Allentown Bethlehem Easton's Atari Computer Enthusiasts'
September 1987
EDITORIAL
S
I, for one, am impressed. I
mean, really. Here we take a simple
idea like like the Atari Safari, and
with only a minor amount of
prodding from the e-board, we have a
great show. Those people who
participated are to he commended for
a job very well done.
We had only two e-hoard run
d isplays going (Puhlishi ng Partner
and the cluh's BBS). The rest of the
show was put on hy general
members and some invited guests to
make for a very educational and
worthwhile event. This is what cluh
meetings are all about -- a little
planning by the e-board, a lot of
participation from club members, and
some interesting topics to explore.
I have only two minor
complaints about the Safari. First,
since I was demonstrating on one of
the systems, I couldn't get around to
see some of the other systems . I d id
see a few and what I saw was great.
The other thing is that I would have
liked to have seen a little better
turnout from the general
membership. There was a lot to see,
but not very many people saw it.
Well, it was their loss — this was the
next best thing to another Expo this
club is likely to see for a while ...
unless we do another Safari again
soon
Onward. Once again, we have
very few articles being submitted by
the general membership. At least
this month 1 had one to choose
from. It’s a good article, one that we
are very happy to have. But where
are the rest 1 ? So far for the contest,
we have a grand total of one (count
'em, one) name in the hat for the
random (haf) d rawing. And there are
three prizes to give away. I’ll tell
you, this Eric Brodeur fellow has it
made in the shade if this keeps up.
He is assured up to this point of
having his choice of a 520 ST system
or a hard disk -- all he has to do is
show up at two more meetings before
January* Please remember folks,
there's no need to wait until
December to submit those articles —
I'll take them anytime ... really, just
ask anyone. I'm easy. So, until we
get a few more submissions, Eric is a
shoe-in and this newsletter will
remain short (but sweet).
Speaking of short newsletters,
did you know that really short,
empty newsletters cost more to mail
than nice, normal sized ones'? Yep,
that’s because light mail has
maximum size restrictions. If a
package is large but light, it is
classified as odd -shaped , and costs
more for special handling. Whether
it actually receives any special
handling or not is another story, but
the extra stamps go on it,
nonetheless. That's why the last
newsletter you received had
thirty-two cents of postage instead
of twenty-two. Hmm, maybe we
could include complementary bonus
bricks In our next light issue ...
As for this newsletter business,
we're still making a go at desktop
publishing in the hopes that it will
improve the quality of its content.
In this issue, we have some good
reviews and an excellent piece of
comedy from another club's
newsletter I really like this sort of
( eonljnued , paged)
Page 2
PRESIDENT S
COLUMN
V J
I've got good news, and bad news.
Lei me start with the good news
by thanking all of the members who
took the time to bring their
equipment and something of interest
to show at last month’s Atari Safari.
There was a lot more to see this year
than last, and that was because so
many members helped out. I'd also
like to thank Steve Jones (Jonesware)
and his associate for coming all the
way to our meeting to give us an
advance look at the 8-bit Atari and
Apple emulators they are working on
for the ST. I was very impressed
seeing Atariwriter Plus up and
running with all those extra memory
banks.
Several members mentioned that
they would like to see another Safari
soon. As long as we can get enough
members interested in bringing
something (or what about different
members?) then I see no reason why
we can't do this twice a year. Let's
shoot for early 1988-
The remote cal 1- f o r wa r d i ng
station for our BBS is working out
very nicely. Since it went in
operation the first week in June,
we've been averaging fifty calls a
month.
For those who haven’t heard,
this is a number in Allentown
(821-9222) that forwards to our BBS
in Nazareth. It allows members who
are long distance to Nazareth, but
local to Allentown, to call the club's
BBS without long d jstance charges If
you're one of those people, please use
the new number. If Nazareth is a
local call for you, please continue to
use the direct number (759-2683).
Also, be aware that this is NOT a
second phone line to the BBS- If one
number is busy, the other number
will also be busy.
We have interesting meetings on
computing your roots, computer
chess and some guest speakers in the
works. And don’t forget, to be part of
our new contest, you must attend at
least three out of the next four
meetings. (Sept/Dec)
And now the bad news. We need
some help. I don't want to unduly
alarm any members, especially those
who have just joined in the last
month or two BUT. ..
