SPACE Newsletter

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SPACENEWSLe I/ER-DEC

MERRY CHRISTMAS

IT'S PARTYTIMEI OECEMBER13th

BE SURE TO ATTEND FOOD • aAMES • RAFFLE l?t'ER'r'OtE IS SENG ASl<B)TOBRNGSot.'E FOOOTOSH.RE

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Newz From the Prez - December of, 99'1 Happy Thankagiving and an early Merry Chrietmae I In less than two weeks, on December 1 3th will be the mHting of the year and you will NOT want to miss ·th,s one! The December meeting will be one huge party with food and fun for all ages.

to complete our banquet. Wyou didn't $ign up on the li5t at the meeting, please bring whatever you would like to ahare with the club. It can be either home-made or store-bought, it does not matter. The Officers Board hopes that everyone will be courteous and bring $Omething to share with their fellow club members. Among the events will be a raffle, video game contest, and aome trivia, as well as other potential surprises. I hope you will be there, it should be lots of funl SH you in Cecemberl Nathan Block Minutes of the November S.P.A.C.E. Meeting 7 :~ PM President Nathan Block opened the meeting. The meeting started late due to scarce attendance. It was the last Meeting for Ken Modaen as vice president. All other officers and chair person& wished to run tor their positions again this year, they all ran unopposed. Sherm Erickaon wae introduced as the nominee for the position of v ice president. A vote was taken, the vote was unanimous to re-install all the , 99'1 officers With the exception of Ken Modeen as h• decided not to run again this year. Sherm Eriokeon wae unanimously elected the vice preeident Nathan talked about the software he had available from the software distributor wishing to sell hia entire stock to S.P.A.C.E. The titles were available for all member& present

to review.

PLEASE DO YOUR BEST TO ATTEND THE DECEMBER MEETING II

mering ia becauH it will be FUN FUN FUN. Our laat memg of the year will prove to be the biggest and beat ye"t, and you will not want to miaa it The Officers Board asks only that you PLEASE bring some food to share with

Nathan discussed the Christmas party with the memberah1p preaent and made available a list that all could volunteer their services or food items. The group will purohue a large ham for the Chriatmaa party with olub funds. Nathan Block announced that the S.P.A.C.E. programming team is holding a programming contest open to the membership but excluding the team member=i. The best program within 1 00 lines of BASIC code wine the $1 o cash pnze. Try your hand at it and bring the program to the Christmas party program contest There will be a trivia game u well. Raffles, aa always, will enhance the festivities. Nathan has written a skit that he would like to put on during the Christmas party. He is looking for Three volunteers to act along with him in the skit The motion waa made to buy 800XL power supplies for an B00XL computer and a 600XL computer that the club would like to raffle off in the future. These were donated machines. If you run acroas any 800XL power supplies pleue purchaae two of them (the club will gladly reimburae you) or let Nathan Block know where they can be purchased. Please try to attend the Christmas Party on Friday the , 3th

tht membership. The club will be providing the main courae aa well aa drinka and we are asking everyone to bring food

of December, it's guaranteed to be a great time. 8:2'1 PM the meeting was closed.

The December meeting will be very important for many reuona. All many of you remember, I wu trying to intereat

th• club in some software that we could purchase fairly cheaply. Due to the November meeting disaster, we didn't vote on it at the November meeting. DECEMBER WILL BE OUR LAST CHANCE TO SAY YES CA NO. Unbelievably, Mr. Brian Hill of PlayWright Software gave me another month to appeal to club members. I would like the opinion of the whole membership on thia iaaue. Aleo, there will be a vote on a potential bylaw change. Larry Serflaten haa a proposal that was drawn up as a r.autt of some member's questions at previous meetings. You Will want to give your Input on this aa well. I will also be passing around a rather large survey sheet for you to give your advice to 'Iha club about where it should head in

