SPACE celebrates our 17th birthday this Friday, July 9, can you believe it?? I've only been a member for 4 years, but this club started in 1982!?! Incredible, but we're still here, and still going strong. Come help celebrate, as the club will pick up the tab for a pizza party at the annual birthday party. We'll order enough for however many people show up by 7:30, so be there on time!
I visited the JagFest in Rochester on Friday, June 18. It was a smallish event, but not as lame as I feared. In fact, I thought it was fairly cool, and I don't even own a Jaguar! There were maybe a dozen of them around, along with a few other things like the 7800, a 2600, and the Lynx. Not that many people, but this event lasted for 12 hours so I'm sure different people showed up all day. My personal highlight was playing 7800 BallBlazer with Randy. He won, but it was the joysticks!
Just before the June meeting Michael Schmidt came up with the 1994 revision of the club Bylaws, which needed to be merged with the 1993 edition we started with this year, and the change we've made so far. I've done that, and the result is both on the web site and I should have some paper copies as well. As it turns out, we haven't lost any ground. In fact, the change I was suggesting two months ago was already made in 1994! (So we didn't have a vote at the June meeting.) So at this point, we can continue where we left off, with Article IV. My modified suggestions are:
--I'm thinking the Secretary should be an elected officer position, like President, Vice-President and Treasurer.
--Specify in Section 2 that the Secretary shall produce written Minutes for each meeting, and these shall appear in the Newsletter.
--Drop the Paper & Educational Software Librarian volunteer position. What about the BBS Operator position?
Maybe between 7:30 and when the pizza arrives we'll have time to discuss some of these ideas, and especially any of yours? See you there!
Space Minutes, June 10, 1999
Michael Current, Space club president, opened meeting at 7:35 PM. Michael asked for a secretary report for the May meeting. Mike Weist, club secretary, recapped the minutes printed in June newsletter
Michael Current next asked for a treasurer report. Greg Leitner, club treasurer, gave a report. Greg stated the club took in $125 from the May auction. The club also had 4 DOM sales and 1 membership renewal. The total income for May was $155. The club paid out $10 for the BBS cost to Lance Ringquist. The treasury balance stands at $1521.83. Greg also stated that the treasury balance could be at $1600 by July meeting. Greg said $57 will be paid out for post office box charges. Mike Schmidt. newsletter editor will be paid $26.40 for three months of newsletters(April, May, June). Greg said that quarterly room rent of $195 will be paid out at the end of July or first part of August. Lance Ringquist was not present at meeting to receive payment of $10 for BBS service tonight.
Michael Current asked for a membership report. Glenn Kirschenmann, membership chair, stated that the club currently has 19 members.
Michael Current asked for Disk of the month report. Glenn Kirschenmann, DOM chair, stated that the DOM had basic programs from a Gennessee Atari club and from 5 1/4 disks from Greg Leitner, club treasurer.
OLD BUSINESS- Michael Current, Space club president, stated that he received 1994 bylaw change copies from Glenn Kirshenmann and Mike Fitzpatrick. Michael stated he had copies of the 1994 bylaws changes for anybody that was interested. Michael stated that recent changes to the bylaws stand. There would be no discussion or changes to the bylaws tonight. Michael will study the copies of the 1993 and 1994 bylaws for future bylaw changes consideration.
Michael Current said the Rochester Jagfest will be next Friday, June 17, 1999. The show opens at 10 am. It will be held at the Holiday Inn in Rochester. Michael will attend the show.
Michael Current talked about the Space 17th birthday party that will be held at the July Space meeting. Several ideas were discussed about what kind of party the club wanted. Michael said a BBQ would be nice but it would take preparation and it may rain. Greg Leinter said a potluck would be nice. Mike Weist said eating out somewhere would be nice . It was finally decided to order in pizza at the Falcon Heights City Hall.
NEW BUSINESS- NONE
Meeting adjourned at 8:10 PM
I was hopping for a good turnout for the June meeting but it wasn't to be. As Jackie and I were getting ready to leave for the meeting from Inver Grove heights, we noticed teenagers in the Simley High School parking lot with graduation gowns on. I then realized that we had another conflict this time with many graduations taking place throughout the Twin Cities. I know this will happen to me next year when my son, Tony, graduates from Simley in the year 2000. It is certain to be on the second Friday in June next year. I already know that I will be missing the August meeting this year because one of our friend's son is getting married that day. So I know that we can't always make all of the meetings.
With the eight members present at the June meeting we were still successful in taking in more than we spent. The Auction went well again and we cleared $110.00 profit for the evening. Also, we had DOM sales of $18.00 and one membership renewal of $15.00. So in all we had a deposit of $143.00 and the only expenses we had was three months of the SPACE Newsletter and the P. O. Box renewal fee. These expenses were $26.40 and $57.00 respectively. Our Treasury increased to $1,581.43 for the month ended June 30th, 1999.
Now for next month. We decided to have a go at a Pizza Party for the SPACE Birthday meeting in July. This time I will wait to order the Pizzas until the official meeting start time which is 7:30. The Club will pick up the tab for the Pizzas and I will bring the beverages. Other members have signed up for the utensils and napkins and desserts. Come and have a good time and don't be shy in bringing your spouses, kids and/or friend.
