SPACE Newsletter

/ NEWSLETTER

August, 1995

News from the Interim President by Mike Fitzpatrick With the August meeting soon upon us and the start of the fall season in September; we need to start thinking of a permanent set of Officers for our club, to be selected in Novembers Vote. Your input as to what you want from your club will be sought at the August Meeting. I would like to ask if the club would entertain a discussion from Lance Ringquist concerning the state of the Atari World based upon his business dealings. Lance and I have met away from the club setting and he has really enlightened me as to the value of our systems even though they may be obsolete. What an eye popper that was. Not much else is new except: Stay Healthy and be careful of the heat & humidity this summer.

SPACE BBS News The BBS had a catastrophic failure of the Hard Drive and was down. With the installation of a new (used) hard drive the BBS is now again back on-line. There has been a question raised concerning extra bases on the system. On the surface of the issue I agree with the idea but received little or no feedback from the active users of the SPACE portion of the BBS. I'm reluctant to set aside hard drive space as the bases are DAT files and use up the same amount of space whether they are filled or not. I can wait until the club expresses a desire for the extra base or two but with a lack of "Public Base" usage as compared to E-Mail it is thought that the existing bases are more than adequate. There will be a general shutdown the few days after the SPACE meeting to perform a much needed backup. Special Note: If you are experiencing a lot of aborted file u/loads, especially F-Mail; PLEASE leave a message so that I can go in and clean out the trash files. Once the trash files are clear normal u/loading will work well.

Treasurer's Report

by Greg Leitner

I am sitting here writing this report after just having returned from seven days in Florida on vacation in Orlando. We had a wonderful time and it was hard to leave and return home when the week was over. Disney, Sea World and Universal Studios can surely take your mind off everything else and focus on Just having fun fun fun. But all good things end and so here I am trying to get myself motivated to return to work and write this report for SPACE. Not much happened at the July meeting as far as business was concerned. We decided that this meeting was going to be a party night celebrating the birthday of our Club. Besides, it had been so hot the last few days that everyone was pretty much all worn out. Glen couldn't make it to the July meeting so we didn't have much in DOM sales, but Terry brought some disks in and sold three of them for $9.00. He said he would have them available for the August meeting also as there are a couple of good games on them. We also took in one membership renewal for $15.00 so our receipts for July totaled $24.00. Our expenses for July were the BBS phone bill, the Newsletter, and I just got the second quarter billing from Falcon Heights for the room rental ($90.00). As you can see we lost quite a bit of our balance in the bank for July which now stands at $397.91. Hopefully Glen will be back in August and our DOM sales will pick up. Until then see you all at the August meeting.

Minutes of Space Meeting

July 14, 1995

Space meeting started at 7:30 pm. Mike Fitzpatrick, acting club president opened the meeting. He welcomed everyone to the meeeting.

OLD BUSINESS-- None NEW BUSINESS--- Mike Fitzpatrick, also club sysop, announced that he has found another MIO for BBS. Mike also talked about starting further discussions about club issues that had been addressed in the last few months. Mike Fitzpatrick has been in contact with a person that logs in to the BBS. from Cheyenne, Wyoming off and on. He is interested in the club. Mike is going to sent him information about how two boards are on one system. Mike Fitzpatrick said that the secretary's report looked good. And he said the treasury report looked good too. Greg Leinter, club treasurer stated that the club's treasury has $500 in it. Mike Schmidt, club newsletter editor, asked Mike Fitzpatrick how big the club's BBS. harddrive is. Mike Fitzpatrick stated the club's harddrive died and he is using his own equipment. Mike Fitzpatrick asked if there was any further business. Hearing none, he ended the meeting by saying----

Going once!

Going twice!

Let's Eat!

Space Club's 13th Birthday Potluck meal followed. Meeting adjourned at 8:35pm.