1892. And the last reason you should come to our December

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BBS CORNER Cont : Atari 8bit • UiseNet Msg# . i 93 Sent: Nov 19, 1991 ert 1 !5:12:00 To: All From: James Hague Subj : Where Are We Going? (1) Where can Mr. Average Joe buy Atari equipment, now that it hao been officially dumped by Atari? In order to put tcge'ther a decent system you have to bascially root through dumpsters to find the appropriate used componenta. There "'la* a market for a very nice low coat computer system for handing useful applications, but Wyou can't walk into a $tore and buy an Atari XE, then no one is going to. (2) Along the same lines, there doesn't seem to be a way to expand the Atari 8-bit user base. There are no new users, and •v•ntuelty the old-timers will give up and buy a PC clone. (3) No available placeis for service. If a machine breaks down, you have to fix it youraetf, provided you have enough documentation to know how. Most Atari machines are rock aolid, but disk drives are another atory. If Atari machines are to continue, there needs to be an easily obtainable and *inexpensive* (around $'100) IBM compertible 3 1/2" drive. And just using 3 1 /~' disks would give a bit more respectability to the machine. The 1 050 has to be complete! eliminated. (4) The statue of all thert old software needs to be reeolved, including stuff published in Antic, ANALOG, and COMPUTE!. If any of it goes public doma1n, there should be aomeone, or an organization, which takes the time to catalog it, make sure it works on all machines and has proper documentation, and distribute it via mail order and BBS. Public domain needs to be explicitly marked as such tc prevent copyright confusion in the e-bit world; it may lead many people to believe thert you can copy anything. An 8-bit ~9gQ%in9 ,s d9sper~•ly n~cied. Atari Interface is • fairly nice little magazine, but it ia aplit between th~ ST and the 8-bits and could use a bit cf polishing. (Question : why does everyone think thert the 8-bits and STe have aom.thing in common'?). And 8-bit software realty does ► need to move ahead if the machinea are to have a future. Geez-enyone ever notice that the same article& and programs kepta repeating during Antic's final few years'? Another stupid random number door prize program, a 1impliatic joystick-baaed drawing program, a tic-tac-toe game, another Tetlis clone. Blesh. Why am I saying all this'? Wen, I used to be a die-hard Atari ueer, and I used to write for Antic and ANALOG, and I just plain *like* the 8-bit

on the 800 there is usually a nice simple little way of solvinQ the problem. Thi& lets you concentrate on writing applicatiom. and such, without having to worry about how to work

around the hardware. I really wish that the 8-brt market would settle down and grow, but in all honesty I don't think it ie ever going to happen. Sigh. Cont : Atari 8bit - UseNet Msg# : , 94 Sent: Nov, 9, , 991 at 1 e :44:00 To : All From : Dill Subj : Re: Where Are We Going? Jamer., you are certainly justified in your anger over the demise of the Atari 8bit I myself have an eoo that I paid ,$900 for many years ago. It ie a -greertmachine. I feel the reason it didn't get as much respect as it should was _becauae people heard 'atari' and thought 'video games.' (Atari didn't do too much to change this either.. ) However, we just have to faoe facts here. It is nice to be nostalgic (sp?) but there are no real reasons for anyone to support the atar, anymore. Develop software for rt?? Why? What? -ANYTHINGthat could be developed on the Atari, could be made better on a 386 machine. The performance standard has risen. It is the same philosopny that the car industry runs on. Auto manufacturers do not still support 1 940 auto's. Why should they. The only people Who still own them are enthusiasts, and they are re:iourceful enough to dig up their own help The market is simply not there for 1 940 era auto tecnnology. Sure the Atari market has shrunk, but it iis not like the trend will continue until there is NO ONE around talking 8 bit There will -alwaysbe enthusiasts like us to talk and keep it alive Usenet and the like are exactly the forum thert will keep it alive also. Don't let it bother you too much that atari support from the business end ie just about dead. They are there to make money, not support a few die-hards like us ... It is up to -usto keep it alive, however possible. God bless our souls.... Conf : Atari 8bit • UeeNet Meg# : 1 9t5 Sent: Nov 19, 1991 st 14:19:00 To: All From : Dean John Garraghty Subj : Re: Where Are We Going? This article was quite and intereetinf one to read, and compliments my views exactly I am an 8-bit supporter here in the Uk, where aupport is not too bad, and where there are plenty of users. There is an e-bit only magazine here in the UK called Page 6/New Atari Ueer, whion ie run and edited by people who have been around since the early daya. They do US aubseriptions aa well. Their address Is:

see.

computera. I programmed an 800 from 1 882 to , then Nofficially" moved to the PC world Vhad been uaing one on the aide since , 984). I really mi11 the aimplicity cf the 8-bit machines. On the PC, things are so contrived-you have tc go through all sorts of contortions to do anything, whereas

Page 6, PO BOX !54, STAFFORD, ST1 S 1 OR, ENGALNO. (continued next paQe)

