SPACE Newsletter - November 2013

November 2013

NEWSLETTER for November 2013

President’s Corner by Michael Current

It is time for the SPACE Annual Meeting! The officer positions of president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer are up for election this month. Each position is elected for a one-year term. All of the incumbents have agreed to run again, but I think we would all be thrilled to have others step up to help keep the club going by serving on the executive board. Please consider! I am most pleased to report the SPACE Newsletter digitization project is complete! I believe I started working on it waaaaaay back in 1996. At last, all issues of the SPACE Newsletter are now available on our club website. The most recent and the earliest issues are provided as PDF files, while many of the issues in between are HTML web pages with the text converted through optical character recognition and images included as well. That approach was the biggest reason the project got so bogged down, the OCR always needed much manual editing, plus I used to put a lot of effort into reproducing some of the basic layout with simple HTML. Back then it seemed worthwhile, making the text so easily discoverable with Internet search engines. But in the end all that work was probably not so smart, because Google indexes PDF documents these days just about as well as HTML text. At this point, though, I have absolutely no intention of going back and rescanning the OCR'd HTML versions into PDFs to make everything standardized. I am done! The other important thing I want to point out is that, while the scanning is complete, the archive is not! We never found issues earlier than September 1984 (other than October 1983). Presumably the Newsletter started about the same time club started, in mid 1982. So please keep that in mind. If anyone reading this ever comes across SPACE Newsletter issues earlier than September

1984 please get in touch so that we can get scans of those issues up on our website! In Atari bankruptcy news, we continue to await (at this writing) the October 29 "Disclosure Statement Hearing" to consider the Motion put forward by the current Atari owners for emerging from bankruptcy with the assets not sold off in auction. (As mentioned here previously, some assets were successfully sold this summer, including rights to the Battlezone franchise, but the rest of the "classic Atari" rights were not sold off in auction.) Then after that, the "Confirmation Hearing" where the court rules on the plan was set for December 5. Stay tuned, or visit http://bmcgroup.com/atari for the latest official public court documents! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your SPACE Annual Meeting, Friday November 8, 2013.

Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner

A little slower meeting in October as it usually is after a party the month before. We sure had a good evening in September for our Birthday party with the food and the meeting being exceptional. I was very pleased with the meeting and also with the October SPACE meeting. After a very short announcement about the upcoming elections in November there were no new candidates so it was once again decided by the four of us in attendance that we keep all SPACE officers and voulunteers the same again for 2014. We can still take on newcomers before the official vote in November and any new candidate is very welcome. After our party in September I brought up the idea that we always have our meal first then follow with the meeting. This makes the meeting a very relaxed affair as we are all just sitting there waiting for our food to digest. And also we are not in such a rush to end the meeting and get to the food. The four of us in attendance all thought that this was a good idea. It looks like Lance and Nolan may have the 8-bit and ST versions of the S-video hookup available by the December meeting. We may know more about this next month so be sure to attend the November meeting. Our bank account is looking better after the last couple of months and thanks to adding an ST DOM to the 8-bit DOM we have doubled the dollars we take in each month for the DOMs sold. We started the month of October with a bank balance of $398.92 and we added two membership renewals and sold three DOMs each of the ST and 8-bit DOMs. So with $30.00 for memberships and $18.00 for DOMs we took in $48.00 for October. Our expenses were the web-site for October of $10.00 and $20.45 for the ST labels for the DOMs for a total paid out of $40.45. So our ending balance of October is $406.47 which is the highest balance we have had since we paid our 2012 room rental last January 2013. So I am very encouraged by the way things are shaping up for next year. We are getting our membership renewals on time and DOM sales are going strong. The newsletter has gotten a facelift and looks terrific. Thank you Nolan for all your hard work in setting up the new newsletter format.

Please come to the all important November meeting and cast your votes in our election. It would be nice to see all members there. Until then have a nice Halloween.

