of project ideas for future titles, so please stay tuned into our website.
* Content from our website. To everyone active in the Atari scene - we salute you!
For starters, we have a preview video of our upcoming Jaguar game. The footage was shot roughly 3 days into development, so we expect it to improve vastly (especially when our artist gets to work on it!) Once completed we will be releasing full source code, and also hopefully porting it to the Falcon and then the Atari ST. Please, come and visit our site. Many thanks to atari.org for the domain registration, and to D-Bug for kindly donating us web hosting.
Cyrano Jones / Showaddywaddy / GGN / Melcus / Dubmood » Visit the D-Bug site http://www.dbug-automation.co.uk/ ******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 9:01 AM Subject: SNDH archive v3.0 released SNDH archive v3.0 released
» Visit the reboot site http://reboot.atari.org/ ******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 9:00 AM Subject: The final D-Bug menu disk The final D-Bug menu disk
May 23rd, 2009
To celebrate the biggest Atari party of the year (Outline in case you wonder), we have released a new update of the SNDH archive. v3.0 of the SNDH archive brings 35 new or updated SNDH files. It's a mix of brand new (even from the Outline compo!) and really old game tunes.
May 21st, 2009 Enjoy!
D-Bug team writes: On the glorious day of the 21st of May, 2009, otherwise known as Outline 2009, we (the management) have released the long-awaited final D-Bug CD to be issued. But! Being the sneaky D-Buggers we always were, things are going to be different for this, our final voyage into menu land. Less than 30 disks have been produced, and they have been issued to a few select people via mail and Outline. The image for CD200 will not be hosted online by us for quite a while (if ever). Yes thats right, if you want it you will have to get it the old fashioned way - via the postal service! So eagerly await that jiffy bag hitting the doormat one morning in the future! We ask that if you do receive one you do not make it available for download anywhere, but that you pass it along to someone via mail. We will be opening a thread on our forum for you to post images of the parcels you receive (please photoshop your address out!) - on request we can even tell you which of the master copies your copy was reproduced from. So, what is on CD200 I hear you ask? Well, for starters its a tad larger than our normal 820k disks.... as it is a CD-ROM containing:
» Visit the SNDH site to download http://sndh.atari.org/ ******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 9:25 PM Subject: Highspeed SIO Patch V1.20 released I just uploaded version 1.20 of my Highspeed SIO patch to my website: http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/ (http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/) Changes since the last official release (V1.12): - Support transfer speeds up to 126kbit/sec - SHIFT+RESET does a coldstart - Speedup highspeed mode detection - Support creation of a patched 400/800 OS on the PC Note: if programmed an EPROM with the latest development version (V1.18 from May 3rd, 2009) you don't need to update it - the binary code of V1.20 is identical to V1.18 (except for the timestamp and version info). so long,
* CD200 Ninja Remix (F30 Amiga TFMX), Jim Power, Robbo, LethalXS Beta, Substation - All HD installable and F30 fixed (Except LXSBeta!) * All D-Bug menus released to date. * All patches released by us over the last few years, and several new ones that we have not put online. * The latest build of ULS3 along with supporting documentation and example files.
Hias
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