Electronics Fair '95 Electronics Fair '95 was held at Aldrich Arena in Maplewood, Mn. on June 16 and 17. This year the show as held one month early from its regular scheduled date. This year the weather for the event was kind of hot. But it seemed everyone had a good time. Although there was alots of electronic stuff in the flea market for sale, Atari stuff was hard to come by for Atari computer people. If there isn't Atari items at the show, where is it? Could it be that people have alots of Atari stuff sitting in their closets at home. At the show I did run into Space club members like Greg Leinter. Our club newsletter editor had a flea market table at the show. Anyway whether a club member finds Atari hardware or software at this show, it is fun to come to this show year · after year. -

AIRBALL reviewed by, WESLEY RINGQUIST BEACH BALL WANTED! Must have slow leak and willing to risk it's life to retrieve evil wizards' spell book

to turn it's self back to human form. Here's the plot to AIRBALL. You have been transformed into a airball, but you have a problem,you've got a slow leak. You're now out to get the evil wizard's spell book and tum your self back into a human. Think you're up to it? The gameplay is terribly addicting! Once you start ya' can't stop! The graphics are great in showing what can be done on the XE if given the chance. The music is above average. I have to warn you that once you start this game you won't be stopping except for the bare needs. (Such as going to the bathroom.)You won't even noticed that the person next to you screaming it's time to eat. (well maybe?) The over-the-head 3/4 view is what makes this game so great! The graphics are so great you'll have to see them to believe them. The XE was defiantly pushed to the max with this game! If you get good enough at this game (which I doubt because of the depth of the game) and are lucky enough you might find the secret edit mode. There you will be able to make and edit your own games. GOOD LUCK!! I give this game ***** Ultra cool tip: pressing the "space bar" enables you to pick things up. My Rating System ***** I Highly Recommend This Game **** Great Game Could Of Used A Little Fine Tuning *** Okay Game ** Try lt,Don't Buy It * Avoid Like The Black Plague

August DOM '95 Hello all! Well, this month's DOM is probably a little different than what your used to. This one is called BW-DOS. Short for "Bewedos". Version 1.10, 1994. This is a clone for SpartaDos 3.2D. (C) ICD Inc. Very much like it, I'd call it a "Junior Version" of Sparta. This DOS, will work on a 800 48K machine with a 810 Drive. Even boot some of the "older" games. COMPLETE manuals included. Thanks for buying DOMS!!! Terry

+----------------------------------------+ I Larry's · I I

ACTION! TUTORIAL

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+----------------------------------------+ #11 OFF AND RUNNING One of my earliest questions was; Why wont this program work without the cartridge??? I will save you the pain of pulling your hair out and tell you. If you want to write programs that will run without the cartridge installed, you must follow these 5 rules; 1. No errors .

2.

3.

4.

5.

Any error will halt your program. You can tell if your program has an error by running it with the cartridge installed. If it works OK, the Monitor message area will be clear when -yo u exit from your program. - No library calls. You have to supply all the necessary code to run. Any call to the library will generate an error when run without the cartridge. No more than 2 bytes of parameters in any function or procedure call. More than 2 requires a little parameter saving routine found in the cartridge. Thats 2 BYTEs or 1 CARD and no more. No MOD, multiplication, or division. You can add and subtract to your hearts content, but you can't try to multiply. These also call a cartridge routine. No shift operations using a variable, or using a constant larger than 4.

If you follow these rules, your program should run without the cartridge. The two rules I have had trouble with are 2 , no library calls, and 4, no multip lication . How can you read the keyboard if you cant use OPEN(4,"K:",4,0)? As shown earlier, you can monitor address 764. How about opening a file? Offsets depend on using multiplication for tabular data . . .. Here are a few solutions to get around the need fo r the cartr i dge. Of course you have to write programs that wont cause an error, number 1 is rather evident. Number 2, as you saw earl i er, you can write your own routines and use them in place of the library calls. For the few that you will need, this is a must. To eliminate rule 3, you can store and retrieve the needed parameters in an array, passing only the address of the array, and picking out the parameters in the called routine. Number 4 is hard to eliminate, except by writing the code needed to multiply or divide two numbers. The same with rule 5, if you must shift according to some variable, you will have to write code or a routine to do the entire s hift using no more than 4 shifts at a time.