We need someone with a van or
station wagon to help transport our
projection TV screen to the meetings.
Without the screen, our projection
TV isn't worth the space it takes up
Without the TV, members won't be
able to see live computer demos or
canned video presentations. That's a
MAJOR problem!
Gene C elebus k i has been kind
enough to bring the screen for the
last year. Prior to that, I took care of
it. Unfortunately 1 sold my van last
year and Gene would like to give
someone else a chance to help out.
Personally, I think a year is more
than enough for any one member to
be expected to do this. Can you help
us?
The screen is about four feet by
six feet and just a few inches thick.
It’s very light and can easily be
handled by one person. Once again I
(continued on page 9J
Page 3
ON BOARD
with Leon Bonam
^ -J
Hello out there * This is your
vice-president speaking .
You may ask who I am and just
what do I do for your club, so. I’ll tell
you .
Besides being around to run the
meeting when the president is not
available, the most pressing business
of the V-P is to line up speakers and
demonstrati ons for the monthly
meetings .
It sounds a simple task , and once
it may have been, when club members
were eager to share new found
software and hardware with
everyone else A while back people
actually volunteered to show new
found or very useful, or just plain
fascinating things at club meetings.
A las, no more .
Now most of you folks own 8-bit
systems, and I do too, as well as
having an ST . The 8-bit systems are
quite powerful and useful for what
they are, but do have certain
limitations, in particular the amount
of memory that is directly
addressable. If you wonder what this
has to do with my task it is simply t
his: there is very little in the way of
new products for the 8-bit, and, what
there is is not easily demonstrated.
Ram disks no matter how large do
not make a good show, neither do
hard disks. New games and utility
software are hard to find because the
programmers want to work with
larger memory systems that allow
them to put more action and realism
in their games and give greater speed
and power to their utilities.
The 8-bit is not dead, and will not
die as long as people take an interest
in it, but you must demonstrate that
interest. People have criticized some
of our latest presentations for
showing too much professionalism
but will not do one of their own. We
do not expect slick shows, but all of
us on the executive board are more
than willing to help anyone who
wants to do a demonstration, or we
will do the demo if you will provide
us the materials needed (hardware or
software} and some idea of what it
does. So you don't even have to do
any public speaking, and if you're
very shy we won't even tell anyone it
was your idea.
Finding a good speaker from the
industry is also becoming difficult as
most of the top guns are in the
midwest, or on the west coast, and
are reluctant to travel just to give
one talk. It becomes a matter of luck
and timing to find someone coming
east on business at the right time and
with the right commuter connections
who is willing to divert for a while
and brighten our our lives with his
presence.
I feel a certain tension among
club members dividing the 8-bit users
from the ST users and I can't help but
wonder why. This is an Atari club
and anything from a game machine
to an MS-DOS machine should be of
interest to all members. If we reach a
point where the only demos available
are specific to an ST or PC or even
the long rumored TT, we will use
them despite the sure chorus of
"You're forcing that expensive stuf f
on us, we want 8-bit stuff
(continued on page 9)
Page 4-
The MAGIC SAC +
an ST Review by Eric R. Brodeur
What is this thing called the
"Magic Sac"? It is a cartridge and
software combination from Data
Pacif ic that turns your Atari into
an Apple Macintosh. "How can it be
done" you ask 1 ? Well, when you
buy the Magic Sac + (referred to
hereafter as the 'Sac') there is a
real-time clock and chip sockets in
which you must insert the
Macintosh 64-k ROMs. If you already
own a Mac there is no problem since
all you do is remove the chips from
the Mac, but if you don't own a Mac
then you must buy the ROMs from
an Apple dealer. They are priced
around $60-$70 and the cartridge
itself is $100-$110. There are some
retailers that will sell both the
ROMs and cartridge together but this
is rare.
To use the Sac all you do is insert
it in the cartridge port and load the
emulator software from the disk
supplied to you from Data Pacific.
After it partially loads there is a
window in which you can select the
memory size of the emulated Mac
(it is dependent on the amount of
RAM in your ST. A standard 520ST
can emulate either a 128k or 256k
Mac and a 1 meg ST can be set at
512k or 828k- If you have even more
memor y than that available there
are other memory size options.