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BBS CORNER Also, I produce an on-disk newsletter which goes out to about 20 people. Hopefully you ehould have received my other article about Digi-Studio my n•w product for the Atari, so I won't go into it here. I will continue supporting the Awl for many years to oome, and will contlnue working tc bring new software. I have no time to play gamee on my machines. I want more from the Atari, and I try and bring more by releasing my own software. I also have other people In the UK worklng on new software for me, which I am also hoping tc releaae next year. I will do my beat tc make all this easily available in the US, and possibly other countries as well if there is a demand. Long Uv• the Atari 8-bltl I Conf : Atari 8bit • UeeNet Mag# : 201 Sent : Nov 30, , 99'1 at 3 :32:00 To : All From : C.L Freeme&ser Subj : Re: Miscellaneous questions (Erio Sokolowsky) wrote: > Where is the Black Box available? What are its capabilities? What kinds/coats of hard drives can be connected to It? Can IBM floppies be connected to it? < The Black Box is manufactured and exclusively sold in North America by Computer Soft\'11are Services. Retail price is $'199.95 for the base model, or $249.95 for a Black Box with 64K printer buffer. The Black Box Enhancer (which ie a ROM replacement with lots of neat features) sells for $49 ~ - The Black Box will accept any SCSI embedded hard drive, or an MFM/RLL dnve with a SCSI converter, such as the Adaptec 4000a It will also accept SASI converters, like the Xebec S1 410a. CSS aells these converters, as well as complete hard drive systems (which includes the BB). The Floppy Board, an add-on to the Black Box. will be available in December. The standard veraion lets you connect up to 4 360K or 720K floppy drives, read/write IBM & ST disks, and access the drives at parallel bus apeeds (@36 aectors/aec). Th• deluxe model gives you all this, plus lets you hook up , .2MB and , .44MB high denaity floppy drivee, aa well aa a veraion of the Super Archiver built-in. Standard FB will sell for $'I 09, while the deluxe veraion is $'149. Let me just aay that yes, I do work for Computer Software Services. However, I'm not trying to 1ell anything, but juet atate the facts of what ia available. BTW, just to get the goats of anybody out there who has been patiently waiting for a Floppy Board, I have 9 Floppy Boards sitting next tc me right now. Not prototypes, but PRODUCTION modele. It won't be long folkel > Thanks in advance. You're welcome, in retrospection. : "')

Conf : Atari 8bit • UseNet Msg# : 202 Sent : Nov 29, 1991 at 22:2'1 :CO To : All From : Alan L. Nelson Subj : Re: Pirate BBS • please commetn (Andrew Roazen) writ.a : >Copyright law in the U.S. atatee that if a holder openly neglects to enforce their copyright or outright refuses to prosecute violators, they are in effect gMng up their rights to the work-and someone elu could decide to copyright the work for themselves. Ludicrous as it sounds, this is the case. Still, you'd have to prove the software< BBZZZ7ZZZZVZZZZZZZ I I I I I . Wrong. There l1 NO buia for your ASSUMPTION OF COPYRIGHT logic. It simply doeen't work that way. You could BUY 'the copyright from the original author, but you could never just ASSUME the rights to it PERIOD. The copyright law only grants protection to those who ORIGINATE the work (or their employers). If you didn't create it, contract for rt, or buy an assignment of the rights, you cannot copyright it yourself. Now, your statement about abandonment of the work MAY be an arguement, (called the Doetrine of Latches in legal terms), but "I* wouldn't bet the farm on the outcome. We now return you to the regularly scheduled atari.ebit discuHions ... Here is a tidbit from Nathan:

Winning Pattern for the ATARI xecs Cartridge "CROSSBOW' When the CHOOSE YOUR PATH option appears 1n between arcade sequences, follow this pattem and you will make It through each screen without repetition. This will save you the possibility of losing all your men by repeated encounters. If yo.u don't follow this pattern, you will have to repeat arcade aequ9nce: a!id you wi!I ~ot make it to the end of the game. The Pattern: (Shoot IN ORDER) Red, Blue, Red. Red, GrHn, Blue, Blue, Red Have fun and good luckl - Nathan Block Here ia the propoHd change tc the By-lawa, the vote waa

delayed due tc a poor tum out at th• laat meeting :

ARTICLE X Section 5 Family membera living at one address on a permenant basis will be eligible for a collective membership upon payment of the annual dues tor the first year. A co1lecttve membership entitles th• family group to receive the same benifita due an individual member.