Secretary's Report by Steve Peck for October 2013 The meeting began at 7:30 PM. There were four members present and nine are paid up at this time, including me since I was due in October. We continued to talk about new developments from Lance at V61 which prove to be very exciting. Progress is going quite smoothly on that. There was talk about the impending elections coming up in November. It seems that all officers want to keep their original posts, unless something happens where someone wants to challenge that. But, I am looking forward to the elections and I am sure that it will be business as usual. The meeting adjourned about 8:00 PM. Well, that concludes the Secretary's Report. In closing, I quote the great comic Maestro Stan Lee… EXCELSIOR!

it can be difficult! It gets harder as you go along, so I can see how the game can get really frustrating for some. I will give this game two thumbs up because I enjoyed the game and it does get addictive over time. Koza Fighter - This is a fast-paced game where you control a creature on the screen called a Koza. You fight with the second player, who is another Koza. To fight, you throw darts at each other. The Koza who wears down the other Koza's energy to nothing wins the match. It is like a Street Fighter/shooter type of game. It is quite fast-paced and I like it. Two thumbs up. Demon Defeated - This is a picture on the DOM showing, well, a demon locked in combat with someone or something. Personally, I could not tell which was the demon and which was the victor in the battle. It was OK, to say the least. I will give it one thumb up, one thumb down. Fortification - This is a great pic. It shows a castle in a high-resolution scan (well, for an 8-bit image it is highresolution). This is the best picture on this side of the disk. I give it two thumbs up. Dust - This is a music demo that is short in duration, but peppy, modern, and up-beat. It sounded great for an 8-bit chip tune. I will give it a thumb up and no thumbs down because I personally enjoyed it. SIDE B: Robotype - In this side-scrolling shooter, you control a spaceship fighting aliens. This is a great game and I enjoyed it. The only thing was it seems quite easy with almost no effort in racking up the points and power-ups. But, I will give it two thumbs up anyway.

8-Bit DOM Review by Steve Peck Well, that concludes the 8-bit DOM Review.

for October 2013 Well, here we are with another DOM review. This month I am going to start something new here. I will present a ratings system! It will be based on thumbs up or thumbs down. Two thumbs up is the greatest rating. The lowest rating is two thumbs down. So, let's get started! SIDE A: Another Stupid Game - Yes, this is the actual name of the game. But, it is anything but stupid. It shows a guy spelunking in a cave avoiding all the obstacles in it, but

So, I will leave with the salutation of my favorite comic artist, the great Stan Lee. EXCELSIOR!

ST DOM Report by Nolan Friedland

Greetings and welcome to another edition of the SPACE ST DOM! This month we have three awesome games – Attackwave, The Pairs Are Gone and Penta. Stay tuned – Next month is a Special Edition two-disk issue!

Attackwave is a simple shooting game for the Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon. In this mixture of Missile Command and Galaxians your task is to blast the baddies from your orbital laser satellite before they reach Earth. Can you save Earth and prevent invasion? You use the joystick (or jagpad) to point the laser cannon at the enemies and press the fire button to fire a laser shot. Be careful, though, as each shot will deplete your energy supply. If run out of energy, you are defenseless and lose the game. If any alien craft passes your defense, it is marked in the lower part of the screen. You will lose the game if 10 or more crafts break your orbital defense perimeter. If you manage to keep a complete wave at bay without any craft passing through, NASA will be able to launch a resupply rocket that will refurbish the energy banks for your laser. In later levels, some enemy craft will fire back at your satellite. Each hit by an enemy laser will take additional energy from your reserves so be careful and kill shooting baddies first!

The Pairs Are Gone is a puzzle game dedicated to the ST Offline Tournament. The goal is to eliminate all cards from a board with special rules for high scores. The cards must be eliminated in pairs and this can be done horizontally, vertically, or diagonally (gives most points). If you end up with cards that cannot be removed, you lose a life and when all lives are gone, you lose the game. The game consists of 25 levels and as you progress you will have to remove more and more cards and new cards will also show up.

