May 2013
NEWSLETTER for May 2013 President’s Corner by Michael Current May 2013 Still no real news on the Atari, Inc. and Atari Interactive, Inc. bankruptcy proceedings. Atari SA in Europe did just put out an "update" press release on April 24, and I almost submitted it for this newsletter, but the fact is it didn't really say anything new. The entire company remains on hold, awaiting action on the proceedings in the US. Perhaps news will be emerging soon. I finally received my copy of the new book "Atari Inc.: Business is Fun" by Vendel and Goldberg. It's an impressive achievement to be sure, but honestly I haven't begun reading it closely yet. One important feature this book sorely lacks: an index! What good is a reference book without an index? Oh well. When I do get around to reading it, I have no doubt it will keep me busy for a long time. www.ataribook.com. A recent little discovery of my own the other day. The Atari Cambridge Research Lab operated from July 1982 to April 1984, directed the entire time by Cynthia Solomon. Turned out she was previously Vice President, Research & Development/Founder at Logo Computer Systems, Inc, and was in fact one of the originators of the Logo programming language. I had never realized how committed Atari was to Logo: they more or less hired many of the most important people doing serious research in the field of programming in education at the time, and gave them their own lab to continue their work. And I can attest that when I finally got my hands on Atari Logo only relatively recently, I found it to truly be an impressive product, I think probably more so than Atari PILOT which we actually learned as kids way back then. SPACE Newsletter digitization update: Going back in time, month by month, I've made it back through September 1986 as of this writing. (OK so I haven't uploaded that last one just yet, I'll get to it shortly.) Visit space.atari.org to bring back old memories!
Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday May 10, 2013. **********************************************
Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner For April 2013
The weather held up for our April SPACE meeting and six members were present. What we didn't expect was that the Falcon Heights Police Department was having a seminar the very same night. So for only the second time that I can remember we were delegated to the little conference room. It worked out okay though because we had already set up the Dom and everyone that was coming to the meeting had already arrived. So we all got to see the Dom in action before we had to close up and move our meeting to the conference room. Glen had a problem with the picture file working on the Club's upgraded 800XL and because it worked on his stock 800XL I thought it would probably work on my stock 130XE. Unfortunately it didn't. The program loaded fine but then when I tried to load in a picture file it seemed to load but after about ten seconds there was a bright flash on the screen and then it just went black. I will see if Glen has any other ideas next month about a fix for this problem. Here is the SPACE bank information for the month ended April 30, 2013: Without going into a lot of detail we just had the web-site expense for April of $10.00 and our receipts consisted of 4 Doms sold for $12.00. So as you can see we only picked up $2.00 for the month of April. We started with a balance of $277.92 and now have a balance of $279.92 for the month ended April 30, 2013. Since we need to get to at least a $300.00 balance by the year end to pay for the 2013 room rental we have a ways to go. This makes our membership renewals so much more important this year. I hate to beat a dead horse every month but you can all figure out what problems lie ahead for the future of SPACE. Dom sales won't do it especially when our new membership count has fallen below ten members. This should give us plenty to discuss in the forthcoming SPACE meetings. If we just make it this year how can we possibly make it through next year. I want to know for sure by 12/31/13 so that the Club can pay room rental for 2014 before
the year begins. It's a lot to think about but we need to tackle it very soon so let's begin a dialogue next month. See you all at the very important May 2013 SPACE Meeting.
From: Michael Current <michael@mcurrent.name> Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2013 8:31 AM Subject: White Circus
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from Andreatari Posted Wed May 1, 2013 1:06 PM
Secretary's Report By Steve Peck For April 2013
Well, here I am again with another Secretary's Report. The meeting commenced at approximately 7:40 PM. We were kicked out of the main room by a meeting of police officers that reserved the room. Who knew? (LOL) So, we went into the conference room instead. We looked at the book Greg brought to the meeting that his son bought him. It was interesting seeing all the history of Atari and how it eventually evolved into such a big household name. It was really delightful to see all that. The meeting continued until it adjourned at 8:20 PM. Furthermore, I am really interested in seeing how this bankruptcy case pans out with the current incarnation of Atari, Inc. I would like to see it restructured and, hopefully, made into a successful company. Granted it will never be the way it would be in the 1980s. Those days are long gone. But, there could be someone who might be interested in buying the name, at least, and using that. Then, maybe. Well, that concludes the Secretary's Report until next month. In the words of the great Stan Lee:
Dear friends When I bought my first Atari 800XL, in 1984, I immediately realized to have in my hands not only a good “game machine” but also a powerful ‘didactic’ instrument to learn. I enjoyed myself with several good games published in the first half of the 80’s and then, I started to program with the excellent Basic available on the Atari 8 bit trying to explore and exploit the graphic and the sound of my machine. Italian books or magazines were almost not existing and, obviously, Internet was far to be a solution… I didn’t stop in my passion and, with many difficulties, I was able to get some documents in English from the USA. With these info and billions of hours awake in the night, I made the jump from Basic to the ‘mystic’ Machine Language... In those years it was very popular “Winter Games” by Epyx but, unfortunately, it didn’t exist an Atari version. For this reason I decided to try to convert the Ski Jump event and to show my creation to Lindasoft, a mythical Italian software house supporting the 8-bit world. The meeting was very positive and they asked me to complete an ‘Atarian’ version of winter games. I finished the game and it was published (obviously without the Ski Jump event, too similar to the original from Epyx) but, due to the Italian Atari market, based mainly on systems connected with cassette recorders, Lindasoft decided to sell it only on tape... a multi-event game is conceptually made to be run by diskette and the cassette version was not a good idea.
EXCELSIOR! ******************************************** From: Michael Current <michael@mcurrent.name> Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 9:50 PM Subject: maxYMiser v1.33 maxYMiser v1.33 gwEm/PHF writes:
May 1st, 2013
To celebrate International Workers Day I am releasing a new version of maxYMiser, and after four years it is about time! There are some bug fixes and minor usability improvements.. but the main feature is a mode which enables MIDI note output on the STe DMA channels - this even works on nonSTe machines. Finally you can sequence some external synthesisers with maxYMiser. I hope you will all enjoy the new version. Visit the maxYMiser website http://preromanbritain.com/maxymiser ********************************************
Now, after a lot of years, and thanks to the support of Filippo Santellocco ( http://www.santelloc...atari/index.htm ) and other friends, It's possible for me to recover this old program and to share it with all you in this complete and never released disk version. I've prepared also an English version of the instruction manual and I recommend you to read it before to play White Circus is a multi-event sport game, it runs on all Atari 8-bit systems and it gives you the opportunity to compete with your friends in 5 different winter disciplines. Please remember: currently my English is very far to be perfect, but it was absolutely terrible when I was a boy, so I beg your pardon for any text error in the game. Also, White Circus has been my very first game... I programmed the code in Machine Language, I created the graphics, the music and the sounds effects. I assembled it in about 10 months in 1987, using BBK Monitor, not a real and comfortable Assembler tool… It’s normal that White Circus is not perfect and that the playability is not always at the top. I know that it is not a masterpiece but it’s a my creature and I will always love it.
It’s a great joy for me to have finally the opportunity to share it with all you, Atari fans Ciao P.S. You can find this game and other news also in the nice website of Filippo : http://www.santellocco.com/atari/programmi.htm
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