SPACE Newsletter

1982•43RD ANNIVERSARY EDITION•2025

Party this month! First time at the Wilder Center! See Greg’s article for details! A little more cassette talk this month, but an otherwise completely different topic. I just learned (on AtariAge) that not only are there two slightly different versions of the 1010 program recorder, one made by Sanyo in Japan, the other made by Chelco Sound in Hong Kong, but the two versions come in different Styrofoam packaging, and they are not interchangeable because the boxes are slightly different sizes! Did you know that already? There are still Atari things to learn! Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting and PARTY: Friday, July 11, 2025.

Not the best turnout for the June SPACE meeting since only four members were present. That was disappointing due to the fact that we needed to figure out the menu for the July SPACE Birthday Party. Anyway, this is what we figured out: I will get a 50-pack of Cane’s chicken tenders, a tub of potato salad, and a tub of cole slaw. That will be at the Club’s expense. I will bring the beverages, table fixings, and a dessert to share. You can bring anything else as long as it does not need cooking or a refrigerator. A crock pot could be plugged in, but I haven’t got an okay for that. The only reason we can have the room for the party is because I worked it out with the guard on duty that we would supply a plate of food to him. We need to keep this on the Q! As for the monthly treasure report we started the month of June with a bank balance of $650.03 and for the month we added $27.00. We had one membership renewal for $15 (thanks, Tom) and we sold four DOMs for $12.00. So, we ended the month of June with a balance of $677.03. I figure it will cost about $125.00 for the party, so we should end up with about $550.00 afterwards. It has been a hectic month for Jackie and me. Two graduations and our son’s dog to watch for about two weeks. A very busy and high-maintenance puppy. He is very scared of many things and he uses his barking to try and warn off strangers. He won’t let anyone near him. Thank god he likes Jackie and myself, but after twelve days he really wore us out! Our next meeting is July 11th. Don’t forget the Birthday Party. I hope we have a good turnout and I will see you then.

HELLO WORLD! Well, for starters, I apologize for not making it to the SPACE Meeting in June. But, it’s going to be very difficult in the future for me to procure a ride to future SPACE meetings. I will continue to think about what to do about this situation, and will keep you posted. If there is a chance for Discord to be used as an avenue for me to log on to future meetings, I will take that chance. In the meantime, I can continue to work on future Newsletters for SPACE. That itself is really no problem. I hope that the four members who were able to make it to the June SPACE Meeting had a good time. I am hopeful that, even though it was not the best turnout, that it still turned out OK for everybody. I hope to make other SPACE Meetings in the future, but it’s not feasible for me to be physically there at this time. At least, at the moment anyway. So, if we can have more time with Discord, that would be acceptable for me. Plus, I can continue with the Secretary’s Report and report on the minutes in future Meetings. Well, that concludes the Secretary’s Report for the July Newsletter. If I cannot be there physically for the Birthday Party for SPACE, I would like to try the Discord link, That is, if someone can help me with that. After all, there is a permanent SPACE Meeting link for people to log on to meetings online for Discord in the Newsletter, so all isn’t lost. Further,more, I will use the 2023 DOMs as filler in the Atari 8-bit DOM Review for now until I can procure new DOMs. Besides, there were no DOMs reviewed for all of 2023 anyway, so it gives some time to do that for everybody. Until then, I will see you later. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day! In the words of the late, great Stan Lee... EXCELSIOR! TRIVIA TIME!

Message from Captain Irata: “The SPACE Birthday is here! It’s time to cheer! So, let’s all play video games and drink tons of root beer!” (Happy Fourth of July, too, by the way!) HOO-RAH!

–ASTRO TRIVIA– TABLE OF CONTENTS Page One: The President’s Corner Treasurer’s Report Secretary’s Report Page Two: SPACE Flashback: A Look at the Last Five Decades in Atari® Technology Page Five: SPACE Comics Section

Light travels at over 186,000 miles per second, or over 671 million miles per hour. In two seconds at light-speed, you would accidentally overshoot the Moon traveling from Earth by approximately 134,000 miles while getting there (the Moon is approximately 238,000 miles away at its closest approach to Earth). Sunlight take over eight minutes To reach Earth from the Sun. The distance of an astronomical unit (AU) is the exact distance between the Sun and Earth, over 92.9 million miles. The dwarf planet Pluto takes approximately 248 Earth years to orbit the Sun because of its Extreme distance from the star.

system and utilized RISC technology and coprocessors. Although it was a superior architecture, and it looked impressive, the Atari® Jaguar™ was severely undermarketed. It still did make a colossal mark in video gaming history. You have to admit, it had some great games like “Tempest 2000™” and “Alien vs. Predator™.” NOTE: There will be no Atari® 8-bit DOM Review this month. Sorry for the inconvenience. I will make up the slack with a double-DOM Review for next month. This will comprise the June and July DOMs for 2025. Thanks for reading and for understanding.

