September 2009
NEWSLETTER for September 2009 President’s Corner
Treasurer's Report
by Michael Current September 2009
by Greg Leitner For August 2009
Here's a recent find in my perpetual Atari research. Do you know the name of the first person hired by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell to be president of Atari? The answer is Dr. John C. Wakefield, an M.D. in psychiatry. My best estimates are that Wakefield was Atari president from fall 1973 (after Atari co-founder Ted Dabney departed the company) to fall 1974 (when Kee Games was merged into Atari and Joe Keenan became Atari president). I first came across the name of "Mr. Wakefield" in an issue of the old internal Atari staff newsletter, The Gospel According to St. Pong. Then, I found his identity confirmed in an old 1974 article from the Wall Street Journal (not online, I found it on microfilm at the library where I work). Finally, with his identity in hand, I discovered his obituary had recently appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, and also online, where it is mentioned that "He was a founding board member and president of Atari." He lived from 1932-2009. Before this, I believe the entire Internet had never heard of Dr. Wakefield's Atari connection! Something else I recently learned. I always thought that Atari's SALLY 6502 microprocessor was not employed until the 1200XL (and in the 5200 and all other XL/XE computer models), with the standard 6502B used in all 400/800 computers. In fact, Atari started using the custom SALLY 6502 in late-production 400/800 computers, as part of their continuing efforts to reduce the cost of production of those machines. I've never seen Atari documentation reflecting this, but I have seen photographs now so there's no question about it. For fun, you might check what's inside your 400 or 800, a standard 6502 or Atari's custom SALLY 6502! Welcome back to SPACE, Steve Berglund! (see Greg's article) Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday September 11, 2009.
I thought it might may have been a slow night for our August SPACE meeting. The PGA was in the second round and the Viking's first pre-season game of the year was all going on that day. But it turned out pretty well. We had six regular members and one new (old ) member. It's not often we can mention a new member, and actually Steve Berglund is an old member now becoming a new member once again. He goes back a ways because I wasn't a member when Steve was and I have been a SPACE member now for around fifteen years. So welcome back Steve. He needs to get hold of 8-bit stuff so it looks like we have a new bidder for our auctions. Speaking of which an old TAIG member is moving to Arizona and his wife says he can't take his old 8-bit stuff with them. So instead of dumping everythin he gave me a call and asked if we were interested. I said sure if it doesn't cost the Club anything we would gladly take what he had for our auctions. It turned out that he had a few floppy drives and three 800Xl's that look in pretty good shape. I guess we can have another auction before Xmas and still have a big one for our Xmas party. If it works out for everyone it was mentioned that October would be a good time to have one. I will bring that up next month. Now for the SPACE bank balance which looks as follows: Beginning balance as of August 1, 2009:
775.25
Receipts for the month of August: Memberships (new) Doms Blank disks
15.00 6.00 1.00
Total receipts for the August meeting
22.00
Expenses for the month of August: Web-site
10.00
Ending balance as og August 31, 2009:
787.25
********************************************** Last year at this time we were about $60.00 better and we will need a couple of good months to keep up with last year. But all in all we are looking pretty healthy and with a couple of auctions still on track for the year we should come close to last year's balance. Just remember to renew those memberships and please buy a DOM every month. Three dollars per
member each month would pay our monthly room rental and six month's of our web-site expense. Well I don't know how I found the time to write this this month. As I sit here writing this I am extremely worn out. Jackie and I helped to paint a house for the paint-a thon on Saturday, then we took some family members to the Dakota County Fair in Farmington. Then on Sunday Jackie and I spent eleven hours in the bleachers on the 18th green on the final day of the PGA golf tournament. So here I am on Monday, August 17th writing my report that I would normally have done on the Saturday or Sunday after our meeting. If I don't do it right away after the meeting I would probably forget to do it at all. Anyway, see you all in September. **********************************************
Secretary's Report By Steven Peck For August 2009
Well, here we are again. Another month has gone by. Not much to report, but we were talking about the party in July again (and Greg detesting tacos as a SPACE party meal, lol), and also there was talk of future auctions in possibly October and right after the SPACE Christmas Party in December. We were also discussing the YouTube channel proposed by myself and Nolan, and executed by Nolan. I think that it will do well as a tool to make SPACE's presence known.
It was great to see Steve Berglund become a member in August. Welcome back, Steve. Although it has been a while, it's still pretty much the same here at the club. I think you'll still enjoy it.
This concludes the Secretary's Report. Thanks for reading and see you in September. Excelsior!
******************************************** BBS Corner By Nolan Friedland For September 2009
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 9:35 PM Subject: atari++ 1.57 --From: "Thomas Richter" <thor@math.tu-berlin.de> --Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit --Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:38:05 -0500 Hi folks, please find a new version of atari++, the atari 8 bit emulator, available for download. Note that this is the new web-page, at: http://www.xl-project.com/ From the README: Atari++ 1.57 - Fixed a couple of issues in the GUI, specifically when entering data into string gadgets. - Fixed again a couple of exception handling issues in the menau. - Made the keypad stick configurable, the keys for joystick emulation are now part of the configuration. - Added a dummy front-end, "NONE", that does not render anything to the screen. - This release supports .CAS images; however, they are not part of a C: (tape) emulation, but emulated as disks. Depending on the contents of the tape archive, the disk is either considered a boot disk, a binary or a basic file. - This release supports better disk support for BASIC and MAC/65 files. If you insert such a file into the emulated disk drive, the emulator will build a DOS 2.0S compatible disk structure around it and you can load the image from the emulated disk as D:PROGRAM.BAS or :PROGRAM.ASM. Note that such disks are *not* bootable, you first need to boot, and then turn on the emulated disk drive. It should also fix the keyboard issues in Action!. Have fun, Thomas ********************************************
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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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