March 2012 meeting this Sunday!

Midi Maze in all its glory!

Just a quick reminder that MACE will meet this Sunday the 18th of March, 2012 at the usual spot.. We expect to have a lot of company on this occasion, with a LAN party being hosted by our parent organisation, Melb PC.

The ST Offline Tournament game being played currently is Xenon II. I'll try to have it set up! Atari-forum thread is here.

The February meeting was an enjoyable one, with Roger setting about getting MidiMaze set up on some ST's for some multiplayer action in the coming meeting. Perhaps we can add a new FPS to the LANner's agenda this month!

Finally, we may be lucky enough to have an old member, Mark, make a guest appearance this meeting with some hacked up Atari hardware to show. If not this meeting, maybe April!

Stay Atari!

Raspberry Pi

Proving that lots of people can still get excited about enthusiast hardware platforms has been the recent runaway success of the first batch of Raspberry Pi computers offered for sale in February 2012.
The Raspberry Pi computer is a tiny, very cheap, modern spiritual successor to the Acorn BBC Micro. Its makers pay homage to the BBC Micro by including a clone of BBC Basic in the distributed Linux operating system, and continuing the model naming convention used by Acorn.
Raspberry Pi measures approximately 3.3 inches by 2.1 inches in size, costs $AU54.75 delivered, and is capable of playing back full 1080P video. It features a low-power, powerful DSP-based VideoCore IV (the less powerful VideoCore II was used in the iPod), an Arm11 700mhz CPU, 256MB of RAM, and an onboard SD card slot for storage.

An initial production run of 10,000 units was manufactured, however global demand has been very high, with retail servers crashing and millions of expressions interest being registered in the days after its release.

Whilst we here at MACE are very happy for the success of a retro-referencing, enthusiast platform, we feel it only fair to mention that marketing and viral, word-of-mouth communication is a funny thing! A number of equally interesting alternatives have been around for longer!

EDIT - someone was going to do it sooner or later! Here is a picture of a Raspberry Pi emulating an Atari 2600

Issue 13 of Atari User magazine is out!

Yesterday saw the release of issue number 13 of Atari User magazine. The cover indulges the seemingly traditional theme of scantily clad, CGI-rendered women for this publication... but one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, as they say!

Cover of the latest issue of Playb... I mean, Atari User

As well as the other features promoted on said cover as shown to the left, this issue includes BASIC programming tutorials for the XL/XE, recent activity in the Atari Homebrew scene, ST arcade conversions, and reviews of both old games and new - namely, Atari's Facebook RPG "Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter"

Job Opportunities at Atari!

Ever fantasize about working at Atari back in the pioneering, halcyon days of the 1970's and 1980's? Working on exciting new games and pulling that market share back from Nintendo, Sega, and Commodore? Marching into Jack Tramiel's office and telling him he's RUINING THIS COMPANY!!? Well it's too late to do any of that! However if you would like to actually work for Atari (fo reals!) they are currently advertising a number of positions, ranging from mobile phone game development to marketing.

Job opportunities at Atari as of November 2011

If you don't believe me (would I lie?), go over and check it out for yourself!

I'd be the keeping this a secret and applying for the development jobs myself, but I never got past "hello world" with the Flash, iOS, and Android development kits I downloaded long ago!

Next meeting Sunday 21st Aug 2011

Just a reminder that the next MACE meeting will be held this Sunday, the 21st of August at 479 Warrigal Rd, Moorabin. For further location details, see the About Us tab at the top of the page.

The game being played for the ST Offline Tournament this month is Commando. Download and score submission details here

This is what Commando looks like when you die!

First Post

Welcome to the blog of Melbourne Atari Computer Enthusiasts, or MACE! This is our first entry, so we shall start off with the basics.
MACE meet on the third Sunday of each Month at 479 Warrigal Rd, Moorabbin for general Atari chit-chat and caper. Meetings generally start at 10:00am and go into the late afternoon.

We have a collection of Atari hardware, software (including boxed games and our old PD library), and books onsite. Our focus is on the 16/32bit home computers such as the Atari ST, TT, and Falcon, but we can also talk consoles, 8bit Atari, and even Commodore without prejudice!

Our meetings are very informal and generally take place with biscuits and cups of tea in hand! All visitors are welcome.



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