Do Run Run STWRITER.PRGB„!B„!12 4 0 5 0 10 70 2 12 132Still humming....By Ernest Schreurs, S*P*A*C*EEvery month, the postman drops the PSAN in our mail box. Then when I sit down and read it, it makes me think that I should write something again myself. Since I usually enjoy writing something, and I had the choice of filling out my tax form or writing something for PSAN, I decided that filling out forms isn't fun at all. So time to put a few of the things that I have been doing down on CRT.I remember an article where I mentioned that we usually number computers. Gee, how right I was back then. Currently we own a 520 ST, a 1040 STfm and two Mega-4 ST's. And of course there is the faithful 260 ST that is running our BBS. As you can see from this, it seems a lot of time is lost in playing with ST's. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Lot's of time is spent in keeping the BBS online, and well fed. Partly because of the 260 has been expanded to 4 Meg of memory and of course the CPU had to make way for a faster chip by FAST technology. We still have an upgrade kit that allows us to install a blitter chip into a regular ST, so one of these days we will plug that one in as well. I cannot remember the specific reason for using a 260 ST for the BBS, but it was the cheapest I guess. Oh well. It seems that the Mega-STe is a nice BBS machine too, but we are currently happy the way it is. Well, that is to say, the 50 Mhz version from FAST sounds nice, especially since the BBS gets a little sluggish with three modems in use. Due to the fact that Michtron no longer exists, we are afraid that the remaining bugs and problems in MBBS will not be resolved. We still keep our fingers crossed, but for now we will have to solve these problems by adding hardware.The Mega-ST's are of course also going to be upgraded. I've got one of Dave Small's 68030 SST boards on order, so when I get it installed I'll have something to write about again. I ordered the 33 Mhz version, with expansion of the memory to 12 Megs. Can't wait to get my hands on it. I bought my Mega's used, because several users are now upgrading to a TT or Mega-STe. This was a chance for me to get a Mega-4 together with a SM-194 monitor. Now to find a spot to put this thing. It IS a big screen. I'll build the SST board into this Mega, because the larger screen really needs a fast processor. As a matter of fact, I escpecially bought this Mega in order to build in the SST, since I think this is the best way of having a 68030 machine that is ST compatible.In the meantime, I have received version 3.0 of Spectre. It kept me playing around in MAC mode several days. Several programs that use sound effects suddenly work, whereas they used to make Spectre crash in earlier versions. On the other hand, all of a sudden PackIt stopped working, so I will keep the older versions of Spectre around in case something does not work under Spectre 3.0. The continued support for this product makes me go out and buy MAC software without even worrying about it anymore. It will work on my Spectre, and if it doesn't, it will get fixed. I recently purchased Think C 4.0 and it seems to work fine with Spectre. I will get my SM-194 installed soon (probably after removing some walls or otherwise creating more space) and hope to use it to develop some programs using this excellent integrated 'C' development package. (Yeah sure, how about the dust on the other five or so 'C' compilers that I own for the ST?).One nice new feature in Spectre is that it now supports the Aladin disk format. This format is used by Aladin, a MAC emulator that is very popular in Europe, since it was developed in Germany, and thus close by and easy to get. Nowadays Spectre is available everywhere, so more and more users are switching over to Spectre. Some friends of mine own several disks in Aladin format, so it is easier to exchange files with them now. The option to automatically start up the ST in Spectre/MAC mode starts to make more sense everytime I use Spectre since on that ST, I rarely use it as a ST anymore. I can also park my hard drives now after using the MAC shutdown option. No need to start te ST in ST mode at all. However, every so often I need to test some software in order to put it on the BBS, and my Spectre ST of course has a monochrome monitor attached all the time, so it comes in handy for the BBS too.I have several other projects going on related to ST hardware. One of them is getting a Konica SCSI drive working together with the 260 ST. It keeps writing bad data. One of these problems that are hard to figure out. Maybe I'll use a different host-adapter for a change. We still have this neat 250 Mb drive that is still to be attached to the BBS, which together with the already installed 320 Mb drive will bring up the capacity to close to 600 meg. Now for a way to handle all these partitions ! Another hardware project is a special DMA amplifier, that would allow me to use a cable that is 10 to 20 feet long for attaching the hard drive or the laser printer to the DMA port. While testing this it turned out to be unreliable, but I'll