Greetings members! Many things have taken place this summer for the club and many more things are yet to come. Next month are elections and then December is upon us and Christmas festivals will abound. We WILL be planning the Christmas meeting in October, so if you would like to contribute ideas, please come.
A very interesting situation has come up. SPACE has the opportunity to get into the software business. I am in contact with a software distributor that has 7 different ATARI titles he will sell to us rather cheaply. ATARI software is harder and harder to find and SPACE might want to get in on this unique opportunity. Distributors usually only sell to organizations with an official store front, so I was quite surprised when I was told his company would sell us the software. We will be discussing this at the next meeting.
Going along with that, I also have some more interesting news. A gentleman contacted me last month with some ATARI equipment he wanted me to sell. Among all the items he gave me was a very rare educational package in its complete entirety. The package is called "DORSETT EDUCATION SYSTEMS" and it consists of a master cartridge and MANY educational tapes complete with booklets and studying guides. I talked to the person who owned it and he said it cost him $1600. Obviously the value has dropped dramatically, but at the same time, a complete education package like this could be of great value to OUR club. I will be bringing the package to the meeting and hope the club will consent to purchasing it. Price can be discussed and brought to a formal vote. I personally think the club can NEVER have too many software titles and hopefully can add this to the library.
ATARI Corporation is planning a very large warehouse sellout to take place November 23rd and 24th in Chicago. The event is to be entitled the "Chicago Computerfest" and Apparently ATARI will be closing out all its ATARI 8-BIT stock. An address to get more information is the following:
Chicago Computerfest by ATARI C/O LCACE
P.O. Box 8788 Waukegan, IL 60079-8788
Phone: (708) 566-0682
That is about all for this month. I hope YOU, the member, will make a special effort to be with us for the last remaining meeting of the year. They will be the most important ones. You will want to make it to the October meeting because everyone will get a FREE DISK from me, just for coming, no strings attached. SO, please come to the October meeting. See you there!
The meeting was called to order by
President Nathan block at 7:34 P.M. The
officers and volunteers
of the club were
introduced. President
Nathan Block then asked
for the Sysop Larry
Serflaten to report on
the BBS. The BBS went
down on Thursday morning
and the hard disk was
not responding. Thursday evening the BBS
seemed to be working; recommendation is
reformat and reload the hard drive.
Larry also asked for approval by the club
to purchase the following software for
the BBS:
Chess @ $15,
Gadgets @ $15,
Topic-of-the-Day @ $15
(or Gadgets/Topic-of-the-Day for $25),
Networking Software @ $10, and
BBS Express upgrade @ $20.
A vote was taken and all software was approved for purchase by the club for the BBS. Larry also related that he has a "Map of the Atari 400/800" listing available to any user who wants it. President Nathan Block then complemeted the officers and volunteers on their good work; the treasury has over $1000 in it.
Roger Myer suggested that help text be added to the BBS as well as some screens/pictures to guide users; Sysop Larry Serflaten and Roger Myer will get Together on this. Vice-President Ken Modeen reminded the membership that elections will be in November for officers. All offices are available for nominations which will begin at the October meeting. Please consider running for a position.
President Nathan Block then asked if any member is looking for software. Amos said he is looking for a MIDI interface for the Atari; also, SIDEPRINT - a page printing program which used to be in old SPACE BBS library. Vice-President Ken Modeen said he will research the old BBS library to determine if SIDEPRINT is available. Nathan related that he used to have a MIDI interface, but has since sold it. B&C Computervisions has a new one for $187. Mark Vallevand shared a list of software proposed by Data Queue. A member said that he had an Assembler Editor cartridge and "Mapping the Atari" Book available for $25 and Flight Simulator II and a Scenery Disk Set for $30; call 942-5510 if interested.
Disk librarian Joe Danko reported that this month's D.O.M. contains a fun game called SNOWFIGH and other interesting software. Please purchase a D.O.M. and help support your club. Lance from Video 61 reported that he has "War Game Construction Set" from SSI available for purchase. Mark Vallevand said he is looking for Atari 1050 disk drives to purchase; Joe Danko said he is willing to sell his drive. Mike Schmidt reminded the members that the HamFest on October 12th is after the next meeting. It is held at the Hennepin Technical College in Brooklyn Park. Mike Schmidt and Mike Weiss have manned the SPACE table in the past; other volunteers are needed as well as anyone who has something to sell. Mike said bring any items to sell to the next meeting and he will market them at the HamFest for you.
A committee is being formed after the meeting to start planning the Christmas Party meeting; talk to President Nathan Block after the meeting if interested in helping out. President Nathan Block related that he received a "BIG" SURPRISE this week. Eight monitors were received and are available for $35 each; anyone who has not yet purchased one of these monitors can get one this evening. The club voted to save one as a door prize at the Christmas Party. Seven members wanted monitors so all were sold. The meeting was adjourned at 8:29 PM by President Nathan Block.
End of the minutes for the September 13th, 1991 SPACE meeting.
