May 2012
NEWSLETTER for May 2012 President’s Corner by Michael Current May 2012
Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday May 11, 2012.. **********************************************
Treasurer's Report I suppose some commentary on the passing of Jack Tramiel on April 8, 2012 would be in order. Having recently departed from Commodore International (which he had founded in 1954), Tramiel purchased the bulk (home computer and home video game businesses) of the recentlydownsized Atari, Inc. from media conglomerate Warner Communications in the summer of 1984. The result was the formation of Tramiel's Atari Corporation. A mere six months later, Atari introduced the 520ST computer in January 1985. While focusing on the ST series of computers for a number of years, releasing computers such as the Mega ST, Stacy, and STe, Atari also released the XE series of computers and the XE game system, and continued to market the 2600 game system. The new Atari would also maintain focus on home video games with the releases of the 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar game systems. Beyond the ST computers, new Atari computer models would include the Atari Transputer Workstation, the Portfolio along with a whole range of PCcompatibles, the TT030, and the Falcon030. While Atari, Inc. had been in the home computer market for only about 5 years, releasing only 5 different computer models, Tramiel's Atari Corp. sold a wide range of computers for around 9 years or so, from 1985 to about 1993. Atari rode the Lynx and especially the Jaguar for another couple years, before the reverse-merger into JTS in 1996, marking Tramiel's exit from the home computer and video game businesses. We tend to harken back to the heyday of Atari, Inc. from the 1970s and especially the early 1980s, but the success of Tramiel's Atari Corp. stands on its own. Tramiel was 83.
by Greg Leitner For April 2012
Another positive month for SPACE at the April meeting. Seven members were present and the topic of the month centered around video. Lance is close to bringing in his S-video for the 8-bit and he gave a great review saying it's the best display you will find for your XL and XE. He hopes to have some available by next month. They are priced at around forty dollars. If you can't afford it now tell your love ones it would make a wonderful birthday or Christmas present this year. Also on the video front, Glen just upgraded his 800XL by swapping out a video chip with a new Pal version and he brought it in to demonstrate how effective it was. I must say that the ten programs he ran from the past few months of his doms in the original format were very unplayable from jumping screens to unreadable text to games just terminating in mid-stream. After swapping his 800XL with the Club's he re-ran all ten of the same programs and I have to admit they ran flawlessly. With most of our dom programs coming now from Europe and Asia a lot of them are only running on Pal. With the new replacement chip it seems that we would be able to run all the programs coming out of those regions. This could really extend the use of our American Ataris's and greatly expand our software library. There is a lot of very good programming still to come and the Pal conversion chip will let us enjoy them all. Glen has all the facts on this upgrade so just let him know you are interested in finding out the procedure. Now let's look at the SPACE financial picture for the month ended April 30, 2012. April 1st beginning balance was:
514.20
Dom sales for the April meeting:
9.00
Web-site expense for Feb thru April April 30, 2012 ending balance:
30.00 493.20
Our bank balance is about $160.00 less than last year at this time due to the fact that we haven't had an auction for about a year. I hope that will change in the near future as we have had a few donations lately. John Mitchell, a former member of SPACE is in the process of moving and he wanted to sell off his Atari collections to any SPACE members who were interested. So he brought his 8 and 16 bit Atari items and sold a few things to our members and the rest he donated to the Club for our future auction. I don't know all there is yet but I do know there is a 520ST, a 720K disk drive and both a mono and color monitor. There are some cables also and other things I need to inventory before I can give you all a list. I also have some Atari power supplies and I/O cables that were donated by a school up north. The power supplies are for the 800 computer and disk drives. Also, if you remember I still have the 1040ST and mono monitor that Michael brought in a while back and I know from testing it out it works perfectly. I can also scrape up some mags (Oh Boy!!) that I hope someone will bid on and I can relieve them from my basement. My wife would be ecstatic, so if you won't do it for me maybe you would bid on them for her. Thanks!!! Well I've gone on long enough and even though the high school sporting events are done I still have the Stanley Cup Hockey playoffs to look forward to. Right now I can't bear to watch the Twins and if you have seen them play this year no explanation on my part is needed. See you next month! **********************************************