Penta is a braindazzling puzzle and sorting game like a two-dimensional Rubik's Cube. You are presented with a scrambled 5x5 number

In order to tweak the difficulty, there are four parameters that you can set when at the main menu. High scores are saved to disk along with your game parameters if you exit the game from the main menu by pressing ESC.

grid and are supposed to bring them into order just by shifting lines and columns. The difficulty setting determines how many tries you have.

From: Michael Current <michael@mcurrent.name>

Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2013 @ 3:08 PM

Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2013 @ 10:50 AM

Subject: Ice-T XE 2.76 released

Subject: Reservoir Gods release Sillytro for Atari STe !

Posted Thu Oct 10, 2013 4:55 PM

October 24th, 2013

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/217539-ice-t-xe-276-released/

Ice-T XE is a VT-100/ANSI terminal emulator for the Atari 8-bits. New for 2.76: •

SpartaDOS: TDLINE is now disabled automatically in nearly all versions (2.x, 3.x, SDX 4.4 and above).

Code, msx by Damo/Mad Max, Gfx by Damo/Piesiu. N-joy invitro and feel the party vibe !

Fixed some cases where CPU intensive events such as clearing the screen could cause data loss.

•

VT100: Many improvements to emulation with the goal of conforming to the VT100 specification as closely as possible; now passes all tests in the 'vttest' suite relevant to VT100 emulators. o

Added Origin mode, DECREQTPARM (request parameters) command.

LEDs, terminal

Answerback string changed to "Ice-T".

Shift-Break now sends longer break signal, as per the VT100 spec.

-itay

Reservoir Gods released an another invitro for the forthcoming Silly Venture 2k13 party in Gdansk/POLAND. After 64-bit Jaguar & 8-bit Atari it's time for the 16-bit Atari STe ! This one requires 1MB of RAM.

•

Enjoy,

Grey writes:

Various misbehaviors, bugs and glitches fixed.

Organiser of the party would like to remind, that SV2k13 takes place from 8th to 11th day of November 2013 (Friday - Monday) And please can you send remote entries for all Atari compos using BOTH e-mail addresses, which are: atari(at)sillyventure.eu greymsb(at)poczta.fm I will confirm every entry sent to BOTH mails. The deadline for msx/gfx and game is midnight of 8th November (Friday) and midnight of 9th November (Saturday) for intro/game and wild entries. More news about SV2k13 will follow soon.

Download the Sillyventure invite by Reservoir Gods http://files.dhs.nu/files_demo/sillytro.zip

BYLAWS FOR THE SAINT PAUL ATARI COMPUTER ENTHUSIASTS CLUB OF SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA

5. The Annual Meeting shall be held each November. At the Annual Meeting, Officers shall be elected and volunteers for other ongoing club duties shall be secured.

As amended by the membership, September 13, 2002

NAME AND OBJECT 1. The name of the Club shall be the Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts, or SPACE. 2. The object of the Club shall be to bring those with a common interest in Atari computers together for the purpose of sharing hardware, software and information related to Atari. MEMBERSHIP 1. The number of members of SPACE shall not be limited. 2. Any person or family interested in Atari computers shall be eligible for membership upon payment of the annual dues for the first year. 3. The annual dues shall be $15.00, payable on the anniversary month of the member's joining date.

6. The President shall preside over club meetings. In the President's absence, the Vice-President shall preside. In their absence, the Secretary shall preside. If the first three are all absent, the Treasurer shall preside. TREASURY 1. An accounting for all incomes and charges to the SPACE balance sheet shall be published in the newsletter each month. 2. Prior approval by the Executive Board is required if the club is to incur any expense. 3. The Treasurer shall be responsible for the duties of managing the club's monetary assets. NEWSLETTER 1. The club shall publish the SPACE Newsletter on a monthly basis. 2. All currently paid club members shall receive a copy of the Newsletter by mail each month.

4. Unused portions of dues are not refundable. 5. Any member found to be in violation of the rules or spirit of the club may be expelled by a majority vote of the Executive Board. 6. The Membership Chairman shall be responsible for collecting membership dues and managing the current membership list.

