SPACE Newsletter

February2016 Newsletter FOREWORD By Captain Irata: "Listen Up! When I say score, you Atari gamers better ask how high! Hoo-rah!"

Well, I finally made the plunge. What plunge do I speak of? I upgraded my oneyear-old Toshiba laptop PC from Windows 7 ("free downgrade from Windows 8") to Windows 10. Not bad, really. It looks very much like Windows 7 still, with an extra layer of phone-like GUI interface for the stuff you're most likely to use most. But the regular control panels and everything are still under there too, if you can find them. So it's not hard to get Table ofContents

President's Corner: 1 Treasurer's Report: 1 Secretary's Report: 2 8-bit DOM Review: 3 Atari News: 4

used to.

style BIOS.

It's nice to be running a current OS for a change. And it really does start up much faster than before, as advertised. This, despite that I am unable to take advantage of the new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) / secure boot features in my situation. My laptop hardware supports these capabilities, but they had to be disabled in my BIOS in order for Windows 7 to work. Turns out that by doing the free upgrade to 10 from there, I'm still stuck without UEFI/secure boot. If I wanted them, I'd have had to change my BIOS settings, then do a new, clean install of Win 8 using the CDs that came with my machine, and then do the free Win 10 upgrade from there. Pretty much start over from scratch. It has to do with fundamental characteristics of how the boot disk is formatted, like messing with the partition table. Not worth to me, I decided. Win 10 runs fine using the old

I've also continued to bang my head against the wall about my Internet stopping every once in a while. I don't know if this is the solution or not, but this afternoon I noticed that my modem's time was wrong by hours. I fixed that, and have a hunch that server time inconsistencies could indeed explain wonky DNS behavior. We'll see... Other than a joystick button that gave out, my Atari gear continues to run flawlessly, with no problematic OS upgrades or network problems to solve. How nice by comparison! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday February 12, 2016.

the actual finances of our club. Since I paid the room rental bill for 2015 in January we take the big hit for the year. We started the new year with a bank balance of $465.54 and after the $300.00 room rental payment we had $165.54 in our account. We did add $15.00 for Richard Mier's membership renewal and sold four 8-bit and three ST DOMs ($12.00 and $9.00) respectively for a total of $36.00 deposit. This gives us a new bank balance of $201.54 for the month ended January 31, 2016.

Sorry about getting this later to Steve than usual, but I wanted to wait until I got the room rental billing from Falcon Heights so that I could update our bank account before the next report. I got a call from them on the Tuesday after the meeting and they agreed that we only had to pay $25.00 per month as we always had. The same rate will apply for 2016. So our yearly room rental total will still be $300.00 instead of the Note that Nolan hasn't been $360.00 I feared they would around for a few months and we still owe him $50.00 for the charge. last five months of last year We had only four members ($10.00 per month). We also present for the January will owe Nolan for the webmeeting, but we were site renewal for 2016. pleasantly surprised by a visit from Roger Mier (Richard Rich Mier is thinking about Mier's son). His Atari returning to the area and affiliation goes back long possibly opening up a shop to before I became a SPACE work on Atari computers member and with long time again. We may see Roger members Glen and Steve around too as he seems to be Berglund there was a lot very interested in getting back of history and stories to to using his STE. Let's hope discuss. Too bad Michael this news comes to fruition as. Current and Lance couldn't We will all benefit from their make it because they would experience. have had a lot to contribute to the conversations. As it was That's all I got for this month Steve Peck was able to name so I hope to see you all in every author and February (the 12th to be acknowledged every project exact). that Roger brought up. I am amazed at the knowledge Steve has of the Atari world then and now! Know I should tell you about the reason I write this report;

HELLO WORLD! I will just go ahead and get started. The meeting commenced at 7:31 PM on January 8, 2016. There were four members present, counting myself. The membership count is at eight paid up. There was a lot of talk that night. We had a surprise visitor. The son of Richard Mier, Roger, came in, sharing Atari memories. Conversation really picked up when he came in. In the old business, Steve B. brought in some components for the AtariLab Light Module for a little show-and-tell. He needs a cartridge, he said. In the new business, there was still talk about the 8 GB SD card drive upgrade for the 8bit, and Roger Mier mentioned Lotharek and his business in Poland upgrading 8-bit Atari computers, including a 1 MB upgrade for the 8-bit. Also, there was talk of Andre LaMothe and the “X” Game System, Steve Berglund’s stock Falcon computer and how to repairing it, the FireBee Falcon clone (and it is top-notch, by the way), and the 68020 processor upgrade card being developed by Rodolphe Pineau for the ST/E/Mega line.

Furthermore, “ACTION!” source code has been released to the public domain which is welcome news to game programmers. You can find out more on atariage.com for more information. Also on AtariAge, there is info on the Authoritative Star Raiders II, developed in secret by veteran programmer Aric Wilmunder from Atari’s coinop division, which would have been Star Raiders II if The Last Starfighter was not developed into the SR2 we are already aware of. The meeting adjourned at 8:23 PM , lasting for fifty-two minutes. That concludes the Report. In the words of my favorite comic book producer, Stan Lee… EXCELSIOR!