A LSH or RSH· must be followed by a constant number, but that shift can be in a FOR/NEXT loop. If the needed constant is larger than 4, two lines that total the number needed may be used: TO CODE THE STATEMENT: X= X LSH Y X= X LSH 7

USE: FOR Z=l TOY DO X==LSH 1 OD · X==LSH 4 X==LSH 3

To help you get started on your very own library, I have adapted the multiplication program found on page 171 in ATARI ROOTS - 1:o Actio n. Th~ ajo-r c:hanges i nclude the storing of the Accumulator and X register to $E0 and $El respectively . Action! expects the value of a function to be returned in location $AO and $Al, these locations were used instead of $CO, $Cl. This function will multiply two BYTE values and return a CARD value. Often that is enough to squeek by in a pinch! CARD FUNC MultiplyB=*(BYTE a,x) [$85 $E0 $86 $El $A9 $00 $85 $AO $A2 $08 $46 $E0 $90 $03 $18 $65 $El $6A $66 $AO $CA $DO $F3 $85 $Al $60) ;$60 is a RETURN command PROC Test() BYTE i,j CARD z FOR i=l0 TO 200 STEP 15 DO FOR j=0 TO 200 STEP 50 DO z=MultiplyB(i,j) PrintF(" %U* %U=%U%E",i,j,z) OD OD RETURN The'=*' after the word Multipl yB simply means to omit the allocation of memory for the parameters. Action! passes the parameters using the accumulator and X register. No reference was made in the function to either 'a' or 'x' so there is no need to reserve memory for them. The function obtained the values directly from the accumulator and X register.

Although the MultiplyB routine will run without the cartridge, the Test routine calls a library procedure . Guess whats coming next issue!

+-------------------------------------. --+I I Larry's I

ACTION! TUTORIAL

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+----------------------------------------+ #12 KILROY STRIKES AGAIN! These months sure take a long time, don't they? This month we make use of the old MultiplyB routine and add a little more to your library! MODULE CARD savmsc=$58,x=$55 BYTE y=$54 CARD ($85 $08 $66

FUNC MultiplyB=*(BYTE a,x) $E0 $86 $El $A9 $00 $85 $AO $A2 $46 $E0 $90 $03 $18 $65 $El $6A $AO $CA $DO $F3 $85 $Al $60]

BYTE FUNC AscToint(BYTE chr) BYTE i i=chr&128 ;Inverse bit ... chr==&127 ;Gone! IF chr<32 ;Conversion THEN RETURN(chr+64+i) ELSEIF chr<96 THEN RETURN(chr-32+i) FI RETURN(chr+i) ;Implied ELSE PROC CLS () BYTE POINTER bp FOR bp=savmsc to savmsc+959 DO bp"=0 OD RETURN PROC EchoS(BYTE ARRAY sa) BYTE ARRAY dst BYTE i i=0 dst =MultiplyB(y,40)+savmsc+x-1 DO i==+l dst(i)=AscToint(sa(i)) UNTIL i=sa(0) OD RETURN You might want to save this portion for later use, then type in the Test program to see it in use. These and the test program will run, in object form, from DOS! Make sure, then save them . MODULE simply lets the compiler know that you are declaring variables that you want available to ALL FOLLOWING routines. Here we declare a variable to use the systems pointer to screen memory (savmsc), the cursor X position and, cursor Y position. MultiplyB, Hello!

Reuseable code is FUN!

