Ted Skrecky
Member
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2025
- Messages
- 22
Available at Internet Archive:
In this issue:
Atari News and Rumours by Rowland Grant:
For July to September 1995, Atari reported third-quarter results of net sales of $4.1 million and a $13.8 million loss. The results from the same period one year ago were $7.2 million in net sales and a $4.2 million loss. Atari has $53 million in cash. / Much of the Jaguar CD inventory has been sold, but sales of the Jaguar console remain slow. / Atari’s share price hovered around $2.50 for most of the summer, increased to $3 in September, and then dropped to just above $2 in October. Time Warner has sold 6.6 million of their Atari shares, representing 10.4% of Atari’s outstanding shares, reducing their holdings to approximately 9 million shares. / Ted Hoff has taken control of Atari’s affairs in North America. / Bob Brodie posted a message stating that artists, game producers, TOS development staff, and the music department personnel have been laid off. Even Atari veterans such as Bill Rehbock have been dismissed from the company. (Update: Bill has 36 credits on 34 games. He was the producer and executive producer on many Jaguar and NUON games. One of the NUON games is Iron Soldier 3.) / All future Jaguar-related work will be contracted out. / Atari has plans to enter the PC entertainment market. / John Mathieson, the designer of the Jaguar and the Jaguar II, has announced he will be leaving Atari to join a new start-up company. (Update: After Atari, John worked on the NUON media processor at VM Labs, and then moved to Nvidia in 2001, helping to develop three generations of the Tegra applications processor.) / Atari’s highly regarded programmer, Francois Bertrand, has also been laid off. (Update: Francois developed many games for the Acorn Archimedes computer. His most recent credit is for production work on Showdown: Legends of Wrestling for the Xbox in 2004.) / PC versions of Tempest 2000 and Highlander are being developed. / Atari has contracted 23 CD games for the Jaguar, and independent developers are developing 27 additional Jaguar CD games. Atari has contracted for 26 Jaguar cartridge games, and the independents are working on 41 additional cartridge games. / The October 9, 1995, issue of Newsweek states that Atari is a defunct video game manufacturer. / A recent issue of BusinessWeek published a video game article that disparaged the Atari Jaguar. Apparently, the Jaguar console sent to BusinessWeek did not work. / Microplay in Victoria, BC has not received any Jaguar games or consoles. / In September, Atari hired Ground Zero to do Jaguar advertising. They are targeting males aged 12 to 34 with fast-paced, in-your-face ads on Cable TV. / Atari has released a promotional videotape, showing clips from 20 soon-to-be-released games. / Atari is teaming up with Electronic Gaming Monthly to appear on the USA: Up All Night program for three nights, and Atari will give away five Jaguars with three top games. / Atari and Run PC, a computer and game systems retailer, are opening a Jaguar Mall Store. This is a large, temporary cubicle in the middle of the mall. The prototype store in Longmont, Colorado, sold all of its inventory in two days. / A demonstration of the Zero 5 game at the ECTS show in London generated the following comment: “I had no idea the Jag was that good.” / Rayman has been released on several game systems, but the Jaguar version is considered the best. / Defender 2000 by Jeff Minter (Llamasoft) has been delayed as his father recently died. The game is finished and will proceed to the testing phase.
Editorial by Gordon F. Hooper.
John Picken has finished the latest version of his XL2 program, and the club has mailed it to other Atari clubs and individual Atari owners. XL2 requires a minimum of 128K of RAM, allowing two programs to reside in memory, such as a terminal program and a word processor.
PEEKing Around (Gossip Column) by Gordon F. Hooper
David Ewens, Tyne & Wear Atari Users Group, UK:
David Ewens, the editor and main contact person for TWAUG, a UK Atari club, died on Thursday, October 12, 1995, at the age of 58. He collapsed and died instantly while out on the town. Rest in Peace, fellow Atarian.
Atari 8-Bit Affairs by Rowland Grant:
Steven Tucker’s Atari Peripheral Emulator (APE) software can configure virtual floppy drives (D1: to D15
on a PC’s hard drive for direct access by an Atari 8-bit computer with an SIO2PC cable. / Ernest Schreurs in Holland has created a CD of Atari 8-bit ATR disk images. (Archive.org has Atari Pooldisk 1.0, an Atari XL/XE CD-ROM Project by B.F. Schreurs. The CD is available for download in ISO and CDR format. Note: John Picken’s XL2 program appears to be in this archive under the MISC directory. (This has not been verified.) Also available are the Tyne & Wear Atari Users Group (TWAUG) disks #7 to #16.) / The Black Box interface by CSS supports direct access to SCSI devices such as hard drives and CD-ROM drives. It has been reported that ZIP drives can be accessed with the Black Box and Sparta DOS. / Mike Hohman of Fine Tooned Engineering reports the Mars board and MIO II will be in production before Christmas 1995. / Roland Buehler in Germany has developed an IDE hard drive interface that plugs into the parallel bus of the XL or 130XE computers. This interface is said to support up to eight 16 MB partitions and runs under Sparta DOS, MyDOS, and BW-DOS. / Jiri Bernasek’s BW-DOS version 1.21 has been released. / David Firth has released a new version of his Atari 800 emulator for Commodore Amiga computers with the AGA chipset. / Bob Wooley of Atari Classics has reported that AC has a complete set of Bellcom Atari 8-bit disks.