Other selections include where the
port in which printer output will go
(parallel or serial), and Hard Drive
options (if one is connected). If you
own a hard disk drive you have the
option of booting from it and also
selecting which partitions have Mac
software on them. Once these
options are set you click on the
button called "MAGIC" and the rest
of the emulator loads. Once this is
done, you insert a Macintosh Boot
disk and press any key. From here
on, you are in Mac
te r r it o r y . . . n ot h i n g of the ST is
apparent.
About 75-80% of all Mac
software will ru n under the Magic
Sac and 20 times faster. I am
building up a considerable sized Mac
library and have only had to delete
about ten files that wouldn't run
under the Sac A lot of commercial
software runs (like Excel, MS Word
3.0, Ready Set Go!, PageMaker and
more) and even more public domain
software does too (there is a list on
the Help Key II BBS of software that
runs with the Sac, but it is very
small in comparison to all the
software titles that do work
however).
Among other files on the Sac
disk are disk copiers, a formatter,
and clock programs. The Magic Sac
disks must be specially formatted
before they can be used with it, but
they can be either single or double
sided depending on the ST drive you
have. However, because of the
special format, you must use the
disk copiers supplied to copy the
specially formatted disks. Other
copiers may work also but their
reliability is definitly lower. The
two clock files supplied on the Sac
disk let you set the internal clock of
the Sac cartridge and also read it
back into the ST (thus allowing you
to use the Sac's clock whether you
are just using the ST or running Mac
software).
Right now there is no way for
Page 5
the ST d rives to d i redly read Mac
disks, so you must either download
Mac files yourself from BBSs and
commercial services or do a Mac to
ST disk transfer with a null modem
cable. The cable and software to do
this is supplied in the Magic Sac
package and is very easy to do tut
only unprotected disks can le
ported over, copy protected disks
will not function correctly. FYI:the
whole disk transfers take about 12-15
minutes. This brings up the question
of "How do I boot up the needed
Macintosh system files'?" The
answer is that you need to use a
Macintosh at least once to transfer
over the System files. An
alternative is to copy a Magic disk
that already has the needed files
from a fellow Saccer (Apple is touchy
about the aforementioned coping
of the System files so do it at your
own risk).
Soon, however, this task will
be eliminated since Data Pacific
will be releasing a product called the
"Transformer" which will directly
read and write Macintosh style disks
(as well as the current Magic disks).
This means that you can put in either
a Mac or ST disk and the
Transformer will configure itself
automatically to that disk format.
This piece of hardware will cost
about $200 and only one is needed
per ST system., not one per drive.
Among other things that you
must be aware of is that the Sac does
not support the Mac sound chip or
the MIDI ports (the reason being that
the Mac software makes d irect calls
into thesound and I/O chips for
these options , a big no no with the
Magic Sac). For the best screen
output you should use a monochrome
monitor but the Sac will operate
with a color monitor. There are two
modes in which the color version
operates. Either with a full screen
(but reduced resolution) or two
split screens that can be flipped
between with the arrow keys (but
with the same resolution as a Mac
screen). As for printing
capa bil it ies . . . no rm al 1 y the Mac
outputs to an A pple ImageW r iter
but a regular dot matrix printer may
be used The printer drivers
enabling you to use a regular printer
cost $4-5 from Data Pacific.
This sums up a general
overview of the Magic Sac and has
hopefully helped explain to you
what it is and how it works as well
as how well it works. I am very
pleased with the Sac and use it
greatly and the customer support is
EXCELLENT. You may either call
Data Pacific by voice and get great
help, or logon to GEnie and get
online help from other people with
the Sac and from David Small
himself who created the Magic Sac
Also available there are files that
are guaranteed to work with the Sac
and thousands more files from the
Macintosh SIG Besides this, you can
download the newest system files
from Apple Computer for the Mac as
well as the latest beta-test versions
of the Mac emulator.
If you have any questions or
need help I may be reached via the
club's BBS (Help Key II), Nak-Ack
BBS, and GEnie (at the address
RICKERIC).
Where’s Your
Newsletter Article?
Page 6
WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE
by Warren Farina
(reprinted from LA -ACE, June 1967)
J
BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL...