Secretary's Report By Brian Little For April 2012
No minutes from the October meeting were submitted in time for this Newsletter. ********************************************
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 2:48 PM Subject: Ice-T XE 2.73 released April 14, 2012 Ice-T XE 2.73 is hereby unleashed unto the unsuspecting public. Here's what's new: a.. A bug in the way I called the OS keyboard handler in order to generate keyclicks caused an endless stream of 'j' characters to appear when "standard" keyclick was enabled, under certain circumstances. Thanks to Avery Lee (author of the Altirra emulator) for pinpointing the cause of this bug. b.. R-Time 8 cartridge supported for clock that is displayed in the menu. c.. Even without R-Time 8, clock and online timer are now far more accurate, particularly on PAL machines (on which they were never even remotely accurate). d.. The 'break' key may now be used (in addition to ^Esc) to send a break. e.. Arrow keys in the menus may now be used with or without holding down Ctrl. f.. Some fixes made to way I access the serial port device (R:). g.. Dial string changed from ATDT to ATD. h.. Dialer will now hang up before dialing, if you were already online. i.. Fixed potential crash when quitting the program. j.. Removed registration nag messages. Many of these changes are geared towards convenience for those using Ice-T under an emulator, particularly Altirra with its excellent support for outbound serial connections. It is now possible to create dialing entries in the Dialing menu which are actually Telnet destinations. See the documentation for more on how to do this. All feedback is appreciated. If it works for you on your particular platform and setup, please let me know. If this new version breaks anything that used to work, please let me know that too. Enjoy, -itay ********************************************
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 12:37 PM Subject: NetSurf 2.9 release
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 1:27 PM Subject: Checkpoint releases invite to Revision 2012
Monday, April 09 2012 @ 02:47 PM CEST
Checkpoint releases invite to Revision 2012 April 3rd, 2012
NetSurf 2.9 release This is the first real release version of NetSurf for Atari ( previous versions where development snapshots ). Because it looks like there is some delay updating the NetSurf website, I'm release the version here on my page. Atari specific changes (look into Changelog for all the changes: * Added context menu. * View source support. * Use favicon when iconified. * Removed unneeded frames handling code. * Fixed rectangle plotter. * Simplified status bar. * Improved download window. * Improved URL bar. * Fixed conversion from local encoding to UTF-8. * Improved scheduler. * Added save page support. * Added settings dialogue. * Enabled view source feature. * Added support for 8-bit displays. * Fixed scrolling of frames - it's now possible to keep the mouse depressed. * Linked against the following updated libraries: - curl-7.25.0 - freetype-2.4.9 - libpng-1.5.10 - cflib for coldfire
The guys from checkpoint have been busy making a new Atari ST invite intro for the Revision 2012 party. Featuring code by lsl and defjam, music by 505 and guest appearences from Dekadence and Titan. » Download the Atari ST invite http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/rev_st.zip ********************************************
From: Michael Current [michael@mcurrent.name] Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 1:28 PM Subject: Antiques by Dune and Sector one released Antiques by Dune and Sector one released! April 7th, 2012 Grey of Mystic Bytes writes: Dear fellows of Atari scene ! I am so proud to announce, that "Antiques" demo from Dune/Sector One - the winning SV2k11 entry for Atari ST has been just released ! I have the honour to give You such a great Easter gift directly from french "hares" ! While I am here I would like to thank all ppl involved in this great project ! Your entry for SV2k11 was surely one of the biggest highlights ! Now it's time to present it to larger public :) Enjoy this eaSTer gift from our french brothers ! Grey / Mystic Bytes, signed off...
Known Bugs: Same as in Version 2.8 - Editing Hotlist item crashes with 68k and 060 version ( wrong clipping redraw / rectangle )
» Download Antiques for Atari STe http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/antiques.zip
Download:
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monokrom.orion.uberspace.de/files/netsurf-atari-2.9.zip
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