RAM/ROM Control on XL/XE by John Picken:
This is a technical article, discussing Atari 8-bit computers with RAM upgrades.
Atari ST News by Rowland Grant:
The Calamus desktop publishing program has been released for Windows 95 and Windows NT. Pagestream, another Atari ST DTP program, has been released for the PC and Macintosh. Pagestream 2.2 has been reissued for the ST and is priced at $39 US. This program used to sell for $299.95. The Atari ST version of Calamus has also dropped in price from $700 to $200. Christian Nieber has reported that Papyrus Version 4 is ready for beta testing. Papyrus is also being developed to run on OS/2 and Macintosh. / ICD is developing software for the ZIP drive. / Toad Computers is advertising the SyQuest EZ-135 at $209 with 100-megabyte disks at $24.95. / Atari ST computers can be upgraded to use 1.44 megabyte disk drives, but a new controller chip called AJAX needs to be installed along with a hardware modification for 16 MHz. / Silmarils of France has issued enhanced versions of Robinson’s Requiem and Ishar 3 for the Falcon 030 in CD format. / Anthony Jacques has released a STOS game programming language update for the Atari Falcon 030. / Jabran Akhtar has released Mnilu Tranquil, a freeware compiler for GFA BASIC Version 2.0 that will also compile most GFA BASIC 3.5 programs. / Gribnif has released a resource file editor for RSC files called Interface. / Bob Lussier (Vancouver, BC) has sent G.C.A.C.E. Issue #2 of Atari World magazine, purchased at Falcon Systems in New Westminster.
ST Catalogue Update by Ted Skrecky:
The latest disk additions to the ST club library are listed. The Commodore Amiga 500 computer is discussed. Listening to MOD music files is a definite pleasure as the Amiga 500 has excellent stereo sound. The Amiga also has the Agnus chip for memory management and the Denise chip for graphics, giving it an edge over the Atari ST. On YouTube, search for “Spaceballs – State of the Art – Amiga Demo” as it is a good example of what the Amiga can achieve. However, in my opinion, the Atari ST easily beats the Amiga in overall ease of use.
GCACE Meetings by Rowland Grant:
Many Atari 8-bit games, including Star Raiders, were demonstrated at the September meeting. / Ed Jones from the Mid Island ST users group in Courtney, BC, attended the October meeting. He uses Timeworks Publisher ST and a dot-matrix printer to produce the MIST newsletter. / John Picken demonstrated the latest version of XL2 on an Atari 130XE. / Craig Carmichael mentioned he programmed a game for the Commodore 64 called Viking Raider, published by Interphase. (Update: You can watch YouTube videos of Viking Raider. It is an Ultima/text adventure game.) / The October 1995 issue of ST Format had a two-page review of Craig Carmichael’s OMEn operating system.
PC-Mask! by Bob Lussier:
I searched the internet and found nothing about the PC-Mask software emulator for the Atari ST.
On a completely different note, has anybody heard of the Acorn Archimedes computer? It was released in England in June 1987 and was very popular in British schools. In the UK, the Commodore Amiga sold 1.5 million units, the Atari ST sold 950,000 units, and the Acorn Archimedes sold 200,000 to 300,000 units. The Acorn’s poor sales were due to its high price.
XIO3 Garden City Atari Computer Enthusiasts Newsletter November / December 1995 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
In this issue: Atari News and Rumours by Rowland Grant: For July to September 1995, Atari reported third-quarter results of net sales of $4.1 million...