AscToint is a routine that changes ASCII to Internal code. This code is used by the system to determine what characters to display on the screen. Why the people at Atari didn't simply use ASCII is not a big concern NOW! You can use the next routine to play around with different values. It basically strips off the inverse bit, then calculates the new value needed, and adds back the inverse bit before returning . CLS is my ClearScreen routine. Changing the Oto some other value will fill the screen with a different character. EchoS will duplicate whatever is in quotes including non-printable characters. To make it as fast as possible, I did not include any error checking or alter X or Y. With 40 bytes in a line, 'dst' has to be Y*40 bytes from the top (savmsc). It also has to be X number of spaces from the left edge, then offset by 1 to align with the incoming string. If not offset, then 'dst(0)' would be at the X and Y position, but 'sa(0)' is not supposed to be printed, it holds the length of the string. The first byte of the string is actually in sa(l). Offsetting allows 'dst(l)' to be at the correct X and Y position, thereby setting up a means of direct (1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc.) assignments. Using these routines as examples, perhaps you can write your own Echo, EchoB, Echo!, and EchoC. I used echo because, I saw the name used in another program, to do about the same thing, and because it keeps it separate from Print and its options which provide error and boundary checks. Of course you'll want to test them: PROC Test() BYTE ch=764 CLS () x=ll y=l0 EchoS("KILROY WAS HERE!") x=4 y=12 EchoS("And he wants you to press a key!") DO UNTIL ch<255 OD x=2 y=16 ch=255 RETURN Remember to set X and Y each time!

Word Search This Month Xs Laughable

A X E G Y R K J D P L T N GN L N K DLAUGHABLEGOFFUBIN N I MH R U K S U O I R A L I H D N UHNSSLAIVOJRIAHGGU G K U U O I K E WL I R L M I N T H P N WO Y J G WL S N U D B Y I L T A I P R NA R G I A F V I G L T I N MBNCNLUBAHCTB I LRNU I G L I U N L G T WG I K Y O E O P H J R D F E N R D N G X MK J V A I I Q P U O L I N K N Y K O O K I P Q NDNLAMUSINGEULCDNB Q I H G N I T T I L P S E D I S R V V R T Y G N S U O T O I R K X N G D V B I N I R G X MY O P L I H J N U

Funny Comical Buffo Jolly Jovial

Waggish Ludicrous Hilarious Diverting Side-Splitting

Amusing Risible Riotous Mirthful Kooky

Attention! Space Members Check your mailing label to find out your membership expiration date. Below is a sample of a label with the location of the expiration date. To renew your membership, contact Glenn Kirschenmann - Membership Chairman, listed on the back of this newsletter under the Club Officials. Glen Atarian 4567 Atari Way Anytown, USA

9508

00000

Membership Dues Support Space

Expiration Date News From The Weird In East Moline, ILL., Benjy G. Kremenak, 39, recently pleaded guilty to having stalked a women for nearly three years. His hearing was postponed from May 1994 because the judge became alarmed when Kremenak several times

during the hearing spontaneously broke out singing his rendition of "Chapel Of Love".

CLUB OFFICIALS President Vice President Secretary DOM Librarian Paper Librarian Software Librarian Membership Chairman SPACE Treasurer SPACE Newsletter Editor

Vacant Vacant Mike Weist(Temp) Teny Streeter Vacant Earline Fitzpatrick Glen Kirschenmann Greg Leitner Michael Schmidt

xxx-xxxx xxx-xxxx xxx-xxxx xxx-xxxx xxx-xxxx xxx-xxxx 786-4790 429-4909 757-4192

Saint Paul ATARI Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE) meets on the second friday of each month at 7:30 PM in the Falcon Heights Community Center at 2077 West Larpenteur Ave. Doors open at 7:00 PM.

DISCLAIMER Published by the Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE), an independent organization with no business affiliation with ATARI Corporation. Permission is granted to any similar organization with which SPACE exchanges newsletters to reprint material from this newsletter. We do however ask that credit be given to the authors and to SPACE. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SPACE, the Club officials, club members or ATARI Corporation.

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P.O. Box 120016 New Brighton MN 55112

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