SPACE Newsletter - October 2013

October 2013

NEWSLETTER for October 2013

President’s Corner by Michael Current

First and foremost, on behalf of SPACE I would like to recognize Mike Schmidt for his extended dedication and service to the club over so many years. Mike's penultimate issue as Editor of the SPACE Newsletter was the July 2013 issue. The first issue produced under Mike's editorship was the April 1990 issue. Thus, it was THIRTEEN YEARS that he reliably produced a monthly Newsletter for this all-volunteer group of Atari computer users, or just over ONE HUNDRED FIFTY issues! Now that is dedication! Thank you, Mike!!! And, thanks to Nolan for ably stepping up as new Newsletter Editor! While we're discussing service to the club, don't forget that next month is the Annual Meeting! Please consider running for one of the officer positions, or otherwise volunteering to help keep SPACE going! We need you!! In Atari bankruptcy news, things seem to have become quite murky. As best as I can make out, after the asset auctions were not that successful in finding buyers for most company assets offered up, on September 20 the heads of the Atari companies filed a new plan of reorganization and emergence from bankruptcy with the bankruptcy court. A "Disclosure Statement Hearing" to consider the Motion has been scheduled by the court for October 29, and the court has scheduled a "Confirmation Hearing" to rule on the plan for December 5. So it's looking like we still have a ways to go before we find out how all this is going to play out. Stay tuned, or visit http://bmcgroup.com/atari for the latest official public court documents! SPACE Newsletter digitization efforts have picked up significantly lately! Going back in time, month by month, I've made it back through August 1985 as of this

writing. Only 12 more issues to go! Visit space.atari.org to bring back old memories! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday October 11, 2013.

Treasurer's Report

Secretary's Report

by Greg Leitner

by Steve Peck

This had to be a first. We decided to eat before holding our monthly meeting because we were waiting for two important members who were on their way but were still about twenty minutes away. And surprisingly it worked out better than could be expected. Instead of holding a brief meeting like we would normally do and then digging into the food we took our time and had a rather long and very productive meeting. I for one would like to use this format for all future parties. It actually gives us the time we need to have a more normal meeting and with everyone having eaten, I think we all felt it was a very relaxing meeting.

OK, folks, here we are with yet another Secretary's Report.

The tacos went over very well again and thanks to Lance bringing his beans and barbecued wieners, I had something to eat also. And thanks to Glen and Steve, we had our choice of root beer floats and cookies. It looked like everyone was satisfied.

The ST DOM sales, coupled with the sales of the 8-bit DOMs (both types of DOMs are being sold for $3.00 each), should be a source of great revenue for the Club. There will also be an ST DOM report submitted every month from now on in the newsletter. As always, kudos to Lance and Nolan for their fine work in bringing out this product to help out the Club financially.

Thanks to Lance, Nolan and Steve we got to see an ST hooked up to the S-video port on a large screen HD TV. It looked very impressive and Lance may show us an 8bit version in the future. Glen had another great DOM and Lance and Nolan combined to bring in the first ST DOM. It looks like we have at least three members who will be supporting the ST format and that means another $9.00 per month for our treasury. Here is how our funds look after the September SPACE meeting. We started the month with a balance of $362.92 and after one membership renewal and four 8-bit DOMS and three ST DOMS we took in a total of $36.00 and only paid out $10.00 for the September web-site expense. That brought our bank balance to $388.92 for the month ending September 30, 2013. We need to spend $20.00 plus tax to purchase some ST labels and that will happen next month but with $9.00 per month in DOMS sold it will be a worthwhile purchase.

We started the Party for the thirty-first anniversary of the formation of SPACE at I would guess 7:30 PM. I can only speculate on the actual time because of my tardiness. Most of the meeting was about the new Atari ST DOMs. They were a big hit with the Club this month. We demoed the DOM on my 1040 STE with Lance's 37” flat-screen TV. It was really great for Lance and Nolan to spend their time making the DOMs up and I think that they should be congratulated for it.

Also, there was still not much to report about the Atari bankruptcy hearing. All we know is the company is to be sold in parts and no one is even bothering to step up and buy any part of the now defunct video game maker. It's a sad end to a great video game icon. But, I guess that is how the economy works nowadays, unfortunately. But, on the bright side, Lance has announced S-video output has been accomplished for the ST and demoed at the Club. It was touch and go at first, but we did figure it out. Once again, good going for Lance, Nolan, and Brian. Great demo for the new DOM and great games for it. But, Atari 8-bit is not dead, either. I have seen great demos and both platforms seem to be coming back a bit. OK. Enough praise for everything. Now we move on. After yet another taco dinner for the party (how typical), the meeting adjourned at 9:25 PM. There was so much talk that we sort of ran over, I guess. Anyway, it was a great time overall. Thanks, guys, for pulling it together for three decades. Happy Birthday and Viva la SPACE! As the comic book maestro Stan Lee would say…

That's it for this month. I hope to see you all in October. EXCELSIOR!

8-Bit DOM Review

PAL issues. It has crude humor and I didn't really get it at all. Whatever.

by Steve Peck

"Dwarf": This is a cool scan of a dwarf with a beer mug. Pretty nice graphics for the 8-bit and is one of the better pictures on the DOM.