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TRAVELING By Mike. Wiest THIS LAST MONTH HAS BEEN A BUSY MONTH FOR ME TRAVELING TO FELLOW SPACE CLUB MEMBER'S HOUSES. A L.OT OF MILES PUT ON THE OLO CAR, S_UT AN OPPORTUNITY 'tO LEARN MORE WORKING ON THE COMPUTER. AFTER LAST MONTH'S MEETING I JOINED FELLOW SPACE CLUB MEMBERS FOR A SUNDAE AT SNUFFY ON LARPENTER AVE. WE ALL HAO A FUN TIME AND HAO A CHANCE TO TALK COMPUTER TALK. AFTER THIS I HEADED OVER TO LARRY'S HOUSE(SPACE SYS~P). LARRY IS STILL EAGER TO TEACH ME HOW TO PROGRAM, I THINK EVERY TIME I GO OVER THERE I LEARN A LITTLE BIT OF PROGRAMNG. EVERYTIME I ao OVER TO LARRY'S HOUSE IT SEEMS I AM OVER THERE UNTIL THE wee HOURS OF MORNING, WORKING ON THE COMPUTER WITH LARRY. I HAVE HAO TO VISIT MIKE SCHMIDT'S HOUSE THIS LAST MONTH. WHEN OVER TO HIS HOUSE I AM ALWAYS AMAZED WHEN MIKE uses HIS HARDDRIVE SET-UP. WOULD BE NICE SOME DAY TO HAVE A HARDDRIVE SET-UP LIKE HIS, MAYBE SOMEDAY. I HAVE VISITED SHERM ERICKSON'S HOUSE TWICE LAST MONTH. THE FIRST TIME I VISITED HIM WAS A NICE DAY. THE SECOND TIME I VISITED HIM WAS THE SNOW STORM OF NOVEMBER 28, 1991 . I GOT THERE BUT WAS STRANDED BECAUSE OF ALL THE SNOW WHEN I TRIED TO LEAVE. MY CAR WHEN I TRIED TO LEAVE MOVED ABOUT A INCH. I DECIDED TO ACCEPT SHERM'S OFFER OF STAYING OVER FOR THE NIGHT. CURING MY STAY AT SHERM WE WORKED ON PROGRAMS LIKE NEWSROOM. ATARIWRITER, PLUS OTHER PROGRAMS. WE HAO A FUN TIME AND WAS ALSO A LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR ME. FOR BREAKFAST I WAS TREATED TO THE BIGGEST BEST TURKEY SANDWICH, COMPLIMENTS OF SHERM ANO HIS WIFE. AFTER Tl-11S SHERM ANO I WENT OUT ANO TACKLED 12 NCHES PLUS OF SNOW. IT WAS FUN SHERM GAVE HE ON THE JOB ~.AlNINC3 ON HOW TO USE HIS TRACTOR OAIVEN SNOWBLOWER. IT IS A SMALL TRACTOR, BUT rr DOES A GREAT JOB OF THROWING SNOW. ONE

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THING THAT STICKS IN MY MINO, WAS WHAT SHERM SAID TO ME WHILE WORKING ON THE COMPUTER, THERE ARE TWO LEVELS OF THE ATARI COMPUTERTHE USER THAT JUST USES THE COMPUTER AND THE ATARI USER WHO WANTS TO KNOW HOW THE COMPUTER AND PROGRAMS WORK. INTERESTING. THE LAST PERSON I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IS OUR NEWEST SPACE CLUB MEMBER MIKE CABLE. MIKE JOINED US WITH HIS GRANDPA AT THE NOVEMBER MEETING WITH THE HELP OF NATHAN AND SHERM ERICKSON, MIKE WENT FROM HAVING A 800 ATARI AND CASSETTE PLAYER TO A ADDING ON A DISC DRIVE {THANKS TO NATHAN) AND A 1030 MODEM WITH BOB-TEAM PROGRAM (THANKS TO SHERM ERICKSON). WHEN OVER TO MIKES HOUSE IT 15 EXCITING TO SEE THE FUN LIKE HAS WORKlNG WITH HIS COMPUTER SYSTEM. I THINK MIKE WOULD BE GREAT FOR THE SPACE'S PROGRAMMING TEAM. MIKE WOULD LIE TO SEE THE SPACES BBS. SET-UP, I AM SURE THAT LARRY(SYSOP) CAN MAKE THAT POSSIBLE. THE SPACE CHRISTMAS PARTY IN DECEMBER PROMISES TO BE A GOOD TIME. SHERM. NATHAN, AND I HAVE MEET ON A SATURDAY TO MAKE PLANS FOR THE PARTY. THERE WILL BE HAM AND BEVERAGES SUPPLIED BY THE CLUB MEMBERS BRING A POTLUCK ITEM. THERE WILL BE A RAFFLE. AND THERE WILL BE FOR-sAL.E TABLES WITCH MIGHT HAVE SOME INTERESTING ITEMS FOR SALE. COME AND HAVE A GOOD TIME. AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE AND HAPPY NEW YEARS. MIKE WEIST

Htrt ii thi1 1onth1 in1t1ll11nt of Word Starch, This 1onth it his I Christ1a1 tht•t• Have Fun! Title: Christ1as

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CANDY CANE ELVES POPCORN SLEIGH

CHRISTNAS EVE "lSELTOE PRESENTS SNOW

COOKIES NORTHPOLE

RAINDEER

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DISCLAIMER

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SYSOP: Larry Serflatten CO-sYSOP: Sherm Erickson

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