WEST OF SCOTLAND ATARI USER GROUP (Affiliated to The Association of Atari User groups) Issue number ONE, February 1996 (ascii text version) Our aim is to provide support for, and to foster communication between, Atari Computer owners in the West of Scotland, to provide timely information about Atari news, products, vendors, and service, and to find solitary Atari computer owners and encourage them to join the group. Sandy Thomson Alasdair Goold 41 Mayfield Crescent "RoisBheinn", Overton Crescent Howwood Johnstone PA9 1BL PA5 8JB Tel: 01505 703813 Tel: 01505 328254 e-mail:sandy_t@cix.compulink.co.uk e-mail:agoold@cix.compulink.co.uk EDITORIAL Welcome to the first ever issue of the Newsletter of "The WeST of Scotland Atari User Group". The obvious question is why start a new user group when everyone is saying "THE ATARI PLATFORM IS DYING". My answer is that every computer platform will inevitably die sooner or later. So just like the IBM compatible PC, the Apple MAC or any other platform, yes it is dying, but, IT'S NOT DEAD YET, not by a long way. "The WeST of Scotland Atari User Group" has been set up to bring us all together, so that we can share our knowledge, experience and enthusiasm for the Atari platform. If it is going to be a success it will require everyone to take as active a part as possible. So if you regularly use a piece of software, have any upgrade fitted to your machine, or have any other Atari related matter you would like to share then please send it to me on a floppy disk (ascii, 1st Word Plus, Papyrus, .RTF or .STW format) for inclusion in a future newsletter. Don't assume that because you know something everyone else will too. Everybody has something to contribute !!! Over the last couple of years there has been a major change in the Atari scene. No longer are there dozens of games released each year, we're left with only a handful of Commercial and shareware games. However as far as good, serious software, both shareware and commercial, things have never been better. So if you haven't already done so, open your mind and have a good look at what the Atari still has to offer the home user, you might be surprised ! On the Atari magazine scene with the closure of ST User and ST Review things looked grim for a while, but Atari World has appeared and is getting better with every issue. The writers, who are mostly on-line with CiX are committed to the Atari platform and use the hardware and software they write about on a daily basis. I would urge every member of the user group to support AW by either placing a regular order at your newsagents for it, or by subscribing. You can subscribe on a quarterly basis. In this and in future issues there are a letters or Forum, and a For Sale/Wanted section, so if you have anything you want to say about the Atari World, any questions you want to ask, technical or otherwise, any computing tips or anything you want to sell or buy (computer related obviously) let me know. Also do you know of any other Atari users ? They are all welcome at the User Group. One of the aims of the Group is to seek out solitary Atari users and encourage them to join our group. So, if you have any ideas for the type of thing you would like to see happening in either the User Group or in the newsletter please let me know and if anybody wants to submit an article on any piece of software, hardware or anything else you use with your Atari, or that you use your Atari for please do so. (If you don't, I might have to start allocating you things to write). Also anybody who wanted to write a regular column on any Atari related subject would be very welcome. REMEMBER ! It is your Atari User Group, use it or lose it. Alasdair Goold INAUGURAL MEETING The Inaugural meeting of "The WeST of Scotland Atari User Group" will commence at 7:30pm on Tuesday 20 February 1996, within the upstairs Lounge of The Railway Inn, Main Street, Howwood. Access will be available from 7pm. It is anticipated the meeting will be concluded by 10:30pm. The Railway Inn is easy to find if you have your own transport. You'll need to find your way onto the A737 between Johnstone and Lochwinnoch. This is the new bypass that was completed a couple of years ago. Between Johnstone and Lochwinnoch you will find an exit marked Howwood. Come off the A737 there and follow the road into the village of Howwood. The Railway Inn is on your right hand side just after you enter the village. You'll find us upstairs in the lounge. Public transport is a problem. If anyone wants to attend, and can only use public transport, get in touch and we'll see what can be organised. The lounge will be closed to the general public for the duration of the meeting and although the bar will be closed, refreshments will be available from the Public Bar downstairs. There will be a short presentation of the concept behind "The WeST of Scotland Atari User Group" and then the floor will be thrown open for a discussion on the direction we would all like to see the Group going. I think it is important to get as much input from others as possible, so come prepared with your thoughts. The first order of business will