The Auctions will be discontinued for a while and I think we are probably in need of a break. This will give us more time to discuss Club business or just converse more after the meetings. I am looking forward to that as I have been quite occupied with the Auctions and haven't had time to talk to some of you. Please come to the July Birthday Bash and let's celebrate a great year that we have experienced since the last Birthday Party. See you all there.
From: "Dean Garraghty"
We are pleased to announce that we have been able to reduce the cost of some of our Atari 8-bit products, as follows:
QUICK Complete Package - GBP10 (US$20)
Most of these savings are around 30% off the original costs. These new prices are permanent, not just temporary special offers. Full details of all these products are available in our new on-line catalogue, which is now in two parts: Public Domain Catalogue, and Commercial Software Catalogue. Both are selected from the 'Catalogue' option from our website at: http://www.dgs.clara.net
The prices shown above include P&P for UK orders. US orders are subject to a small shipping charge of 10% of order value, minimum US$5. This is for Air Mail, which takes around 5 days.
Recently, it was stated by somebody in this newsgroup that QUICK is Public Domain. I can assure you that is it IS NOT.
Dean Garraghty
LEGENDARY HARDWARE PIONEERS TO PARTICIPATE IN HISTORIC ROUND-TABLE
DISCUSSION
June 10, 1999
VALLEY STREAM, NY -- The founding fathers of some of the most popular videogame machines and computers will get together for an unprecedented panel discussion during this year's Classic Gaming Expo '99(tm) (CGE). They are
expected to share their experiences in how their systems came to be and shed some light on the trials and tribulations in designing game hardware. The panel will consist of such legends as Ralph Baer (creator of the Magnavox Odyssey), Jay Smith (GCE Vectrex), Jerry Lawson (Fairchild Channel F), Jay Fenton (Bally Astrocade), RJ Mical (Commodore Amiga, Atari Lynx & 3DO) and Joe Decuir (Atari 2600, 400/800 computers & Commodore Amiga).
"It is an absolute honor to be in such great company," said
Jerry Lawson, former Chief Hardware Engineer at Fairchild
and creator of Channel F, the first ever programmable and
cartridge-based game console. "I look forward to telling my
story behind the Channel F, but I'll also be there as a fan,
just like everyone else in the conference hall."
The panel discussion is scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 14, at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Van Burnham, author of the forthcoming book "Supercade: Context and Aesthetics of the Videogame Age 1971-1984" (The MIT Press) and Senior Production Manager of Wired Magazine, will moderate the round table.
"We are delighted that the leaders for just about every major
U.S. game machine will be represented in the panel discussion. I would be hard pressed to think of any other time in history when such an all-star cast of gaming's greatest hardware pioneers have come together in one location," stated Sean Kelly, Co-Promoter of Classic Gaming Expo.
Conceived and coordinated by three of the individuals
responsible for coordinating last year's highly successful
"World of Atari" event, Classic Gaming Expo(tm) is the industry's only annual event that is dedicated to celebrating the roots of electronic entertainment, bringing together industry pioneers, gaming enthusiasts and the media for the ultimate in learning, game-playing and networking. Classic Gaming Expo(tm) is a production of CGE Services, Corp. (www.cgexpo.com)
Subj: APE and Prosystem '98 Beta Available
Final beta test versions of Ape '98 and Prosystem '98 are now available for registered users of APE. A few of the new features in APE '98 vs. the DOS version are:
Excellent stability under even the heaviest system loads, runs as a real windows device driver in the background. No more sputtering or time-outs when running programs.
Runs in the system tray and uses 0% of the CPU when idle, even on a 486 system. Does not use more than 3-4% of available CPU time even when loading from the Atari at highest possible speed.
8 independany PC-MIRROR drives, as well as the complete big disk support your used to in APE. Each independent PC-MIRROR drive can also act as an independent APELOADER drive if your OS supports booting from drives other than drive 1.
A file browser with built-in support for viewing the complete directory tree of any Atari/Mydos or Spartados image, and extracting files.
Advanced printer support. Print from your Atari to any windows printer driver, using truetype fonts, direct to the PC printer port, to a file, or to a print monitor window.
Plus many other new features like the nice GUI and ease of use. Check it out if you have Windows and are using APE.
The prosystem has been completely rewritten and includes batch support of 1-4 drives for every operation. Need to image a bunch of disks? Just hook four drives upto your Prosystem interface and press start. Need to format a box of disks? how about formatting all 4 drives at once to make things easier and faster?
To get your beta copy just e-mail me with your registration information and I will send you the download URL and password. Any information regarding bugs or new features would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Subj: Atari disk image conversion utility
Hello!
I've finally released my ACVT utility. It's replacement for all those DCM2ATR, XFD2ATR, ATR2XFD etc. programs. This program can handle four well know Atari formats ATR, XFD, DCM and SCP and can convert between them. It also can repair few broken ATR/XFD images.
Here is readme:
Acvt v1.00 (c) 1999 Jindrich Kubec
This program is provided 'as is', no warranty will be taken
for any damage caused by it or by any use of it.
