Saturday, 20 April 2013
March 2013 meeting report
I think this is going to be a short one. Next meeting is on Sunday the 21st April 2013 at 10:00 AM Melbourne, Australia time. But we'll try and start the Google+ hangout earlier for those of you in the Northern hemisphere. By the way we've skipped out of Day Light Saving time and should now be one hour less in front of most of the World, excludes New Zealand of course.
Saturday, 17 November 2012
November meeting report
Another month, another meeting! Tom was so loathe to miss the excitement and adventure of the 18th Nov meeting that he cycled 3 hours, through "fire and ice", the pain barrier, and murderous mini-vans from Broadmeadows to 479 Warrigal Rd! We watched a few gameplay videos and demo's for the ST, Amstrad CPC, and Spectrum ZX81 to fill in the time, before starting a "wildcard" round of the ST Offline Tournament, in which we chose to play Klaz's patched version of Fire and Ice.
Next meeting will be on the 9th, instead of the 16th as would be expected from the "third Sunday of every month" rule. We'll be meeting at Monty's place instead of the usual location as well, so be aware!
Finally, we did a bit of ST-spotting! An ST can be spotted in a few fleeting frames of "Enter Space Capsule", by Gerling, an Australian eletro-pop band.
Finally, we did a bit of ST-spotting! An ST can be spotted in a few fleeting frames of "Enter Space Capsule", by Gerling, an Australian eletro-pop band.
Friday, 17 August 2012
MACE general meeting Sunday the 19th of August 2012...It's on again...
On Friday the 17th of August 2012 at approximately 9:34 PM Eastern Standard Time somebody wrote:
The Melbourne Atari Computer Enthusiasts meeting is on once again at 479 Warrigal Road, Moorabbin, Victoria in Australia from 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time onwards.
I'm hoping the Friday posting gives people enough warning. Thanx!
The Melbourne Atari Computer Enthusiasts meeting is on once again at 479 Warrigal Road, Moorabbin, Victoria in Australia from 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time onwards.
I'm hoping the Friday posting gives people enough warning. Thanx!
Friday, 16 March 2012
March 2012 meeting this Sunday!
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| Midi Maze in all its glory! |
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
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
Saturday, 14 January 2012
Friday, 21 October 2011
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!
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"
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| 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"
Thursday, 20 October 2011
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.
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!
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| 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!
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Vaguely Relevant Happenings Of The Last 30 Days
ST Offline Tournament Number 4 has finished! The fifth season will start in early 2012, but in the meantime there won't be any games on our agenda (at least for STOT purposes!). Discussion on the games selection list for 2012 here.
Andrew was able to represent MACE in the last round playing Son Shu Shi
The Atari Flashback 3 went on sale in KMart at the beginning of October. Unlike Flashback 2, the hardware of which was the original 2600 circuitry shrunk down and implemented on one chip, the Flashback 3 console runs an emulation engine on an Arm processor. This makes the hardware virtually impossible to hack and modify, and hence adding a cartridge port to play original 2600 games (as was frequently done with the Flashback 2) is not possible. However, the Flashback 3 retains its 9 pin joystick ports and the ability to use any original Atari compatible joystick. Perhaps we can sell the MACE stockpile of joysticks after all!
Atari scener Grey, who you may know if you visit such sites as DHS made a recent appearance on Polish TV along with his Atari collection. It's all in Polish but you get the idea!
You would probably have had to be living under a rock (or on holidays!) to not have heard the sad news of the passing of Steve Jobs last week. Less difficult it would have been, perhaps, to miss the news that the equally influential Dennis Ritchie, co-creator of C, Unix, and the famous "K&R" had also left us.
Meanwhile over at Sony security woes with the Playstation network continued, with a number of users accounts being compromised. This is seen by many in the industry as continued retaliation by Anonymous for numerous previous incidents of corporate heavy-handedness
Finally, I should mention that Andrew and myself had a great time at Monty's last Sunday! We managed to solve Monty's Falcon issues, and expect a spate of Falcon creativity from Monty in the near future ;-)
Andrew was able to represent MACE in the last round playing Son Shu Shi
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| Andrew showing them how it's done in Son Shu Shi! |
The Atari Flashback 3 went on sale in KMart at the beginning of October. Unlike Flashback 2, the hardware of which was the original 2600 circuitry shrunk down and implemented on one chip, the Flashback 3 console runs an emulation engine on an Arm processor. This makes the hardware virtually impossible to hack and modify, and hence adding a cartridge port to play original 2600 games (as was frequently done with the Flashback 2) is not possible. However, the Flashback 3 retains its 9 pin joystick ports and the ability to use any original Atari compatible joystick. Perhaps we can sell the MACE stockpile of joysticks after all!
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| The Atari Flashback 3 went on sale on Australian KMart stores at the beginning of the month |
Atari scener Grey, who you may know if you visit such sites as DHS made a recent appearance on Polish TV along with his Atari collection. It's all in Polish but you get the idea!
You would probably have had to be living under a rock (or on holidays!) to not have heard the sad news of the passing of Steve Jobs last week. Less difficult it would have been, perhaps, to miss the news that the equally influential Dennis Ritchie, co-creator of C, Unix, and the famous "K&R" had also left us.
Meanwhile over at Sony security woes with the Playstation network continued, with a number of users accounts being compromised. This is seen by many in the industry as continued retaliation by Anonymous for numerous previous incidents of corporate heavy-handedness
Finally, I should mention that Andrew and myself had a great time at Monty's last Sunday! We managed to solve Monty's Falcon issues, and expect a spate of Falcon creativity from Monty in the near future ;-)
Starwars Theme on 3.5" Floppy
The tune we well know. It's epic resonations saturated the steamy, clingy air of countless cinema's worldwide in the late 1970's; from those first renditions its faint echo's reverberated into loungerooms in the 1980's and 90's, tones laden with the shifting pitch imbued by dirty VHS player heads and 8th generation pirate copies of rented videos. Now, in 2011, it is sung by a new voice - the humble 3.5 inch floppy drive!
Whilst we here at MACE would never suggest that this shows the ST actually possessed a secret, better-quality tone generator than the YM2149 so frequently utilised (but I think I just did!), we do wonder if the two could perhaps have complemented each other better in a bid to rival the (regrettably) superior sound abilities of the Commodore Amiga.
With that thought, I shall leave you with some more examples of the genre as follows: Phantom of the Floppera, Imperial March (Solo), and Fur Elise on an HP scanner.
Whilst we here at MACE would never suggest that this shows the ST actually possessed a secret, better-quality tone generator than the YM2149 so frequently utilised (but I think I just did!), we do wonder if the two could perhaps have complemented each other better in a bid to rival the (regrettably) superior sound abilities of the Commodore Amiga.
With that thought, I shall leave you with some more examples of the genre as follows: Phantom of the Floppera, Imperial March (Solo), and Fur Elise on an HP scanner.
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