be to elect a committee. Personally while we would prefer "The WeST of Scotland Atari User Group" not to become too formal, having a committee and appointing a treasurer seems a prudent idea. At the moment it appears as if we will be getting the premises for nothing. The licensee is happy with the idea that a few Coca-Cola's will be being bought each night. Therefore the only expense that we can foresee at the moment is a relatively small amount per person to cover the cost of the stationery involved in setting up the User Group, and publishing the newsletter. To try to keep expense to an absolute minimum we would ask that everyone who attends brings with them a medium or large SAE for the next copy of the next newsletter. We will also be looking at ways to raise the finance for the stationery etc to reduce members costs as much as possible. FORMAT OF MEETINGS Our initial intention, which is open to discussion, is that each meeting will be split into 3 phases. i) Formal meeting: to discuss any relevant business and to allow suggestions to be made. Hopefully this would only take up a few minutes of each night ii) Demo: A short demo by a member or a guest of either some piece of hardware or software. Many of us have only ever seen some Atari products in the magazines. This is your chance to see them live. iii) Random Access session: A general free for all to allow the members to meet, talk and try out software on the machines present. AG 1996 MEETINGS All meetings will take place within the upstairs lounge of The Railway Inn, Main Street, Howwood. The doors will be open from 7pm . The formal opening of each meeting will take place at 7:30pm. The proposed dates for the meetings to be held in 1996 are as follows. 1996 20 FEBRUARY - 1ST MEETING 19 MARCH 16 APRIL 14 MAY 11 JUNE 9 JULY 6 AUGUST 3 SEPTEMBER 1 OCTOBER 29 OCTOBER 26 NOVEMBER 24 DECEMBER -NO MEETING 1997 21 JANUARY - AGM ? All dates are provisional at the moment and will depend on both the response to the groups as a whole, and the suitability of the Railway Inn. AG ATARI NEWS ST Format stops new subscriptions. With issue #78 of ST Format, subscribers got a note to say that all new subscriptions to the magazine had been stopped. Existing subscribers could re-subscribe for either 6 or 12 months, but Future Publishing will no longer accept new subscribers. This is not good news for ST Format. AG The UK Association of Atari User Groups. You may have noted on the front page of this newsletter and on our headed paper that we are affiliated to The UK Association of Atari User Groups. To explain what exactly this is I have included a press release from Harry Sideras. For those of you that have read Atari World, you might recognise Harry's name. He writes AW's Clubbin' page as well as the occasional other article. AG The UK Association of Atari User Groups re-launched ============================= Recently Ken Ward announced the end of his involvement with the UKAAUG. This followed 15 years of sterling and much appreciated work on behalf of Atari 8-bit, ST and Falcon owners and User Groups. Following that decision I contacted Ken and obtained his consent to take over the AAUG and re-launch it within the UK as from January 1st 1996. The primary purpose of the UK Association of Atari User Groups is to maintain a directory of User Groups and their contact details in order to enable individuals to join an existing network of support. Advice and encouragement is also available on creating new groups in areas where it doesn't currently exist. The UK AAUG will continue to operate on a non-profit making basis, so all postal contact requiring a response must be accompanied by an SAE and disk. The directory will also contain information on groups that support Atari software, Atari publications (both printed and on disk), PD Libraries and Atari Bulletin Boards, FTP and WEB sites. To this end I would ask that all organisations that need to be listed in these directories, that haven't already been contacted directly on this subject, confirm their current contact details as soon as possible to ensure that they are included within my provisional lists. Harry Sideras UK Association of Atari User Groups 49 Haywood Road Tile Cross Birmingham B33 0LJ (Remember the SAE and disk) Internet: sidcelery@cix.compulink.co.uk hsideras@mettav.demon.co.uk NeST: Harry Sideras on 90:102/143 TurboNet 100:1011/143 AtariNet 51:502/100.16 FIDO 2:254/108.16 COMMS Several of the founder members of the WeST of Scotland Atari User Group are keen users of comms. several of us are on CiX which featured in Atari World, issue #9. The intention with this section is to bring you news from the world of communications. FORUM Obviously, this being the first issue there are no letters or items in The Forum section. I would hope that htis could develop into an area where questions could be asked, then other members could write in with their own answers which will be included in a future issue. Hints and tips for any Atari related subject can also be featured here. FEATURES This section will contain features on Atari related items as written by members of the