These programming languages are
well known and more or less
well-loved throughout the computer
industry. However, there are
numerous other languages which are
less well known, yet still have ardent
devotees. In fact, these little-known
languages generally have the most
fanatic admirers. For those who
wish to know more about these
obscure languages, and why they are
obscure, I present the following
catalog:
SIMPLE... is an acronym for
"Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose
Programming Linguistic
Environment." This language,
developed at Hanover’s College for
Technical Misfits, was designed to
make it impossible to write code with
any errors in it. The commands of
this language are therefore confined
to BEGIN, END and STOP.
Furthermore, no matter how the
commands are arranged, it is
impossible to receive a syntax error.
Programs written in SIMPLE do
nothing useful. Thus, they achieve
results similar to programs written
in other languages without the
tedious frustrating process of testing
and debugging.
SLOBOL... is best known for its
tremendously slow compiler. While
many compilers allow you to take a
coffeebreak while they compile,
SLOBOL allows you to travel to
Bolivia to pick up the coffee.
Forty-three programmers are known
to have died of boredom while
sitting at their console and waiting
for a SLOBOL program to be
compiled. Weary SLOBOL
programmers often turn to a related
(but infinitely faster) language,
COCAINE.
VALGOL... was developed in
Southern California's San Fernando
Valley in the hope of educating
Valley girls in programming.
VALGOL commands include
R E A LL V , LIKE, WELL, TUBULAR,
GROSS ME OUT and Y'KNOW.
Variables are assigned with the “LIKE
and “TOTALLY operators. Other
operators include the "California
Booleans" FERSURE and NOWAY.
Repetitions of code are handled in
FOR-SURE loops. Here is a sample
VALGOL program:
14-LIKE, Y'KNOW (I MEAN) START
%% IF PI A =LIKE BITCHEN AND
Ol B “LIKE UBULAR AND
9 C “LIKE GRODY**MAX
4K (FERSUR E)**2 18 THEN
d-I FOR I “LIKE 1 TO OH MAYBE 100
86 DO WAH + (DITTY**2)
9 BARF(I) = TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
17 SURE
IF LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
7 REALLY
$$ LIKE TOTALL Y(Y'KNOW)
VALGOL is somewhat declaimed
by its users for its unfriendly error
messages. For example, when the
user makes a syntax error, it replies
with the message "GAG ME WITH A
SPOON"
LAIDBACK... was developed at
the (now defunct) Marin County
Center for T'ai Chi, Mellowness and
Computer Prog rammi ng -
(continued on page 9)
Page 7
s
PUBLISHING PARTNER
an ST review by Chris Scullion
Desktop publishing. It's all the
rage these days. Everybody who's
anybody is doing it, talking about it,
or needing it desperately. It's selling
Macs left and right (about the only
thing you can do with those silly
things, anyway). It's selling laser
printers like they were going out of
st yle.
Well, now the Atari ST can do it,
too. There's no real trick to it. All
you need is a nice piece of software
that lets you manipulate text with
proportional character spacing, add
pictures in the middle, and otherwise
compose pretty pages for printing on
a good quality printer (impact or
laser). Publishing Partner from
SoftLogic does all of this, and more.
It's the first of it's kind on the ST,
so I can forgive some of its faults. It
does evrything you NEED a
publish ing package to do. It's fully
GEM based ... that's nice. It has lots of
text formatting and modification
options ... that's nice. It can take
DEGAS and NEOCHROME pictures,
crop them, size them, and put them
anywhere on your printed page ...
that's nice Youe can draw with it
directly ... that's nice. You can even
use it as a word processor if you
have to that's nice, too. It crashes
occassionally .. that's, uh, no, that’s
NOT nice
The fact is, jt has a few bugs left.
I've found that trying to route text
f rom one page to the next can cause
the occasional bombs on the screen.
" Routing" means that, if an ASCII file
doesn’t fit in one text column, you
can " pick up" the overflow text and
put it down in another column. PP
will then keep track of where one
column ends and the next begins.
However, when these text columns
are on different physical pages, it
seems to have a little trouble. After
a few attempts, it did work, but the
eventual solution was by no means
obvious.
