July 2011
NEWSLETTER for July 2011 President’s Corner by Michael Current July 2011 It's party time!! Come to SPACE this month to help celebrate the establishment of our little Atari computer club 29 years ago! It's a potluck, so bring a dish to pass. Further details are in Greg's article. On the evening of June 14, 2011 I had the very fun experience of supplying the Atari computers for a Retro Gaming event for ages 12+ at Veterans Memorial Library in my home town of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Turnout was better than expected! We had a total of three Atari computer systems running, plus two NES stations. I had brought a 4th computer, but seemingly one of my XL/XE power supplies was no good (pretty much the only thing I didn't test in advance, figures!), so only 3 working systems. I had a 130XE "paddles" station with two sets of paddle controllers running Castle Crisis (the modern Warlords clone), Kaboom!, and Super Breakout. An 800 with four joysticks attached, running a variety of things including Asteroids, Frogger, Deluxe Invaders, Donkey Kong, and my "Tron Lightcycles" game (available on cartridge from Video-61!). And, an 800XL that spent most of it's time playing Pac-Man, but also played Frogger, Ms. Pac-Man, and Joust. Of all the games played, I'd have to say that Asteroids (3 or 4 players at once) and (amazingly) my Tron game were the most popular with the kids on this occasion. (I wrote that Tron game at the age of many of the kids playing it that night!) Overall I think the Atari computer games I had selected were more accessible and thus more popular than what the Nintendo guys offered up, though Tetris (the Nintendo version rather than the Tengen (Atari Games) version) on the NES was fairly popular too. The 800XL's display was a projection video device, filling a wall (next to one of the NES stations doing the same thing). Yes I tried out Star Raiders on there! The 800 and 130XE were both hooked up to brand-new LED HDTVs the library had just purchased. These had composite video inputs, so that worked well. Actually more than well, it was beautiful, better video than I've ever seen from the Atari. But what I found troubling was the apparent lack of responsiveness I felt we were getting out of the controllers. The kids didn't know any better, but it felt wrong to me. All I could think of was, the TVs were introducing a bit of a delay before the signal got onto the screen. Well, turns out this is a fairly well-known
fact: HDTVs generally actually do introduce a delay to a video signal on the way to making it as pretty as possible before putting it up on the screen. This effect can be noticeable with any interactive video, but especially with older video games. And it turns out that many HDTVs will now have a "game mode" for the specific purpose of turning off most of that extra processing and just routing the signal direct to the screen. I didn't know to look for such a feature at the library, but this completely solved the same issue on my mom's new HDTV. So, an essential bit of knowledge when shopping for an HDTV as an Atari user: make sure the TV has a gaming mode! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting and PARTY, Friday July 8, 2011. **********************************************
Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For June 2011
For two months in a row we had the same six members show up for the SPACE monthly meeting. I guess we are pretty consistant and probably will have at least that many members for an average meeting. We have twelve paid up members in June so 50% attendance is pretty good. I expect we will have many more next month for the July SPACE Birthday Party. Once again to no one's surprise we will be having TACOS as our main course, and Jackie and I will be bringing the main dish along with the pop and table fixings. We still need some side dishes and Glen will be bringing ice cream and root beer; Lance will be bringing chips and little smokies. Anything else is your choosing, but bring enough for an average of fifteen people. If you missed the June meeting then you didn't see the S-video adaptor for the Atari 8-bit computer Lance brought. He had two for sale and I may take him up on one. The only drawback for me is that it won't work on the XE and I got rid of my 800XL at an earlier auction. I was thinking maybe it would make a great Xmas present this year. As our kids get older it is harder than ever to think of things to get them. At the June meeting we talked quite a while about a letter I received from a former SPACE member: so he said although no one could remember him. He was a member supposedly in the mid 80's and had to leave when he ended up having two brain surgeries. He had put an investment of about $2,000.00
into an Atari 400 with some cartridges and books. He says he expanded the memory to 16meg although I think he meant 16K. The casing is missing a piece of plastic above the joystick ports and the pin that opens cartridges is broken. He thinks $200.00 would be a fair asking price for his stash and I don't have the heart to tell him that his stuff is basically wothless. I don't know his physical condition today but I do know he isn't up to date with the advancement of electronics. Anyone who wants to talk to this former member just let me knowand I will get you his contact information.
