June 2020
SECRETARY’S REPORT
•June 2020 Edition• TECH TALK
By Steven Peck
By Steven Peck
HELLO WORLD!
In this edition of Tech Talk, we will focus on the CosmosEX add-on for the Atari ST/TT/Falcon computer line, and it will be a good read.
Welcome to the first Summer in the second decade of the 21st Century (unless it’s actually going to start in the year 2021)! Well, not at this writing as yet, but it is close. I hope that you are all safe and healthy. I have had an excellent month, and I got an addition to my collection: an Atari 5200 SuperSystem! It was rebuilt with new parts and works just fine. Which is a good thing, since I have over thirty A5200 game cartridges that I would love to play for it anyway. It really keeps me from getting bored and keeps me on my toes! Anyway, I still have not heard from anyone about the next SPACE meeting. I hope that we still have the Parties for SPACE Birthday and Christmas. This concludes the Secretary’s Report. Have a great summer, folks! In the words of the late, great Stan Lee… EXCELSIOR!
But, what is CosmosEX? I am sure that is what you are thinking. It is a device that allows you to work with floppy disk images using USB flash drives and SD cards, like using a floppy drive, only better. In fact, way better. It has ACSI and SCSI port access (either both, or one or the other), so you can connect to ST/TT through ACSI port, or TT/Falcon through SCSI. The USB flash drive and/or SD card can serve a a hard drive, and it is just plug and play. It can use a shared folder from another PC to transfer files back and forth from ST and PC. It would have to be mapped to TOS drive letter and it can be done in plain TOS, and MiNT isn’t needed to do that. ZIP files can be opened in TOS like any folder, as CosmosEX has ZIP file support for TOS. Need a new keyboard, mouse, or joystick? No problem! just connect it to CosmosEX. It will not need drivers, and it works like the old Eiffel interface. If you need to use a new keyboard in cohesion with your ST keyboard, that is no problem either. With CosmosEX, you can. CosmosEX is configurable with ST, Web interface, or even Linus SSH connection. You can even get software updates for CosmosEX to keep up with current software for the device, as it has included a Raspberry Pi 3, model B+ with it. The original developer, Jookie, stopped developing it by himself. You can get CosmosEX from this website URL:
Message from Captain Irata:
atari.sk/cosmosex-3-0/
“Make Atari games, not war! It’s much safer…”
The total cost with shipping is €185.00 (or, USD$205.47, at current rate of exchange at this writing), not including any taxes or tariffs. This is from the European Union, more specifically, Slovakia. There were 100 pieces intended, so there may be a delay because of supply limits to anyone who wants this product.
HOO-RAH! TRIVIA TIME! The 6502 CPU and its variants are used in the Atari 2600 (as the low-cost 6507), 5200, 7800, Lynx, and XEGS.
Well, that concludes Tech Talk for this month. I will see you soon with another edition of Tech Talk. Thanks for reading! See you at the next available SPACE meeting! Carpe Diem, folks! ATARI HOME PLATFORM GAME REVIEW I have been playing the game “Space Dungeon,” for the A5200 game system. It is a well-crafted game, too, and fun. In the game, you pilot a ship with laser turrets in every direction. You must find treasures in a multi-room space dungeon, hence the name. But, there are nasty aliens that will try to shoot you and thieves that will steal treasures from the rooms. You start off with three lives, and get extra lives every 10,000 points. If you lose all your ships, the game is over. You will collect bonuses aftr you have treasure at the end of every level. It gets harder with each level, too. You fire your lasers differently, as you have to use
the second-player joystick to steer in the direction of where you want to shoot. Not really harder that way, jusr very different. The graphics are very good for this game. It is a very good port for the A5200. It is definitely challenging. I like this game, even though it get frustrating sometimes, but others might see that differently from me. I will now score this game: Graphics Gameplay Animation Sound:
9 10 8 9
SCORE:
36/40
So, this concludes the Game Review. I will return next month with yet another Game Review for any Atari platform (let me surprise you). Thanks for reading and see you soon! Have a good summer, everybody!
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