The whole package is placed under the GNU Public License, for further information on redistribution see the included file "GPL.TXT".
Description:
It's replacement for DOS version of Steven Tucker's Imagic.
Thanks go to:
Usage:
sourcefile is Atari disk image (ATR,XFD,SCP,DCM).
destfile is output disk image. If omitted, output filename is created automatically.
-xfd -atr -scp -dcm options are output type modes. Default is -atr.
-batchmode: turns on multi file processing mode. Only input files are specified on command-line (Unix-like compatible regexp expressions are allowed when compiled under DJGPP). Output filenames are created automatically.
-autorepair: automatically determines the best repair method.
-norepair: doesn't ask for repair options and considers input file invalid.
-errstop: in batch mode ends on first error encountered.
-over: overwrites existing files. Otherwise returns and error.
-test: only loads input images and displays their state.
To Do:
Known Bugs:
Function for actual conversion is stupid. In fact in order to convert ATR to XFD there is created Atr object, loaded in, and same Xfd object is created and all the data are duplicated. With 16MB SpartaDOS Atr images it's simply too
much.
Compiling Tools:
--
Theres a new professional maded board for the "AKI" (Atari Keyboard Interface) available now !
Some of the features:
- connects any standard PC keyboard with your ATARI
For some pictures and a short description of the new board look at:
http://www.macfalkner.de
bye, MacFalkner
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 officers,
club members or ATARI Corporation.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: NEW LOW PRICES FROM DGS
Date: Thu Jun 24 07:13:59 1999
Screen Aided Management (SAM) Complete Package - GBP10 (US$20)
QUICK ED Character Set Editor - GBP3.00 (US$6)
RubberBall game - GBP2 (US$4)
Bombi game - GBP2 (US$4)
Minesweeper game - GBP2 (US$4)
Glaggs It! game - GBP2 (US$4)
Pack of all 4 games above - GBP5 (US$10)
dgs@clara.net
Subj: CGE '99 update
Date: 99-06-25 16:39:45 EDT
For immediate release
Contact John Hardie, Sean Kelly & Keita Iida
info@cgexpo.com
516-568-9768
http://www.cgexpo.com
### END ###
Date: 99-06-17 17:08:27 EDT
From: "Steven J. Tucker"
Steve
* * * Author of Imagic and APE -
The Atari Peripheral Emulator! * * *
* * *Turn your 8-bit Atari into a powerhouse with APE!* * *
* * *Ape Homepage: http://www.nacs.net/~classics* * *
!! Request my *FOR SALE* LISTING OF CLASSIC VIDEO GAME STUFF !! 2000+ Lines !!
Date: 99-06-11 11:38:17 EDT
From: Jindrich Kubec
Latest version can be found at http://www.asw.cz/~kubecj
------------
Converts between four basic image formats.
Currently supported are:
ATR - SIO2PC images
XFD - XFormer images
DCM - DiskCommunicator images
SCP - SpartaDos SCOPY images
It's in fact better because:
1) It's free.
2) It comes with source.
3) Therefore it could be ported to another architectures.
4) Contains less bugs. (Hope so.)
5) Can repair some invalid images.
Ernest Schreurs for his DiskCommunicator dissection and paper about DCM
format.
Chad Wagner for DCMtoATR utility (DCM driver is still loosely based on his code).
------
Acvt [options] sourcefile [destfile]
History:
--------
Date Author Version Description
5/22/1999 kubecj 0.10 First version
5/25/1999 kubecj 0.15 SCP save added
5/29/1999 kubecj 0.20 DCM save added, decompression corrected
5/30/1999 kubecj 0.30 Code cleanup
6/1/1999 kubecj 0.35 Invalid DD ATR repair added
6/2/1999 kubecj 0.39 Invalid DD XFD repair added
6/2/1999 kubecj 0.40 Invalid ATR length repair added
6/2/1999 kubecj 0.41 Added cached read for DCM decompression
6/3/1999 kubecj 0.42 Code cleanup
6/4/1999 kubecj 0.43 Added checks for DCM..., check formulti-arc
6/5/1999 kubecj 1.00 First public version
------
Maybe check pass count in DCM images?
-----------
DCM record 0x42 is not decompressed, code is present, but commented out and untested. I need some sample first.
----------------
For PC executables DJGPP is used. It could be found at
http://www.delorie.com.
Sources were written/tested on GCC/Intel only. There should be only slight problems to port it to different architectures/environments.
Makefile should need only slight changes.
Jindroush
See http://www.asw.cz/~kubecj for Atari 8bit utils!
Subj: Professional AKI board now available!
Date: 99-06-17 11:56:39 EDT
From: MacFalk2@aol.com
- full plugable, only 4 soldering points needed (only if
POKEY is socketed)
- option for a separate macro memory (up to 8Kbytes)
- output pin for switching several OS-Roms or Ramdisks
- the 'hanging key' software bug is removed
-> atari projects -> AKI
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Last updated: Thursday, July 22, 1999
URL:http://www.library.carleton.edu/space/news9907.html