group. This can be on a piece of software you use, or a purpose that you put your computer to. There are no rules here, as long as you can tie it to your Atari somehow. As a starter there are a couple of items. The first on Grahpics cards by Sandy Thomson, and the second by Brian Stanton on getting Timeworks, as supplied witgh AW a few months ago to run with other useful bits of software. If you have any comments on these or future articles, send them in and we'll put them in the FORUM section. GRAPHICS CARDS: Although they have been available for some time for the MST and TT range of Ataris, it is only recently that one has become available for the STe & STFM range. Priced at around œ300, you either have to be a VERY enthusiastic Atarian, or have a definite purpose in mind to even consider this as a serious option. First question is Why? As a professional photographer, I wanted to use Multi-session CD Rom to store and re-touch my photographs so, when I enquired about this, I was advised to fit a graphics card to my MegaSTe4. System Solutions could do a graphics card/multiboard package for around œ300. So what would I get for my money ? PROs 24 bit card gives "TRUE COLOUR", IDE Hard drive Compatible, Up tp 8meg Ram space CONS Multisync or VGA/ SVGA monitor required, Having to recase an ST into a desktopper or similar, Cost At this point, my interest began to cool VERY rapidly. An outlay of œ400 or more to me, meant either opting out of the Atari platform entirely OR buying a Falcon OR forgetting the whole idea altogether. I opted for the middle idea and bought a Falcon. HOWEVER...... IF you own a basic system and IF you intend to upgrade the memory and IF you intend to buy a Hard Drive and IF you don't yet have a monitor, This could be for YOU! Anybody out there got a card going CHEAP ???? ST TIMEWORKS V2.04: TITLE: Timeworks 2.04 & the Falcon - I have at last got TW up and running - hopefully what follows may be of interest. Thanks to Neal O`Nions at Compo for much needed advice at various stages. (After several false starts, I ended up working with fresh installations of Speedo 4.2 & 5 on a spare partition and a bare desktop. XBoot and a text editor - Everest for me - are almost essential). 1. Install Timeworks 2.01 from the Readers Disks, selecting ST High as the screen resolution (printer to taste!). Do not run either FONTWID.APP or PUBLISH.APP. 2. Install v 2.04 as per READ.ME text file supplied, with ASSIGN.SYS being edited to remove all the fonts except Dingbats screen and printer bitmap fonts. Don't run Fontwid etc at this stage. 3. Change from ST High Res. with "Set Video" option on the Desktop. Personally went to Falcon SVGA 16 colour (640*480*16) mode which is my default. From now on, this can be used, and ASSIGN.SYS does *not* have to be altered to take account of this. 4. Install (activate) SpeedoGDOS (5.0c preferred, but works with any version), with OUTLINE.ACC & DRIVERS.ACC also active. Probably best just to start with the standard no. of fonts supplied for manageability. (Loaded all the Speedo fonts I had from HiSoft's Designer's/Writer's Font Packs - 72 in all! - worked fine but took 8 minutes to load...) 5. Using OUTLINE.ACC, configure EXTEND.SYS - set Width tables "ON" but do not create width tables. Set caches including the bitmap cache. Set point sizes to 10, 12, and 14, set all fonts and save. Reboot to activate these settings. Can edit EXTEND.SYS with the text editor but it's a lot easier with the acc. 6. Now (at last!) run FONTWID.APP. This should process the screen widths, the printer widths and finally the Postscipt (sic!) widths. The prog. will hang at this stage. Reboot. 7. Run PUBLISH.APP. 8. Once running it's probably best to create a new DEFAULT.STY before trying anything as "error in j_getfont" tends to appear if the prog. looks for a font in the original default.sty that isn't there. In general, care in making sure that the correct versions of the printer drivers are present, and also of OUTLINE/DRIVER ACC's for the Speedo versions, plus checking all the paths are correct makes life a lot easier. FONTWID has to be run after any alteration in fonts or screen resolution, but creation of various sets in XBoot of standard set-ups cuts down this, as the Batch Command facility really comes into its own to copy in the various pre-created SCREEN.WID & PUBLISH.WID files. Works with NVDI 2.5 & 3 - but more of that to follow. Also to follow is how to get rid of the original Dingbats bitmap bullet font. This leads to the best combination a Speedo "bullet" font, Speedo 5, and NVDI 2.5 (mainly from the ease of handling font changes - NVDI 3 is a pig in that respect). Truetype fonts are also on the agenda. Now to remove the original Dingbats bitmap font as supplied so as to run purely on vector fonts.... Start point - Falcon in 16 colour mode SVGA using standard Speedo 4/5 fonts supplied (aided by XBoot & Everest). 1. Assign.sys: delete all the zdbxxxxx screen & printer fonts leaving just a list of "path = ", screen.sys's and "21 appropriate Speedo printer driver.sys". (The path I chose is to my NVDI 2 Gemsys folder to make life easier for adding NVDI). 