8-bitDOM Report

BySteven Peck

are only five programs on Animation: 7 here, so it will be another Sound: 7 short Review. So, I am going Total score: 22/30 to get started. Lecie: NOTE: this demo has mild, implied nudity. Please Ramp Rage, the only program be aware. on Side One of this month’s DOM, is a game that involves This demo has digitized steering a speedboat through graphics and smooth real-time treacherous waters. You have animated typography. I to avoid hitting obstacles in thought that the graphics the water and other boats. were pretty awesome and You also have a limited blew me away. I personally supply of fuel. There are a that this program is the best couple good things, however. demo on the DOM. Kudos to You can shoot at targets and whomever wrote it. collect fuel if it is low during the game. Also, there are Graphics: 10 ramps that you can utilize to Animation: 10 leap over obstacles in the Sound: 10 game. It is enjoyably difficult. Total score: 30/30 (perfect score) Graphics: 7 Gameplay: 9 Lost in Space: Here is a game Animation: 6 where you have to pilot a Sound: 7 space ship to an orbiting base to get fuel. You will die if you Total score: 29/40 lose fuel, crash, or go so high above the planet that you get SIDE TWO: “lost in space” (hence the There are four programs on name of the game). It is quite Side Two: three demos and difficult to play and needs paddle controllers. It reminds one game. me of “Lunar Lander,” where Boss: this animated black-andyou have to land on the Moon white graphics demo depicts without crashing or losing the boss from the first round fuel. It has an interesting of the classic arcade hit “Rpremise. Type” (which was a favorite of mine in the arcades; I even Graphics: 4 owned it for the Sega Master Sound: 3 System and TurboGrafx-16). Animation: 5 There is a message, “R-Type Gameplay: 8 3000,” on the screen during Total score: 25/40 the demo. Looking good! SIDE ONE:

Hi again, fellow SPACE members! I am back with another DOM Review for the Atari 8-bit computer. There Graphics: 8

Compo Filer 2: This is a nifty

animated demo of geometric shapes in real time. I liked it, but I wonder if the 8-bit can do WYSIWYG graphics. But, I guess that might create problems with the graphics limitations of such a small program. I think it is an excellent example of real-time animation on the Atari 8-bit computer. Amazing stuff, to be sure. Graphics: 7 Animation: 10 Total score: 17/20 Well, folks, this ends the DOM Review for January. I hope you have a nice time and don’t forget to read the next Review which will have more dynamite programs. See you later.

Atari News

SentbyMichaelCurrent January 31, 2016 From: playermissile Announcing Omnivore (http://playermissile.com/ omnivore/), the Atari 8-bit binary editor. It is a crossplatform app for modern hardware (running Linux, OS X and Windows) to work with executables or disk images of Atari 8-bit machines. It is a hex editor, a disassembler (with mini-assembler) and a map editor. It is still beta-level code, so testing and bug reports would be appreciated! Thanks to Kevin Savetz of the ANTIC

Podcast and Wade of the ANTIC 2 (Graphics 0), ANTIC Inverse ATASCII Podcast for 4 or 5, and ANTIC 6 and 7 early testing and feedback. (Graphics 1 and 2 large character mode) Binaries are available for Character map may display Windows (64-bit) and OS X either ATASCII or internal (https://github.com/robmcm ANTIC format ullen/omnivore/releases). Edit character data right in the Linux users currently have to character map window install from source, see the Displays 6502 disassembly README with memory map for Atari 8(https://github.com/robmcm bit or Atari 5200 ullen/omnivore). I'm Includes a 6502 mini especially interested in assembler allowing you to feedback from Windows users change the assembly code as that version has been tested without needing a 6502 the least. reference card Smart search that matches in Features hex grid, character map, or disassembly comments Opens .ATR, .XEX, .XFD disk Highlights all matches, move images in single, double, and forward and backward among enhanced density formats them Save data in same format Map Editor Edit entire disk image or in Edit arbitrarily wide images logical segments Rectangular copy/paste Unlimited undo/redo Select drawing character Copy/paste ("ink") from character set Built-in support for default palette Atari character set Draw freehand Custom character set support Draw lines Custom color definition or Draw rectangle default NTSC or PAL colors Draw filled rectangles Multiple views of the same Copy between different maps data in different windows; Goals changes are reflected in all save in different formats windows attach notes to regions (for Hex Editor reverse engineering support) Displays data in multiple add a character set editor forms: hex, binary, character add a player/missile graphics graphics editor Select regions and copy/paste support editing MAME ROMs Operate on hex data in (including other 8-bit selected regions (logical processors like the Z80. Long functions, shift/rotate, term, maybe even 16-bit set/clear, arithmetic processors like the 68000) functions) support disk images for other Edit hex data right in the hex 8-bit machines like the C64 grid and Apple ][ Character map supports :

The Next Meeting is on Friday, Febuary 12, 2016, at 7:30 PM. We Hope to See You There!