3. Newsletters shall also be sent free of charge each month to other Atari clubs which are able to return the favor. 4. The Newsletter Editor shall be responsible for the duties of collecting articles from the membership, publishing, and distributing the Newsletter. DISK OF THE MONTH

MEETINGS 1. SPACE meetings shall be held at 7:30pm on the second Friday of each month, at the Falcon Heights Community Center, unless otherwise directed by the Executive Board. 2. Club business cannot be conducted without at least one Officer and one other member present.

1. A new SPACE Disk Of the Month (DOM), readable by a standard Atari 1050 disk drive, shall be produced on a monthly basis. This is for the purpose of raising funds for the club. 2. DOMs shall include shareware, freeware, or public domain software or other files for the Atari. DOMs shall not include pirated commercial software.

3. All club meetings shall be open meetings. 3. The price of the DOM shall be $3.00. 4. Minutes of each club meeting shall be recorded by the Secretary and published in the club newsletter.

4. DOMs shall be available for sale at each club meeting, and may be sold to members and nonmembers.

5. Other clubs may trade DOMs with SPACE on a one-for-one basis. 6. The DOM Librarian shall be responsible for the production and sales of the DOM. BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEM 1. A Bulletin Board System (BBS) supporting Atari computers shall be made available by the club. The BBS provides an online forum for Atari discussions, and an optional communications medium for club matters. 2. The BBS System Operator shall be responsible for maintaining a friendly and welcoming environment on the BBS. Illegal software or offensive language shall not be tolerated. WEB SITE 1. The club shall maintain a home page on the World Wide Web. The site shall be primarily designed to attract new club members, and provide online access to club information. 2. The Webmaster shall be responsible for maintaining the web site, and keeping the information presented there current. OFFICERS AND EXECUTIVE BOARD 1. The Officers of the club shall be President, VicePresident, Secretary, and Treasurer, and shall be referred to collectively as the Executive Board.

5. The Executive Board shall also seek volunteers for other ongoing administrative duties, such as meeting location arrangements and post office box maintenance. 6. Officers shall be subject to a Recall Vote if a majority of the membership so decries. The Recall Vote shall not take place until it has been announced in the newsletter. 7. The rules contained in the current edition of "Robert's Rules of Order" shall govern the club unless they are in conflict with the bylaws, in which case the bylaws shall take precedence. AMENDMENT OF BYLAWS 1. A Quorum shall be defined as either a minimum of 50% of the entire membership, or 10, whichever is smaller. 2. Provided that a quorum is present, and provided that the amendment proposal has been communicated to the entire membership in writing in advance, the Bylaws may be amended at any meeting by a two-thirds vote of the members present. 3. Voting shall be by consenting AYE or NAY if a two-thirds vote can be confirmed, or by a show of hands for a precise tally. 4. Proxy voting is not permitted for Bylaws amendment votes. CLUB DISSOLUTION

2. The Executive Board shall collectively supervise the affairs of the club, shall be responsible for proper and orderly club operations, shall be responsible for upholding the rules of the bylaws, and shall at all times make decisions with the best interests of the membership in mind. 3. The officers shall be elected by a majority vote of those present, or by acclamation if only one person is running. The term shall be for one year, or until a successor is elected. The term of office shall begin at the close of the annual meeting at which the officer is elected. 4. The Executive Board shall actively seek volunteers to fill the following positions: Membership Chairman, Newsletter Editor, DOM Librarian, BBS Operator, and Webmaster. These volunteers shall be subject to the approval of the club membership.

1. The club may elect to disband itself by a majority vote of the current membership, provided the proposal has been printed in at least one issue of the newsletter. 2. In such an event, the Executive Board members shall be responsible for the proper and orderly closing of accounts, arrangements, and all normally ongoing club activities. 3. Any remaining material assets of the club shall be distributed evenly among the membership, as best as this is possible. Historical club materials shall be preserved if possible. 4. When all outstanding charges are paid, the Treasurer shall distribute any remaining club funds evenly among the final group of club members.

CLUB OFFICIALS

Michael Current

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

Vice President / Webmaster / 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.