This month is the inaugural issue of the 8-bit DOM review, previewing the demos and games of the 8-bit disk of the month. I hope you enjoy it.

"Potwar": This picture shows a strange creature holding a fish skeleton. Somewhat simplistic graphics, but interesting. "Saprflaj": Interesting music demo that sounds nice, but it has PAL problems. "Bronco": This animation of a Ford Bronco at night is in my opinion the best looking demo of the DOM. Very high quality and with excellent detail. Love it! This concludes the 8-bit DOM Review. Enjoy! EXCELSIOR!

SIDE A "Tetryx": This "Tetris" clone is touted as a "game for old men" where the blocks are so small you can barely see them and the screen is too big! There is even a ticker that shows how much you've aged! Sarcasm at its best! "Demon's Eye": This graphic shows a woman staring at a giant eye. The eye has a spiral galaxy in its pupil and I can say although the pixels can all be seen on this demo, it is quite good at showing the graphics capability of the 8-bit computer. "Mstone": This cartoon picture shows a little old man who is a cross between Merlin, Amelia Earhart and Santa Claus in the way he looks, picking up a magic gemstone. It looks nice and it shows off the drawing capabilities of the 8-bit. I like it. "Fort": This upbeat music demo from Europe is a great example of the music capabilities of the 8-bit computer. It sounds like it has a sense of urgency in it as well. Personally, I liked it and it's a cool chiptune. SIDE B "Balz": This "Bust-A-Move" clone looks easier than what it is. Shoot the balls at the balls at the top of the screen of like colors. Somewhat busy graphics, but nice! "Wybierak Do Stolca (Invasion from Excrex)": This is a strange game. Aliens attack Earth with their crude "offerings". Extract the offerings to play the game. Has

ST DOM Report by Nolan Friedland

Greetings and welcome to another edition of the SPACE ST DOM! This month we have two great games – Dark Wars and Pooz.

user or thief. After you have generated your character, you start the adventure in the easternmost town of Eaglesmount. You now have to gain experience, level up, find other adventurers that want to join you in your quest and, when you are strong enough, journey south and cross the river to discover what evil lurks there. Traveling alone you will not get far so it is important to speak to other adventurers and try to convince them to join you.

Enjoy!

DARK WARS is an RPG that takes place in a large secluded clearing in the Invar forest where four towns lies. Clerics had long believed that there was something outside this clearing but other people rejected this as fairytale stories. However, one day contact was lost with the two southern towns and some people started to wonder if there was any truth in what the clerics believed. War broke out between the two remaining cities of Swordsblade and Eaglesmount and the situation looked very grim for Eaglesmount. Nevertheless, one night the Swordsblade army was almost annihilated. Survivors told the citizens of Eaglesmount that an army of evil orcs from the south had attacked them. After the two towns agreed to cease the fighting, an expedition was sent south to discover what had happened to the two towns south of the Invar River. For many weeks, nothing is heard from the expedition but then one day a lonely soldier stumbled into Swordsblade and uttered the word "undead" before he died. In his possession, a note is found that warns the two towns of a great evil to the south and forbids anyone to travel south of the Invar River. The elders ignored this warning and offered a reward of 20,000 bronze pieces to anyone that can find out what has happened to the south and this is where the player comes into the picture. As a poor adventurer living in Eaglesmount, you accept the challenge and get ready.

Before starting to play, you need to generate a character; choose between four races: human, elf, dwarf or halfling and between four classes: warrior, magic

POOZ is an action puzzle and reflection game. Hunt those nasty pills down and prepare for some surprises.

Several game modes are available: Continual, Time Attack and the ability to adjust the level for one player; Team, Versus and Combo for two players; and The Lab for those diehard fans.

At the main menu, simply use the keyboard or joystick to move around the various sections offered. As you go below the last one, as small arrow icon will appear, meaning that you can leave the game. Scores or unlocked items are automatically saved to a pooz.dat file that you should NOT delete unless you feel like losing all scores of course. In the main game, you can use ESC to quit or 'P' for PAUSE though this key is disabled in Time Attack mode for understandable purposes. In single-player mode, you use the arrow keys to move around and spacebar to swap/delete pills. A joystick or jagpad may be used to play through the game. In 2-player mode, you have no choice though as the first player will have to use keys only while the other player will have to use a joystick or jagpad.

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Features: *

Complete VT-102 and ANSI-BBS emulation, including boldface/blink support.

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Takes advantage of XE/upgraded-XL banked RAM to provide many features.

Incredible speed - supports up to 19,200 baud, with no data loss!

Readable 80-columns, usable even with color TV.

Fully menu driven, very easy to use.

Xmodem-CRC, Xmodem-1K, Ymodem-batch, Ymodem-G, Zmodem download protocols.

ASCII upload, 16K capture buffer

16K scrollback buffer

Auto-dialer, with a directory of up to 20 numbers

Built in text file viewer

Fine scroll

Print screen and screen dump to file.

