August 2015
NEWSLETTER for August 2015
President’s Corner by Michael Current
Do you know the difference between a Happy and a US Doubler? A Duplicator and a Super Archiver? A Turbo and a Speedy? How about an IS Plate? These are all modifications for the Atari 1050 disk drive. While deep in a project to characterize all the commercial alternate operating systems for the 8-bit Atari, I've been finding myself repeatedly veering off to carefully get a much better understanding of the various disk drive upgrades. This is because there are some correlations between the two. For instance, the CSS Ultra Speed Plus OS is optimized for the CSS Super Archiver... which was an evolution of the ICD US Doubler... which was an evolution of the original Chip for the 810... which ran the original Archiver program from Spartan Software of Minnesota. Any club long-timers familiar with that firm? Another example is the German Bibomon Operating System replacement for the XL/XE. One of its many features is built-in support for the Speedy 1050 high speed upgrade for the 1050, which was very popular... primarily in Germany (similar to Happy, but a little faster and less error-prone due to a more robust communication protocol, as I understand it). So delving into operating system variations has turned out to be an even bigger project than I had imagined. I'm getting there! Still to go among things to understand enough that I can characterize them are QMEG and Ultimon... and then I'll have to take a shot at breaking down the whole product line from Computer Support, a UK developer with a diverse product line that to me looks similar to Newell Industries in the US. Do you feel like we'll never run out of things to learn about our Atari computers? Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday August 14, 2015.
Notes from the VP by Nolan Friedland
Another great meal for the SPACE Birthday Party last month! The next big party will be our Christmas Party on December 11, 2015.
Dom purchases so we ended up with six of each of the 8bit and ST DOMs sold for another $36.00 in receipts. So our final balance for the end of July 2015 is now $290.54. I think that's really great with membership renewals still due in the upcoming months. That is all for now. I hope to see as many members as possible next month.
See you all in August!
Secretary's Report by Steve Peck
Tech Report by Nolan Friedland
No problems or issues to report this month. Everything is going smoothly. Expect an update from previous months’ issues and ideas in August :)
Treasurer's Report by Greg Leitner
We had a great meal for the SPACE Birthday Party at the July meeting. Sorry to see only four members and two spouses in attendance. Lots of leftovers to take home. Thank goodness for hungry grandkids to gobble them up! Also, sorry to hear about Michael's surgery and Brian's accident. We really miss two important members of SPACE. And to top that off, Lance is going to have rotator cuff surgery and will probably miss up to the next three SPACE meetings. So it looks pretty bleak for the next few months when thirty percent of our members are laid up with medical conditions. We can only hope that their treatments go well and they return to SPACE soon. Good luck!! Our treasury came out really good for the month ended July 2015. We started with a bank balance of $224.54 and added $66.00 to our coffers after posting receipts for June and July 2015. We had two membership renewals for $30.00 and a couple of members caught up with their
HELLO WORLD! Well, it is yet another year gone by for SPACE as we celebrate the club's 33rd year of existence. So, here are the Secretary's minutes for that meeting. The meeting started at 7:29 PM. Greg figured how to auto-boot TOS programs on Falcon computers. Way to go, Greg. We knew you were asking about that when I was at the May meeting. We also wish Mike Current, Nolan, and Brian well. We hope that they can get to one of the SPACE meetings soon and we are pulling for them. Also, the SPACE membership count was at nine at the beginning of the meeting and went back up to ten after a renewal was paid up, which is always good news. There are two games from Video 61 that are nearly done. They are still in the R&D phase so I do not have much more info than that. However, they will be dynamite games when released. Lance is going to be out of commission for about three months of SPACE meetings. I will try to be there as well since I am the Secretary. No worries. He should be fine and I got his back. :) After the general meeting officially ended at 7:45 PM, we had the SPACE 33rd Anniversary Birthday Party with, of course, TACOS!!! Oh well. There's got to be some place for the mundane somewhere. Such is life. Anyway, this concludes my Report. In the words of the great Stan Lee… EXCELSIOR!
ST DOM Report by Nolan Friedland
Greetings and welcome to another edition of the SPACE ST DOM.
To control Alfred the Snake, you can use a joystick or the cursor keys on the keyboard for movement and the left shift key to fire. Alfred is always on his way. He stops, if he hits a wall directly or if there are two possible directions to turn. Alfred will also turn at corners by himself if there is only one possible direction to turn. Two players can compete with each other. If the current playing player looses a snake, a player-change is performed.
Enjoy!
If one player is a much better than the other, they should use the “Player-Change after (X) continuous solved Levels” option to have the game control the player change. Even if the current playing player has not lost a snake, they will be forced to hand the joystick to the other player if they have solved X levels in a row. N.o.B.I. - Racing contains six different normal bonuslevels and two different High Speed Chase levels. Normal bonus-levels are solved after every fifth level. You can win different prizes, including: lots of bonuspoints, extra-snakes and even game continues. In between every 10 levels, there will be one High Speed Chase level. To get into them you have to solve the survival level without losing a snake. These survival levels are announced by a special sign: a whistle 3 seconds long if sound effects are on or a special screen “Prepare for Survival Level...” if the sound effects are off.
N.o.B.I. - Racing is very simple: You control Alfred the Snake through more or less difficult mazes in order to reach all objects. You have to avoid letting Alfred bite himself and letting the time run to zero. That's all? Nope! :) To get a lot of points, you have to be very fast and clever playing the bonus-levels as well.
CLUB OFFICIALS
Michael Current
President: (608) 787-8548 michael@mcurrent.name
Vice President / Webmaster / Newsletter Editor (763) 689-3737 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
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