get the schematic diagrams for it one of these days, so that maybe I can figure out what is causing the trouble. On the other hand, I have seen a German vendor offer something similar at a fair price, so maybe I'll get one of those. They also offered a splitter, that would allow two ST's to talk to the same disk drive. Well, I wonder whether that also works for five ST's?Although we could not make it to the Ce-bit show, I'm sure we'll visit the Atari-Messe in Dusseldorf. Since it is an all-Atari show, nobody really wants to miss that one. The last one was in August, so I suppose it will be held around that time again this year. We'll be sure to cover our visit there. Since I have to commute by train some two hours a day nowadays, I'm looking around for a nice laptop or notebook computer. Really nice of Atari to develop the ST-Book. I hope it will be available soon. Too bad that they never developed a XE-Book though, I still love those. I couldn't see it at the show, but by the time the Atari-Messe will be held, I suppose the ST-Book will be widely available. I wonder what this does to the STacy though.You might think that we are busy using ST's only these days. Not so, since we also mess around with MS-dos machines. It comes with the job, and besides, there is a lot of PC emulating going on in the Atari community, so we have to have some experience with that as well nowadays. I was surprised to hear that Darek Mihocka is working on a PC port of the X-former. It would be fun to see this thing fly for a change. Lot's of TT user's (and SST users) would probably rather see a TT version, but maybe one of these days, if all these people write letters to Darek. By the way Darek, sign me up for a SST version please! This brings us, finally, to the good old XL, XE, GS and whatnot.I have really increased my collection of Atari computers. Some time ago, I managed to twist somebodies arm to make him let go of his good old 1200 XL. (I hope your arm feels better now Jim.) A good friend of mine, former officer of SAG (the dutch usergroup that had over 5,000 member before dissolving) wanted to have one for his collection. Since he was beginning to run out of space to put all his Atari stuff, he gave the machine back to me. You should know that the 1200 XL was not sold here, so it is rare to find one. At a recent non-computer electronics fair, I managed to dig up an Atari 800 XE, also one of those machines that you have to go out and look for. I used this machine to build in another Turbo-816 upgrade, and I actually used it to run Bob-term at a show where we were attending in order to show people what BBS-es are all about. Lots of people had never seen the 800 XE before, and lots of people wondered about the note attached to it stating it was a 16-bit machine. I can go on quite some time about this subject, but all I'll tell you for now is that we now also own a XE Game System, two 130 Xe's, three 400's, one 800, one 600 XL and one 800 XL. Still hunting for that 65 XE. It is not that we really need those machines, but if you get accros an 800 XE at $50, well, it is hard not to give in. Even though we know we do not have a place to put it anymore, there is some sort of feeling that tells me "It's hungry and needs to be fed with love". Is it time to visit my psychiatrist again? He uses an Atari in his office, so it might be not a good idea.So what do we do with all these XL's and XE's? Note how I usually try to avoid the term 8-bit since I have a couple that are 16-bits now. Well, we are one of the very few people here that own a hard drive for the XL/XE. Our Supra drives have performed well these last couple of years. One of our friends twisted my arm enough to borrow my 60-meg drive for some time. I still have my 20-meg drive attached to the 130 XE that contains the T-816, so I decided I could manage without it for a while. Most of the time we use the 130 XE for reading the electronic magazines from our usergroup and for testing various Public Domain programs. Sometimes we also compact files on it in order to store them on the BBS. I recently got the assembler for the Turbo-816, which fully supports the 65816 instructions and special requirements. Since I do not have much time to spend on it, I managed to convince another XL fanatic to try and make something nice in 16-bit mode. Although we do not have time, we do try and support the XL/XE in any way we can, which usually means signing up as a usergroup member, or supporting another BBS or so. Note that usergroups usually have a shortage of persons simply willing just to spend some time on doing all sorts of fun things. Since there are a couple of those people in the usergroup here, we try and make that possible by getting hardware or other supporting stuff to these people if they have trouble ordering stuff from the U.S.Well, I suppose it is time to fill out my tax form now. After that, I still have to clean up some of the XL/XE files on our BBS. After that, I hope I can find some time to work on some of my projects again, and maybe even write about them too. Keep those XL's and XE's and other Atari's humming.