About IGT

CSI© 2000-2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. & Daltrey Funding LLC. TM in USA CBS Broadcasting Inc. & outside USA Daltrey Funding LLC. All Rights Reserved. DOLLY PARTON® is a registered trademark of Dolly Parton The Phantom of the Opera TM© 1986 & 2004 The Really Useful Group Ltd. SOURCE IGT

48K USERS - There is an older, less capable version supporting all machines with less than 128K, including the 800. It should be available at your favorite Atari software archive (sometimes incorrectly offered as a "64K" version). That version has a number of bugs, and I abandoned it when I moved on to a new version for the more capable 128K machines. Version history: 2.74 - September 25, 2013

From: Michael Current <michael@mcurrent.name>

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Minor speed improvement in text rendering thanks to Jon Halliday (author of The Last Word).

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Screen dump to disk added.

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R-Time 8 cartridge support was buggy, fixed.

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Minor improvement to clock accuracy (when no RT8 present).

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RS232.COM automatic loading is now only attempted under MyDOS.

Sent: September 28, 2013 @ 2:20 PM CDT Subject: Ice-T XE 2.74 released I c e - T XE -- Telecommunications software for the Atari 8-bit. by Itay Chamiel - (c) 1993-2013 Version 2.74 - September 25, 2013 Email: itaych@gmail.com



SpartaDOS 3.x: Added automatic disable for TDLINE if it is on. (SDX users, sorry but I couldn't get this to work.)

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SpartaDOS 3.x: The configuration file ICET.DAT will now be correctly loaded from the current path. Also the default current path in the Mini-DOS will also point to the current path.

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SpartaDOS X: Ice-T must be loaded with the "X" command. A reminder is shown if you did not.

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Mini-DOS: Path will now accept any single-letter (or letter and number) device type, so you can use files on things like H:. Also '\' is now allowed as a directory separator.

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File Viewer: Fixed EOL parser, should work with Unix/Windows/ATASCII files.

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VT100 emulator: Minor tweaks to font; Underline now ignored for mode 3 (top half of double height row) text; Fixed the bug discovered at the release of 2.72 (see below) involving scrolling portions of the screen in boldface mode; Fixed bug that caused double-width/height lines to misbehave when scrolling upwards. Bold text is now enabled by default. With these fixes the VT100 'torture test' now passes.

From: Michael Current <michael@mcurrent.name> Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2013 @ 9:57 PM CDT Subject: Ice-T XE 2.75 released Ice-T XE is a VT-100/ANSI terminal emulator for the Atari 8-bits. New for 2.75: 

Fixed a major regression from version 2.73 which broke compatibility with the P:R:Connection, MIO, and possibly other interfaces, due to incorrect reset of the BREAK key status. Thanks to Russ Gilbert for reporting and assistance in finding the cause of the bug.



VT100: Fixed some visual errors when changing the width of existing text.



Title screen: Fixed minor visual glitch if serial port failed to open.

It wasn't easy debugging an issue that wouldn't occur on my hardware - I had to send Russ about a dozen different versions until we narrowed down the cause of the bug. In version 2.73 I added support for the BREAK key (to send a Break signal over the serial port). Reading the key is done by an interrupt handler, but a flag named "brkkey" (address $11) is zeroed by the OS and must be set back to its 'normal' value, outside of that handler but before any subsequent I/O operation is performed, otherwise the BREAK status will cause that I/O operation to abort with an error. Now, according to Mapping The Atari any nonzero value is good, so Ice-T stuffed a 1 value in there as part of the keyboard read routine. The trouble is that Mapping is wrong: the correct value for normal status is $FF, as stated by De Re Atari and confirmed by the P:R:Connection R: handler source code (luckily available for all to see in the device's user manual). So basically the PRC and apparently MIO as well were constantly thinking the BREAK key was pressed and reading bytes from the serial port would return with some constant value, causing an endless stream of a single garbage character like 'Q' or '?'. Enjoy, -itay

CLUB OFFICIALS

Michael Current

President: (608) 787-8548 michael@mcurrent.name

Vice President / BBS Operator / Newsletter Editor (763) 689-5340 Nolan Friedland ilmarinen1976@hotmail.com

Steve Peck

Secretary: (651) 408-1096 artisan213574@gmail.com

DOM Librarian / Membership Chairman: (763) 786-4790 Glen Kirschenmann kirsch@netzero.net

Greg Leitner

Treasurer: (651) 455-6550 greglites@hotmail.com

Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE) meets on the second Friday of each month at 7:30 PM in the Falcon Heights Community Center at 2077 West Larpenteur Ave. Doors open at 7:00 PM.

S.P.A.C.E. c/o Gregory Leitner 3407 78th St E Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076-3037

DISCLAIMER Published by the Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE), an independent organization with no business affiliation with ATARI, Inc. Permission is granted to any similar organization with which SPACE exchanges newsletters to reprint material from this newsletter. We do however ask that credit be given to the authors and to SPACE. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SPACE, the club officers, club members or ATARI, Inc.

Visit our website at: http://space.atari.org/ The SPACE BBS is currently offline. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope to have it back online in the near future.

Articles for Publication must be received by the Newsletter Editor two weeks prior to the Club’s next Scheduled meeting.