Respectfully submitted by Pat Krenn, Secretary.
There have been more hard disk adventures for the software library and lucky librarian (me). Along with the speed and convenience of a hard drive comes the responsibility of keeping the precious data organized and, most of all, secure. I have done well with the organization and failed miserably with the security. While checking out a cranky disk from Georgia, it seems that some wild code went out and partially formatted my hard drive. Of course, it required several weeks of diagnosis and general horsing around to discover this fact. I thought I had a hardware problem. Thanks to the patience of Mike Schmidt, hardware was eliminated and Rich Mier's advice was absolutely correct. It seems that Atari hard drive controllers are vulnerable to out of control programs and there is a shortage of data recovery software sophisticated enough to recover from this sort of thing. Thus I was forced to low level format and lose all my data with my latest backup disks dated sometime in March. Needless to say I lost all my September DOM material. The SPACE index program and the Math and Statistics re-issue will have to wait. ALso, my old hard drive problem of slow seeks has returned! The whole episode has been educational. It looks like I need to disable or write-protect the hard drive when testing unknown software. The other possibility, although remote,is the unknown disk from Georgia may contain a virus. Viruses are so rare on the Atari 8-bit that no software exists to check for infections.
SPACE Library software for September, 1991:
DRAW7XE *requires BASIC and 128k memory*
This is a complete 2-sided disk with a Mode 7 graphics
drawing/editing application. The program files are booted on
Side 1 with Basic enabled and requires a joystick and a 130XE
or other XE/XL system with at least 128k bytes of memory.
Side 2 contains complete documentation that is displayed or
printed by the program.
TEXTPRO version 4.56f: Absolutely the most powerful and flexible text/word processor available for the Atari 8-bit system.
This a reminder that the library has this final version of TEXTPRO available which is capable of the following features:
September, 1991 Disk of the Month
SIDE 1
SNOWFIGH.OBJ
SNOWFIGHT is a very interesting game that is supposed to
be a re-issue, but I have never seen it before. I almost
rejected it because I could not get it to play but the
operation rules were finally discovered almost by accident.
It is a two-player only joystick game.
See the SNOWFIGH.DOC for help in operating the game.
ALFBACK.COM, ALFREST.COM, ALFBACK.DOC
This is the SPARTADOS hard disk backup/restore program I
have been using (not enough) with the library. It works
reasonably well but lacks sophistication. It will do
continuous backups where you just keep feeding disks into the
floppy drive until data is all copied along with an index of
directories and filenames. The restore program works only if
the index is readable.
RD.COM, RDF.COM, RD.DOC:
This is tan improved PSI ramdisk driver for use with
SPARTADOS and XL/XE systems with expanded memory. This driver
has enhanced capability to partition the expanded ram for
dual use as ramdisks and extended program space and the
formatting emulates a true disk drive.
BOB11.SX, BOB12.SX, EXPRS850.SX, SX212HND.COM/DOC, READ.ME
A collection of MODEM handlers for use with various
terminal programs and the SX212 300/1200 baud modem. (which
is still for sale at DAMARK for $20).
TKFREEZE.DOC
A textfile describing the latest version of "the FREEZER".
This is a switch and accompanying logic to allow an ATARI
XL/XE system with a ramdisk to be rebooted while retaining
the contents of the memory chips.
SIDE 2
This side is dedicated to some recent additions to the
large library of utilities and macros for use with TEXTPRO
version 4.5x. Thus the reminder about the TEXTPRO version
4.56f that is available.
Graphics--------8 Sound/Music----10
Playability-----6 Overall---------9
Alternate Reality, is the first in a would have been series of games that had an unfortunate end with the second part, the Dungeon. However, what Datasoft could pull out of your "little" 8-Bit will make you want to play on, just to see if you have met up with all the enemies, or heard all the music! Even if you don't like RPG's, I suggest this game.
The Game,
The game starts with a beautiful Intro that tells the
story better than any instruction book could.
You have been captured by beings from an alien world, who have taken you to their planet. On this planet the beings have you and a plethora of other beings that can only be discribed as "Things". Thieves, Robbers, Gladiators, Imps, Gremlins, and thats not even the tip of the iceberg! In all the encounters you have, you can do many things. There are three different menus, depending on if you have surprised them, both seen each other, or are disengaged. Each has it's own unique options plus choices that all share.
The object of the game is rather simple, survive. This will be hard enough. But should you be fortunate enough to survive a night and a day, keep on, the reward is seeing you charicter build levels, and get better weapons.
Overall,
I recomend this game highly, it has a "real time"
element that is usually foregn to Role Playing Games. The
first time you see the sunset it will probably take you by
surprise, because, like the rest of this game, it is
unexpected.
Hints!!
Have fun!!
If you have a game you want reviewed, leave me Mail on SPACE, as Roger Mier, Greyhawk, or Warp 10 as PHLOD, or call me at 636-9625. I'll see what I can do.
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.