Another problem we noticed
("we" meaning Ralph and I) was that
"what you see is ..." not necessarily
what you get. One of the primary
reasons for the delay of the last issue
of this newsletter was that, what
appeared to be a normal PP document
would not print at the laser printer.
Upon further experimentation, I
discovered that it didn't print
correctly on a dot matrix printer
either- And yet, the document
appeared fine on the screen. In
general, I found it difficult to get a
good printout started. But once it IS
started, it goes off without a hitch.
Figuring out exactly where the
printer drivers and font files have to
be on a disk is not made too clear in
the otherwise good documentation.
But it DOES work, and that's
important to note.
This is typical of all the minor
bugs in PP. They ARE minor, and
they can all be "worked around,"
avoided- So, that makes It a very
workable program, overall. The
biggest problem with the program is
not the program itself, but the lack of
character fonts available. SoftLogic
provides only the Helvetica font for
actual printing ... well they provided
others, but the manual warns you
that the others don’t work too well,
end that's no lie! SoftLogic says they
(continued on page 10)
Page 8
f
( 'EditoriaJ , continued from page 2)
thing... anytime we can have a little
fun with our computers, whether it
he games or jokes, it helps -- helps
break the self-induced pressure to
understand these beast ies and helps
remind us that they ARE tools, not an
end in themselves. I sometimes
have trouble keeping that in mind
since I am surrounded by them all
day at work, but an article like
"Watch Your Language," and games
like “ Hitchhi ker's Gu ide.. help to
bring things back into prospective for
me.
Till next time.
G President's, continued from page 3)
ask, can you help us? If you don't
step forward, no one else will.
More bad news. Two of our
E-Board members have had changes
in their jobs that involve weekend
work- Neither will be able to make
many, if any, of our general
meetings. For that reason both Ralph
Fenner (membership! and Curl Lopez
(secretary) have submitted
resignations. We need two club
members, at least 18 years of age, to
take these two positions. PLEASE,
contact me now and get involved
with the running of this club- If we
lose a few more board members, we
will have no choice but to seriously
consider the disbanning of ABE'S
ACEs. The club's not perfect but do
you really want to see it cease? If so,
do nothing. If not, GET IN VOLVED!
(On Board, continued from page 4-J
Nothing in this world is static,
new things come along and we must
accept them. Remember that most of
the ST users had or have 8-bit
machines, and while they are now a
minority, they also deserve our
attention in terms of doing a meeting
or two for them.
I would like to thank ell who
volunteered their time and
equipment for the Atari Safari. I
didn't really thank you all at the
meeting, but if you were as busy as I
was, you probably didn't get a chance
to see it all either. If we can keep this
kind of sharing alive, I see this
becoming an annual event.
For any of you who shop at the
Micro-Cottage, be sure to bring your
club ID card along and use it for an
extra discount.
See you soon.
( Language , continued from page 7)
This center was ideal for
programmers who liked to soak in
hot tubs while they worked
However, and unfortunately, few
programmers could survive there
long, since they outlawed Coca Cola
and pizza in favor of bean curd and
Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of
LAIDBACK because of its reputation
as a gentle and non-threatening
language For example, LAIDBACK
responded to user syntax errors with
the message "SORRY MAN, I CAN'T
DEAL WITH THAT."
Page 9
C-.. was named for the grade its
creator recevied when he submitted
it to his professor in
Graduate-Programming Class. C- is
best described as a low-level
programming language. In fact, the
language generally requires more C-
statements than machine code
statements to execute a given task.
In this respect, it is very similar to
COBOL-
FIFTH... is a precision
mathematical language in which data
types refer to quantities. The data
t ypes range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT
and JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name
of the language,) LITER, MAGNUM,
and GROTTO. Commands refer to
ingredients such as CHABLIS,
CHARDONNAY, CABERNET, GIN,
VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH and
WHATEVER SA ROUND.
There are many versions of
FIFTH, each of which reflects the
sophistication and financial status of
its users. Commands in the ELITE
dialect include VSOP and LAFIATTE,
while commands in the GUTTER
dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE.
The latter dialect is a favorite of
frustrated FORTH programmers.
LITHP . ith unremarkable, lhave
for the abthence of the letter ETH in
itth character thet, yet it ith thaid to
be utheful in proceththing lithtth.