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 8:57 PM Subject: New MyMAIL Version 1.95
Now for the SPACE treasury for June 2011;
After a year as student I finally got time over to release a new version of MyMail.
Beginning balance as of June 1, 2011: 666.15 Receipts for the June SPACE meeting: Memberships Dom sales Total June receipts Expenses for the June meeting: Newsletter postage for 12 months Web-site for June
New MyMAIL Version 1.95 Mail client program for TOS based computers. Hello all, New version of MyMail 1.95 is released.
I have now left the old work as programmer and electronics engineer and will work as a traindriver. http://erikhall.mine.nu/~erikhall/images/ErikKorMa828Mini.jpg
30.00 6.00 +36.00
77.00 10.00
Total June expenses
- 87.00
Ending balance as of June 30, 2011:
615.15
As you can see we lost $51.00 to our bank balance but we had one of our better months with two membership renewals and two doms sold. We are running about $85.00 behind our balance last year at this time, and with still no auctions on the horizon it looks like it will be hard to keep up the pace we have set the last few years. Especially this year we need to have those membership renewals and please consider buying a SPACE dom to help support the Club. I can't emphasize enough how much time and sweat Glen puts into making our great monthly doms. Don't forget the party next month and please help out by bringing a dish for all to share. See for the TACO FEST!!!
As usual, I will continue the programming of MyMail when there is time over. Major improvements & bugfixes: ----------------------------- Re-design of how weekday is calculated. - Bug fix of timer event handler. - Corrections of charset code - TCP corrections - Time zone corrections - Fixed deadlock problem in editable fields and lost of minor corrections. Read more in the history.txt file. Download from: -------------http://erikhall.mine.nu/~erikhall/programs/mymail.html Best Regards Erik Hall
******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 9:20 PM Subject: Rave Network Overscan back on Atari Rave Network Overscan back on Atari June 5th, 2011
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Secretary's Report By Brian Little For June 2011
No minutes from the June meeting were submitted in time for this Newsletter. ********************************************
Rave Network Overscan is back on the Atari with a really nice 96k intro for plain ST called Natrium. Lots of nice effects, great graphics and music by 505. The intro won first prize at Outline 2011 96k intro compo. » Download at the Outline 2011 download page http://dhs.nu/files.php?t=partydl&party=Outline%202011 ********************************************
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 9:21 PM Subject: New 96k intro from France New 96k intro from France June 9th, 2011 Bahh of Positivity, Dma-Sc of Sector One and Ukko of Live! released a new ST 96k intro at Outline. The intro is called "Superstar!" and features a few nice effects as well as good graphics and nice new Dma-Sc soundtrack. Works on half meg ST. » Download at the Outline 2011 download page http://dhs.nu/files.php?t=partydl&party=Outline%202011 ******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 9:22 PM Subject: Paradox releases Outline STe-demo Paradox releases Outline STe-demo June 20th, 2011 The winning STe-demo from Outline 2011 is out from Paradox. The demo features Blitter effects by Paranoid, 31-colour display mode by RA, 505 music (using DMA drums) and graphics from Ukko and Dan. » Download at the Outline 2011 download page http://dhs.nu/files.php?t=partydl&party=Outline%202011 ******************************************** From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 9:22 PM Subject: Sillyventure 2011 ST invite released Sillyventure 2011 ST invite released June 24th, 2011 Aggression, Mystic Bytes and Sector One have teamed up to release a nice invite intro for the upcoming Sillyventure 2011 party in Poland. Code by !Cube, graphics by Piesiu and music by Dma-Sc ensures a high level production from ground up. Works on 512k+ kB ST and STe. » Download the invite http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/sv2k11in.zip ******************************************** ******************************************** ******************************************** ********************************************