January 2025
•HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025 EDITION•
It’s not just a new year, but a new era! After 39 years of meeting at the same old Falcon Heights location, this month we are all going to get together at our brand-new meeting place. See you at the Wilder Center, Merriam Park Room 2410, 451 Lexington Parkway North, Saint Paul, MN. Onward and upward! What new Atari goodies turned up under your tree this year? I got myself a brand-new Atari CX40+ Wireless Joystick. More fun than I expected, this thing is pretty sweet! The joystick seems pretty much like a standard CX40, but instead of a cord it speaks Bluetooth. And it comes with two dongles, one for a DB9 Atari controller port, the other for a USB port. You plug the dongle thing into the joystick port, then hit the Bluetooth pairing button on the joystick, and voila, ready to play! One bummer, at least for me, is that the dongle thingie doesn’t physically fit into my 130XE, the case gets in the way. I suspect an XL or 400/800 would be fine, but instead of swapping computers I pulled out a joystick extender cable to use between the XE and the Bluetooth dongle. Works like a charm, if a little nutty to use a 12’ cable just to attach the dongle to the computer. Hey, it works! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting: Friday, January 10, 2025. And don’t forget, we are meeting at the Wilder Center!!
On Friday, the 13th of December, SPACE celebrated our annual Christmas meeting. This ended our association with Falcon Heights Community Center after many years, but we hope to have a long association with the Wilder Center starting on January 10th, 2025. John Zimmerman, Event Manager at Wilder, has confirmed the second Fridays for the six months from January to June 2025. I need to add future Fridays as the year progresses as it is on a first-come, first-served basis. The Christmas party was a great success with seven members and my wife attending. We had a total of 50 chicken tenders for the main course and we managed to demolish all but a few. Along with the chicken we also had a few salads, cookies, a dessert loaf and to top it off (of course) Glen brought the makings for root beer floats. There was plenty of everything to go around. A great way to end the year, but it was sad to say goodbye to a meeting location for so many years. As for our treasury, we took in $24.00 which included one membership renewal and the sale of three monthly DOMs. We started the month with a balance of $644.81. We spent a total of $105.78 on the food for the party so at months end we had a balance of $563.03. A respectable amount to start off 2025 and since we won’t have a room rental fee in 2025 we can easily see our bank account to grow throughout the year.
HELLO WORLD! It was a laid-back time for December 2024. Although I couldn’t physically make it to SPACE for the Party, I was there online through Discord. But, I prefer being there physically. No worries, I just missed the camaraderie when I show up physically. There was no Meeting, but we had the Christmas Party. I enjoyed talking to the other members while online. Thanks to Roger for establishing that. I wouldn’t miss anything. I am glad a lot of people from SPACE showed up for the Party. It was a good time. I plan to be at the physical Meeting at the Wilder Center on Friday, January 10, 2025. This concludes the Secretary’s Report for December 2024. There will be no Atari 8-bit DOM Review this month, but I will have a double-DOM Review for February to catch up on things, mainly for December 2024 and January 2025. Thanks for reading, and in the words of the late, great Stan Lee. EXCELSIOR!
Mark your calendar for our next meeting on January 10th and don’t forget to go to our new meeting site as follows:
Message from Captain Irata: “Life’s tough! I wish I had an infinite supply of continues! Wait! What about using a Game Shark?!” HOO-RAH! TRIVIA TIME! The Atari 2600 has only 128 bytes of RAM, but there were updates made, like the Starpath Supercharger cartridge, which added over 6K of extra RAM through the cartridge port and the ability to read cassette data tapes. The same cartridge can also read CD data. There was a release called “Stella Gets a New Brain” on CD, where one could play the entire Starpath tape library on CD-ROM.
Wilder Center 451 Lexington Parkway North Saint Paul, MN 55101
–TABLE OF CONTENTS–
Look for the White Castle Restaurant on the corner of Lexington and University. The Wilder Center is right behind the restaurant and they have a free parking garage which John suggests to use as this garage is monitored by a security guard.
The President’s Corner Treasurer’s Report Secretary’s Report
Because we will be arriving after their regular hours you need to get buzzed in at the entrance. Just let the guard know that you’re there for a meeting in the Merriam Room for the SPACE meeting. We will be on his schedule each month. Glen and myself can use their loading dock in the back to load the computer and monitor. We can get buzzed in the same way as with the main entrance. I hope you all have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year, from Jackie and me to you and your families. If you have questions you can reach me at (651) 895-2223 or greglites1@outlook.com. I hope this all works out for many years to come! See you all on January 10th, 2025.
PAGE ONE:
PAGE TWO: PAGE FOUR: Recent Atari News
The Atari 8-bit DOM Review will not be published this month. There will be a double-DOM Review in February for December 2024 and January 2025. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thanks for reading!
UNABLE TO MAKE IT TO THE NEXT MEETING? Then, sign into our Discord server On the night of the physical Meeting! Here is the permanent invite link To the SPACE Discord server: https://discord.gg/r9Q4AxuNmQ NOTE: This link has been corrected. Sorry for the inconvenience as it was misspelled in the September 2024 SPACE Newsletter. You can copy and paste this URL link on your browser in the search bar. Once on the SPACE Discord server, Go to the Meeting Stream in the sidebar on the Discord page. There is a screenshot of the sidebar on this page with the Meeting Stream link circled. THANKS FOR COMING VIRTUALLY AND PHYSICALLY!
We need your articles! If you wish to channel your inner F. Scott Fitzgerald and want to send in an article, please feel free to send them to the SPACE Newsletter Editor! Please try to send your articles within two weeks of the Club’s occurrence every month. They then will be posted. The SPACE Newsletter Editor’s contact information is, of course, on the back of every SPACE Newsletter! Thanks for posting and for supporting your SPACE Club! We hope to see more articles soon!
Vice President: Brian Little E-Mail: demomantna@gmail.com
https://space.atari.org The next SPACE meeting And Election will commence on Friday, December 13, 2024, At 7:30 PM, local time! We hope to see you there! Thanks for coming!
WE ARE MOVING! Starting January 10, 2025, we will be meeting at a new location! We are going to meet at the Wilder Center on 454 Lexington Pkwy. N., in Saint Paul’s Midway area. You will need to check in with security if you come to the building after 5:30 PM. We will meet in the Merriam room (room 2410). We will meet at the normal time of 7:30 PM every second Friday of the month. Thanks for coming to SPACE! The map below shows the location of the Wilder Center, our new meeting place.
E-Mail greglites1@outlook.com S.P.A.C.E. (Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts) C/O: Gregory Leitner 3407 78th St. E Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076-3037
(Map courtesy of Google)
Another Message from Captain Irata: “That’s all she wrote, SPACE Cadets!” HOO-RAH!