June 2013
NEWSLETTER for June 2013 President’s Corner by Michael Current June 2013 In Atari bankruptcy news, on May 22 Rachel Feintzeig reported for the Wall Street Journal that Atari Inc., including Atari Interactive, have not found a suitable buyer for the Atari intellectual properties, so they are seeking bankruptcy court approval to auction off the company assets in pieces in July. Proposed minimum bids for all proposed pieces would add up to $22 million. Proposed auction dates are July 1619; proposed bid deadline in July 10. Proposed court approval date for the auction results would come July 24. All of these proposals will be considered by the court on June 11. Stay tuned! Next month is SPACE party month, so make sure to make the meeting THIS month to help plan!! SPACE Newsletter digitization update: Going back in time, month by month, I've made it back through September 1986 as of this writing. I expect to be able to make a lot of progress this summer. Visit space.atari.org to bring back old memories! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday June 14, 2013.
and we both agreed that we need answers to our financial situation by the end of this year. Since the only activity was my purchase of the May Dom for $3.00 I am only going to report that our Treasury is now at $282.92. So I hope since the June meeting is our last before our July Birthday meeting that all our mrmbers make it next month. I want to thank Glen for sticking around a little longer in May to talk about a problem my grandson was having with a game that he had put over 60 hours of his time on. The game would not load any longer as the install shield would not run correctly. I couldn't even uninstall the game so he could reinstall and start over again. He hadn't been able to play this game since before last Christmas, but thanks to Glen's advice I was able to run setup.exe and uninstall and the reinstall the game, and even better my grandson found that all his work had been saved and he was able to continue the game from where he had left off. Needless to say my grandson was one happy camper. The May meeting turned out to be one of the most memorable one for me. The feeling I got from just seeing my grandson being able to play his favorite game again was greatly satisfying topped off with a high five!! So you never know what to expect at the meetings and you never will unless you show up. I don't know what the future holds for this Club but I know that we need all our member's support, and that can only happen if you attend and contribute to our monthly meetings. Hope to see you all next month. **********************************************
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Treasurer's Report
Secretary's Report By Steve Peck For May 2013
by Greg Leitner For May 2013 No Secretary’s Report was submitted for the June Newsletter. What do you get when the May SPACE meeting is held on the same weekend as Mother's Day and opening fishing? Two members in attendance that's what! Glen and myself held out for one more member to arrive but at 8:00 PM we finally called it and said see you next month. We were actually only going to stay until 7:30 which is our normal beginning of our meetings, but Glen and I got to talking about the Club's future
******************************************** From: Michael Current <michael@mcurrent.name> Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 9:58 AM Subject: Oxygene updates STNICCC 2000 demo Oxygene updates STNICCC 2000 demo Leonard writes:
May 18th, 2013
13 years later, ST-NICCC demo is improved :) Main change: - The music is no more STE specific. STF owners have music now! It use HexTracker replay routine by Paulo Simoes on STF, and still use Lance player for STE. Minor changes: - STE module replay fix (end of the music) - Polygon filler optimized a bit (on STe) - 3d dots intro part minor graphic bug fixed - Added a nice OXYGENE logo before credits part Hint: On STE hardware, press F10 during boot to force the STF version if you want. » Download the updated STNICCC 2000 demo http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/st-nicc2.zip
* UI improvements: expanded full-screen UI, more drag-anddrop options, better quality text in on-screen indicators, reduced lag in full-screen modes, and improved support for full-screen modes with true PAL (50Hz) refresh rates. Now that 2.30 is out, I can now also fully reveal what I've been working on behind the scenes, which is support for emulating abnormal playfield DMA: http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.40-test1.zip http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.40-test1-src.zip Which, as I hinted at in the previous thread, you can test in 2.40 test1 or on real hardware by typing the following in BASIC: POKE 39974,18:POKE 39975,8:POKE 54276,15 That's supposed to be a mode 8 (GRAPHICS 3) line. This is what I've long called the "last big unemulated Atari hardware bug." It's utterly useless except for screwing up your program, but I've seen several people independently hit it while doing various HSCROL tricks since it hasn't shown up in emulation and get stuck trying to figure out what's screwing up their display list. Well, it's time to fix that. To accompany this, I've also uploaded a newer version of my Hardware Manual to the main website with a new section on abnormal playfield DMA, explaining everything I've been able to discover about this bug and how to avoid it. Thanks to everyone who's provided feedback and welcomed me on this forum as I continue with what is now a very long but still enjoyable nostalgia trip.
******************************************** ******************************************** From: Michael Current <michael@mcurrent.name> Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 9:52 PM To: kirschg@netzero.net; Schmidt, Mike; michael@mcurrent.name Subject: Altirra 2.30
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May 15, 2013
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Okay, this is basically three posts in one, but I figured that was better than spamming the board.
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Since things were at a good stopping point, I've re-released the 2.30test15 beta version of my emulator Altirra as 2.30 final:
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http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html
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The full change list is at the bottom of the page, but here are some highlights: * Many bug fixes to 65C816 emulation. In particular, crossbank indexing is now emulated, which is a major cause of 65C816incompatible code that uses only legal 6502 opcodes. * Improved emulation accuracy: player/missile lockup, exact patterns and pattern timing for POKEY noise generators, and 800/XE floating data bus. * Many fixes and improvements to the debugger, including the ability to stack panes. * Major improvements to the built-in LLE OS kernel. In addition to improved compatibility, it now supports XL/XE OS features that are commonly omitted, including the printer and cassette drivers, PBI device support, relocatable peripheral handler support, and type 4 polling. * Improved device emulation support: SIDE 2, Axlon extended memory, VBXE 1.24, and SIC! cartridges with different flash chips.
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