Now ithn't that thpecial'?
ct c • r
_i i _JiU-
mccTih ire
I ILL I II MO I
Starting in October, the ST 3fG mill meet
immediately following our general meetings
at the community college.
(Publishing, continued Prom page 8)
will be providing more fonts and a
font creation program in the near
future, but I haven’t seen it yet.
There are some public domain fonts
available, and they seem to work
quite well, so I guess you can "work
around" this problem, too-
I like Publishing Partner. It does
everything you need a desktop
publishing program to do. But, I'm
afraid that, once I see Fleet Street
Publisher, I may become less lenient.
ABEs ACE’s 1
Meetings
September 12
October 10
November 14
Theater
December 12
Cafeteria i.
Page 10
m COM TT1STT m
Don’t forget about the new club contest? It could prove VER /'profitable for you!
First Prize: your choice of an Atari 520 ST (monochrome) or
a 20 M byte hard d isk d rive
Second Prize: an Avatex 1200 baud modem
Third Prize: A gift certificate at Gemini
A 11 you have to d o to get your name i n the random d rawing is attend three of the
four club meetings between September and December and write a 500 to 1000
word article for this newsletter. It's that simple!
o
j o
o
j o
0
J & S COMPUTERS
j o
o
(215) 966-4464
! o
o
j o
ATARI
1040/ST COLOR
$859
■ w
o
1040/ST MONO
715
| (j
o
130XE COMPUTER
149
| o
o
1050 DISK DRIVE
135
i o
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1027 PRINTER
125
! o
o
PRINTERS
i o
o
INTERFACE
35
| o
G
EPSON LX86
269
j o
G
EPSON FX86e
429
1 o
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EPSON FX286e
619
I o
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EPSON LQ80Q —
549
j o
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EPSON LQ1000
799
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EPSON EX800
529
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EPSON EX IQ 00 —
759
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MISC.
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DATALIFE 5 1/4" DISKS
10
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DATALIFE 3 1/2" DISKS
18
\ o
i —
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MEM0REX SS/DD FLIP'N FILE W/20
20
\ o
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MEM0REX DS/DD FLIP'N FILE W/20
22
; O
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MODEMS
\ o
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ATARI XM 301
39
j o
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AVATEX 12Q0hc —
135
1 G
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Page 11
ABE'S ACEs
Executive Committee
Allentown Bethlehem Easton's
Atari Computer Enthusiasts is an
independent user group organized and
run by owners of Atari Computers.
Atari is a trademark of Atari Corp.; all
references should be so noted-
If you would like more
information about ABE'S ACEs, write
us at the club's add ress or call the club
Hotline at the number listed below.
newsletter
This newsletter is published by
ABE'S ACEs on a bi-monthly basis (six
issues per year). Opinions expressed
in this newsletter are those of the
author and not ABE'S ACEs. All
unsigned articles should be attributed
to the Editor. This newsletter is
provided free to our membership and
on an exchange basis to other user
groups. Original articles from our
newsletter may be reprinted in other
newsletters provided credit is given to
both author and source.
Submissions to the newsletter
may be made via the Help Key II, at
the general meetings, or by mail to
the club's P.O. Box. For more
information, leave messages on the
Help Key II or call the club Hotline.
President Dennis John
(215) 759-8151
Vice-President LeonBonam
(215) 266-1521
Secretary Curtis Lopez
(201) 475-4854
Treasurer John Slaby
(215) 252-1991
Membership Jace Gill
(215) 395-8271
Librarian Chris C. A ndrews
(215) 866-2459
Newsletter Editor Chris Scullion
Unlisted
Library Staff
John Douglas
Robert MacGregor
16-Bit Disks Chris C- A ndrewr
Paper Library Open
Meeting Set- lip
Open
Club Phone Numbers
8-Bit Disks
Special Projects
Ralph A . Fenner (215) 868-6469
Help Key II BBS (215)759-2683
Club Hotline (Voice) (215) 759-3336
Allentown Bethlehem Easton's
Atari Computer Enthusiasts
P.O. Box 2830
Lehigh Valley, PA 18001
San Leandro Computer Club
Newsletter Exchange
P„ 0. Box 1506
San Leandro, CA 94577