By 1996, Atari® was sold to JTS Systems, and for a while the name faded into history. However, over the years, Atari® has come back and is producing new and retro software and hardware again. It’s a brand that will nor die easily, that’s for sure. Atari™ has proven to be resilient.

SPECIAL ARTICLE

Also, who can forget the iconic computers that came out from this iconic company, like the 400, 800 and the XL/ XE series (which spawned the XEGS game system which is another popular system for retro collectors). People still use the ST, TT, Mega and Falcon computers.

SPACE Flashbacks: A Look at the Last Five Decadess in Atari® Technology By Steve Peck I decided to look back by creating this filler article I call “SPACE Flashbacks.” We are going to look at a timeline of when Atari® dominated the computer and video game markets. It all goes back to when the iconic brand was formed in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was originally going to be called “Syzygy,” but a candlemaking company in Mendocino, California, had the name already. Being that Nolan Bushnell was a fan of the Japanses strategy game Go, he renamed the company “Atari®,” after a term in Go like “Check” in chess. The first Atari video arcade game was Pong™. It was extremely popular and took the gaming world by storm. There were many variations of the game made for the home theater by third-party companies like Coleco, APF and Magnavox. but, Atari’s Pong stood out. In 1977, it was decided to create a new type of home video game system. The Fairchild® Chennel F™ had interchangeable game cartridges first, so cartridges were to be what this new video game would use for games. Henceforth, the Atari® 2600™ was born, and the rest is history. The Atari® 2600™ had a 6502 CPU variant called the 6507, designed to be cheaper to produce. It had a staggering 128 bytes of RAM through the RIOT chip and it utilized the TIA (Television Interface Adapter) chip as well. It was a colossal success. In 1982, it was decided to create a successor to the Atari® 2600™. Thus was borm the Atari® 5200 SuperSystem™, with more RAM and was basically an Atari® 800™ computer on the inside, just only for gaming. By 1984, the Atari® 5200 SuperSystem™ was off the market. The Atari® 7800 ProSystem™ was originally released in May of that year, but in limited quantity. It was then again released in 1986. It had an advantage over the 5200. It was backwards-compatible with the 2600. Although there was an adapter to play 2600 games on the 5200, the 7800 was designed to play 2600 games without a separate adapter. This was a quantum leap forward, and a strong selling point. But, the 7800 did not do wa well as Nintendo® did with the NES. We know what happened from there, but the 7800 is a great system and millions of them were sold. So, it did make a great mark in gaming history. It was the first truly backwards-compatible game system from its design. In 1989, to compete with the Nintendo® GameBoy™, Atari created the Lynx™, the world’s first color game system. This was a game-changer, since the GameBoy™ was black-and-white. Originally, the Lynx™ was the size of a room. Thanks to Epyx®, we have the system as it is today. Around this time, you had the infamous “Console Wars,” by Sega, Nintendo and NEC. The new game systems had 16-bit technology, when it was 8-bit before.. The Genesis and the TurboGrafx-16 came out in 1989 with superior graphics, and the Super NES came in 1992. These systems stole the show, so companies decided to make 32 and 64-bit systems to compete and establish supremacy in the video game market. In 1993, the Jaguar was released. It was the world’s first true 64-bit game

Again, Atari® just will not die, and this is a great thing for us Atarians. I hope the trend continues for years to come, and I am sure it will at that! Well, that is all for now. I will be back with yet other articles in future SPACE Newsletters. Until then, thanks for reading and I will see you soon in future SPACE Meetings. Have a great day!

HAPPY 249 BIRTHDAY, AMERICA! AND RD HAPPY 43 BIRTHDAY, SPACE!

TH

SPACE COMICS SECTION! The Misadventures of A-Man and C.D./Ferret Fracas Crossover!

THe next SPACE Meeting and Birthday Party will commence on Friday July 11, 2025, from 6:00 - 8:30 PM. We hope to see you there! Thanks for coming!