2. Extend.sys: set BITCACHE = 0 (leave WIDTHTABLES = 1). 3. PUBLISH.DEF: edit last line BULLET_FONT 129 to BULLET_FONT 5003 - now using one of the installed Speedo fonts as the bullet font that Timeworks requires - Swiss 721 BX000003.SPD in this case but can use most of the others that have a full character set AFAIUI (not More Wingbats SWC!!) with Speedo 5 adding 5000 to the font id. 4. Reboot. Rerun FONTWID - hangs - reboot. ...and that's it! You can add/remove Speedo fonts very easily with OUTLINE.ACC/PRG. I use XBoot to install sets with various standard groups of fonts, using the Batch Command option to copy in the various associated PUBLISH.WID & SCREEN.WID files - so only have to run FONTWID at the setup stage. For small font alterations, I use a Timeworks Reboot set which has no Assign.sys or Extend.sys info file specified so rebooting doesn't alter these just changed files - but FONTWID has to be run. Now for NVDI 2.5... (I prefer 2.5 to 3, as it's much easier to change fonts - reputedly the best setup is TW 2.04, NVDI 2.5 & Speedo 5 with not a bitmap font in sight). 1. Assign.sys: path points to folder with NVDI 2.5 screen drivers and Speedo printer driver. No alteration required if this GEMSYS folder was used as suggested previously. 2. Extend.sys: no change. 3. Activate NVDI.PRG in Boot partition AUTO folder. 4. Ensure XCONTROL.ACC & NVDICONF.CPX are installed and active. 5. Reboot and run FONTWID.APP. Reboot. 6. Run PUBLISH.APP. This will most likely result in an "Invalid Handle" error message. Key <1> repeatedly (11 times!!!) and the Timeworks Info screen will eventually appear and loading will proceed unhindered. This is due to faulty VDI calls and enabling "TOS Compatibility" in the NVDICONF.CPX will cure this, although it is not recommended for otherprogs - XBoot to the rescue again! Works beautifully, snappy screen redraws - so far seems stable. Works with Screenblaster - have used 752*560*16 and a Virtual Screen of 1505*1120 - impressive! Note: I've not tried using this with NVDI 3 as I personally dislike the Speedo font addition/removal and I didn't feel it was worth the effort. Still on the backburner is the use of TrueType fonts - haven't had time to investigate the use of these. However, I'm waiting for my NVDI 4 upgrade which may prove to have better font interchangeability - there may well be more to come... BS SHAREWARE & PUBLIC DOMAIN Genuine Shareware and Public Domain software will be available for copying at meetings. Most of this will have been sourced from PD libraries, Bulletin Boards, CiX and PD CD Roms. I personally would strongly recommend that everyone registers any Shareware software that you regularly use. At the moment, Shareware is the strongest new source of quality new software. The only way to keep the programmers active on the Atari scene is to encourage them by registering. The fee is normally very reasonable. AG SOFTWARE PIRACY The WeST of Scotland Atari User Group does not condone software piracy and will not allow the group meetings be used to copy commercial software. HARDWARE UPGRADES If you have, or know of someone with a 520 STE we have a supply of simms chips to upgrade these to 1 megabyte machines. We will have these at the meetings so if you bring the machine with you we will supply and fit them there and then for you. For this service we will charge œ5 per upgrade. The half meg upgrades are chips that have come from machines that have been upgraded already and have therefore been obtained free of charge. The funds raised for the club would be used toward stationary costs etc. IMPORTANT Please remember that if any machine is opened to be upgraded it is done at the owners own risk, and that it would invalidate any warranty still existing. In addition we expect to be lay our hands on some 1 mb simms shortly to allow STE's to be upgraded to either 2 or 4 megabytes. These 1 mb simms have still to be obtained and paid for, but I would hope to be able to supply and fit them for appx œ20 per meg. These are not being being sold on behalf of the user group. FOR SALE & WANTED STE/FALCON Software for Sale: I'm looking for offers for the following software, which is all in perfect condition :- DA Vektor PRO, Cyber Paint, Rainbow, Dogfight, Caesar, Bloodwych, Flight of the Intruder, Championship Manager Italia, Dragons of Flame, Falcon (STE version) and both mission disks: Op Counterstrike & Op Firefight, BOOKS: Atari ST Machine Language, (Abacus Software), ST Disk Drives Inside & Out (Abacus Software). Tel: Alasdair on 01505 328254 FOR SALE : STe 4 meg Upgrade TOS 1.62 + Cumana ext DD + boxed games œ250o.v.n.o. also STFM 4 meg Upgrade TOS 1.2 - 2.06 switchable + Atari SF 314 ext DD + boxed games œ200o.v.n.o. Tel. Sandy on 01505 703813 WANTED ; Microvitec Multisync 1438 14" monitor or similar, Tel. Sandy on 01505 703813 CREDITS This Newsletter was prepared using Papyrus Gold with N.V.D.I. and printed at 300 dpi on a Hewlett Packard Deskjet 500C. The headings are in Swiss 721 12pt text and the body text is in Times New Roman 10 pt. Contributors: Alasdair Goold Sandy Thomson Brian Stanton Harry Sideras (½ WSAUG, 1996)