Happy New Year! I trust you all had a splendid holiday season, mine was wonderful. So wonderful in fact I am a tad short on news this month.
The club is doing extremely well financially. As I nave stressed during the meetings this is entirely due to the support you, the membership, has given it. Having been with another user group before and seeing its demise, I can truly say SPACE has something really special going on. We nave some very knowledgeable people who know their stuff and are willing to share it. Thank you members for a good year in 1990 and let us make 1991 even better!
If you missed the December meeting I must inform you, it was the meeting of the year! We had lots of good food, a very unique raffle, auction, and a plain old good time! I also had heard previously from my ATARI penpal in Switzerland who sent me a really impressive game called DRACONUS. For those of you who own ZYBEX, believe it or not, this game TOPS IT. DRACONUS will be the feature DOM of this month and you WILL WANT to pick it up.
BUDGET COMPUTER in Fridley, the store I work at, has come up with some REALLY RARE ATARI software. The Fridley store has 4 factory sealed copies of WAR GAMES based on the 1982 smash MGM movie. For those of you who nave never played WAR GAMES, it is one of the best games ever written. The game play is fast, exciting and graphically superior to many dames. BUDGET also has MASTER OF THE LAMPS, FLIGHT SIMULATOR II and one large package containing the FLIGHT SIMULATOR II scenery disks 1-6. I will attempt to bring in some of these software titles at the next meeting.
That is really about this month. I have made some New Year’s resolutions and one of them is to help keep SPACE going strong for another year. You can help. TELL YOUR ATARI FRIENDS about our club and pass the word! There are PLENT of ATARI people out there, we just have to let them know we are here!
Nathan Black
1. The meeting was called to order by President Nathan Block at 7:30 P.M.
2. President Nathan Block described the location of business "Computer Station" which has Atari 8-bit hardware and software for sale. "Computer Station" is located on Diamond Lake Road near the intersection with Nicollet. Their telephone number is 822-0777.
3. Vice-President and Sysop Ken Modeen reported that the club is looking for a 40 million byte (40MB) or greater hard drive for the BBS. The club is looking for a good deal on one. If you find one, please notify Ken, Co-Sysop Larry Serflaten or a Board member.
4. A drawing for 3 door prizes at $1/chance was then held with Bill Cadwell getting the “Jingle Disk”; Pat Krenn getting the "Ace of Aces" game; and Mike Schmidt getting the "Drop Zone" game.
5. Time out was then taken for people to register to win an Atari 400 or a “De Re Atari” Manual. During this time a demo of the Switzerland game "Draconus" was shown. The Atari 400 was won by Marc Vallevand and the "De Re Atari" was won by another club member (forgot to get his name).
6. One more $35 color monitor was available for club members and a raffle was held between 3 members interested in the monitor.
7. Joe Danko received a request for a club member to look at some hardware the Guadalupe Area Project has available. Two members of the club volunteered to check this out.
8. An auction was held for an "R-time 8" cartridge and software; this sold for $21 to Mark Vallevand.
9. News and Problems - Russ McGlenn asked if anyone can restore a "Visicalc" program disk; his copy has quit working and he is not able to get a replacement. Pat Krenn volunteered to make a copy for him and mail it to him for $1 postage
10. News and Problems - Mark Vallevand reported that someone on the BBS is looking for a working ATR8000 (runs CP/M OS); Joe Danko has one but his is not working.
11. Atari Corporation is still providing customer service and the trade-in offer for 810 drives is still on; the Atari portfolio computer is selling right now for $400 with software.
12. Disc of the Month - This months DOMs include a set of 6 machine language disks at $1 a piece as well as 3 utilities disks also at $1 a piece. This previous DOM software grouped together by area, complements of Joe Danko.
13. Since many new faces were at the meeting and a request was madee to match BBS names with faces, everyone in the room introduced themselves or were introduced.
14. The meeting concluded at 8:45 P.M. with a GREAT pot-luck feed and demonstrations were conducted on the DOMs available at the meeting.
End of the minutes for the December 14th, 1990 SPACE meeting.
Respectfully submitted by Pat Krenn, Secretary
Here is a Word Search puzzle generated by a program from APX, by Max Mulliner. There will be a different one each month. Each with it’s own theme.
The first one is computers. The answer to this months will be printed in next months newsletter.
Have Fun!
Happy New Year and Happy New Decade. It is truely the 1990’s now.
BLANK DISKS for sale at the meeting.
10 for $3.
We are still assembling the Disk Of the Month as the newsletter goes to press. Therefore, the information you are about to recieve may not be 100% accurate.
January 1991 DOM:
LabelMaster V1.6 - from BLACK MOON SYSTEMS
This is a full working version of LabelMaster, A shareware
program. You can register and Black Moon will send you the
latest enhanced version plus the Multi-Column Lister Utility
and the full documentation.
Labelmaster prints labels and mailing lists.
GIFNCODE
This program lets you encode your favorite 8-bit graphics
(graphics 8, 9, or 15) into GIF for uploading to other
computer BBSes and displayable by other types of systems.
Reads uncompressed or Koala/MicroIllustrator files in
graphics 15. Also pretty good as a way to view all the
picture files or your disk one by one. Please read the
XXX.DOC file. ShareWare...enjoy!
LABRYNTH.OBJ
In this game, which comes with documentation, you must race
a solar-powered cart through a 3-D laze and collect diamonds
while shooting baddies. 1st person perspective game,
collect 10 diamonds to win!
TK13BETA
If you presently own a Transkey IBM Keyboard Translator,
this file will provide you with some bug fixes and NEW
features.
REQUIREMENTS: EPROM Burner, 2732 EPROM, 6116 CMOS SRAM.
Includes the NEW Object code and Docs.
GEMSETS
GEMSETS complete with documentation and source code, Mac/65.
Designed to put any Atari 8bit font into your Gemini, or
Epson printer.
ACTFLOAT
Complete floating point library in Action. Provides access
to all the built in floating point functions in the Atari
operating system. Also provides all the derived functions.
DISKCOMP
DISKCOMP 1.1 compares two disks to see if they are exactly
alike. TWO DRIVES ARE REQUIRED! Non-matching sectors are
reported on-screen. Docs included.
TARTRIS2
THE 8-bit Tetris clone.
New Features include:
Permanent high scores
Two-player cooperation mode
Structure height bonus
Lines-to-go display
Lines completed display
Bonus for clearing board
Second player Join-In feature
and more!
PRINTSTAR
This BASIC program prints out 40 Column XXX.D0C and XXX.TXT
files in two or three rows of print. A great paper saver for
those big XXX.D0C files (for Epson type printers)
Also available at the January meeting will be a disk with a 48K version of TURBOBASIC that will execute TURBOBASIC software on an ATARI 400 or 800. The disk comes with some application programs.
Another BONUS disk will be DRACONUS, another game that escaped from Europe. DRACONUS is outstanding with great sound/music and fantastic graphics.
Also available at the meeting will be the famous $ disks. Classic original SPACE Library software crammed on disks for ONE DOLLAR each.
I would like to thank Glen Kirschenmann for assisting with the library. He is currently excercising his organizational skills on the library copies and will have a surprising object with him when he appears at the meeting.
With the disappearance of George Baris, we desparately need someone to take care of the ANTIC and ANALOG disks and magazines. The appointed person would only have to make disk copies and labels to keep several of each disk in stock and keep track of the disk and paper media as to who has it checked out and for how long. If possible, the Antic/Analog coordinator could also handle disk sales of those products at the meeting.
It has been a disastrous month for my computing environment. For some reason, I took my working SPARTADOS disks to the December meeting and lost them. I am just now getting productive again. In addition, my MSDOS system hard-disk self-destructed on the 30th. I spent most of the 31st shopping for a new hard-disk so I could start doing homework for my 'C' class that started on the 3rd. Things are almost back to normal. See you at the meeting.
Not much this month, I was on vacation and things on the BBS seemed to be pretty quiet while I was gone.
Title: Atari TT Computer
Author: MICHAEL FITZPATRICK
To: All
Posted: Fri 4-Jan-91 at 10:18:01pm
Had the opportunity to talk to Atari Customer Relations Today and I learned some interesting facts. #1 any 8-bit hardware returned for warranty repair will have the item replaced froma stock of new products. As far as I know it pertains only to the XE-130 and the XF-551. The stocks are dwindling so that if anyone wants to take advantage of trading an 810 disk drive and $75 for an XF-551 should be giving serious consideration to doing so in the near future. Atari also plans on keeping the ST line of products going.
Asked about the TT computer. Currently it is only available for commercial applications; something to do with FCC release certification which is pending. Atari expects to have the certification to sell the TT as a PC soon.
The following it from our co-sysop, Larry Serflaten.
I have the CLUB’s MPP 1000e modem and am ready to return it. (He finally bought a 1200 baud modem) I won the use of this modem in a raffle held at an earlier meeting. I suggest we again send out this modem with a member who does not yet have a modem. This information should be put in the newsletter, so that the members who really need it are aware of its availability. If more than one member wants to use it, we could raffle it off, like when i got it.
From the EDITOR:
Also there will be a computer hooked up to the BBS (Finally). The answer of using the multi-line phone was so simple it’s embarassing. I picked up an old 300 Baud acustic modem. I now have only to call the BBS and put the handset in the modem and the magic will begin!
The sysop has been kind enough to volunteer to help those who would like to learns how to use the BBS (Downloading, Uploading, Posting Messages, etc...).
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.