archive.org
Atari News and Rumours by Rowland Grant:
For July to September 1995, Atari reported third-quarter results of net sales of $4.1 million and a $13.8 million loss. The results from the same period one year ago were $7.2 million in net sales and a $4.2 million loss. Atari has $53 million in cash. / Much of the Jaguar CD inventory has been sold, but sales of the Jaguar console remain slow. / Atari’s share price hovered around $2.50 for most of the summer, increased to $3 in September, and then dropped to just above $2 in October. Time Warner has sold 6.6 million of their Atari shares, representing 10.4% of Atari’s outstanding shares, reducing their holdings to approximately 9 million shares. / Ted Hoff has taken control of Atari’s affairs in North America. / Bob Brodie posted a message stating that artists, game producers, TOS development staff, and the music department personnel have been laid off. Even Atari veterans such as Bill Rehbock have been dismissed from the company. (Update: Bill has 36 credits on 34 games. He was the producer and executive producer on many Jaguar and NUON games. One of the NUON games is Iron Soldier 3.) / All future Jaguar-related work will be contracted out. / Atari has plans to enter the PC entertainment market. / John Mathieson, the designer of the Jaguar and the Jaguar II, has announced he will be leaving Atari to join a new start-up company. (Update: After Atari, John worked on the NUON media processor at VM Labs, and then moved to Nvidia in 2001, helping to develop three generations of the Tegra applications processor.) / Atari’s highly regarded programmer, Francois Bertrand, has also been laid off. (Update: Francois developed many games for the Acorn Archimedes computer. His most recent credit is for production work on Showdown: Legends of Wrestling for the Xbox in 2004.) / PC versions of Tempest 2000 and Highlander are being developed. / Atari has contracted 23 CD games for the Jaguar, and independent developers are developing 27 additional Jaguar CD games. Atari has contracted for 26 Jaguar cartridge games, and the independents are working on 41 additional cartridge games. / The October 9, 1995, issue of Newsweek states that Atari is a defunct video game manufacturer. / A recent issue of BusinessWeek published a video game article that disparaged the Atari Jaguar. Apparently, the Jaguar console sent to BusinessWeek did not work. / Microplay in Victoria, BC has not received any Jaguar games or consoles. / In September, Atari hired Ground Zero to do Jaguar advertising. They are targeting males aged 12 to 34 with fast-paced, in-your-face ads on Cable TV. / Atari has released a promotional videotape, showing clips from 20 soon-to-be-released games. / Atari is teaming up with Electronic Gaming Monthly to appear on the USA: Up All Night program for three nights, and Atari will give away five Jaguars with three top games. / Atari and Run PC, a computer and game systems retailer, are opening a Jaguar Mall Store. This is a large, temporary cubicle in the middle of the mall. The prototype store in Longmont, Colorado, sold all of its inventory in two days. / A demonstration of the Zero 5 game at the ECTS show in London generated the following comment: “I had no idea the Jag was that good.” / Rayman has been released on several game systems, but the Jaguar version is considered the best. / Defender 2000 by Jeff Minter (Llamasoft) has been delayed as his father recently died. The game is finished and will proceed to the testing phase.
Editorial by Gordon F. Hooper.
John Picken has finished the latest version of his XL2 program, and the club has mailed it to other Atari clubs and individual Atari owners. XL2 requires a minimum of 128K of RAM, allowing two programs to reside in memory, such as a terminal program and a word processor.
PEEKing Around (Gossip Column) by Gordon F. Hooper
David Ewens, Tyne & Wear Atari Users Group, UK:
David Ewens, the editor and main contact person for TWAUG, a UK Atari club, died on Thursday, October 12, 1995, at the age of 58. He collapsed and died instantly while out on the town. Rest in Peace, fellow Atarian.
Atari 8-Bit Affairs by Rowland Grant:
Steven Tucker’s Atari Peripheral Emulator (APE) software can configure virtual floppy drives (D1: to D15
on a PC’s hard drive for direct access by an Atari 8-bit computer with an SIO2PC cable. / Ernest Schreurs in Holland has created a CD of Atari 8-bit ATR disk images. (Archive.org has Atari Pooldisk 1.0, an Atari XL/XE CD-ROM Project by B.F. Schreurs. The CD is available for download in ISO and CDR format. Note: John Picken’s XL2 program appears to be in this archive under the MISC directory. (This has not been verified.) Also available are the Tyne & Wear Atari Users Group (TWAUG) disks #7 to #16.) / The Black Box interface by CSS supports direct access to SCSI devices such as hard drives and CD-ROM drives. It has been reported that ZIP drives can be accessed with the Black Box and Sparta DOS. / Mike Hohman of Fine Tooned Engineering reports the Mars board and MIO II will be in production before Christmas 1995. / Roland Buehler in Germany has developed an IDE hard drive interface that plugs into the parallel bus of the XL or 130XE computers. This interface is said to support up to eight 16 MB partitions and runs under Sparta DOS, MyDOS, and BW-DOS. / Jiri Bernasek’s BW-DOS version 1.21 has been released. / David Firth has released a new version of his Atari 800 emulator for Commodore Amiga computers with the AGA chipset. / Bob Wooley of Atari Classics has reported that AC has a complete set of Bellcom Atari 8-bit disks.RAM/ROM Control on XL/XE by John Picken:
This is a technical article, discussing Atari 8-bit computers with RAM upgrades.
Atari ST News by Rowland Grant:
The Calamus desktop publishing program has been released for Windows 95 and Windows NT. Pagestream, another Atari ST DTP program, has been released for the PC and Macintosh. Pagestream 2.2 has been reissued for the ST and is priced at $39 US. This program used to sell for $299.95. The Atari ST version of Calamus has also dropped in price from $700 to $200. Christian Nieber has reported that Papyrus Version 4 is ready for beta testing. Papyrus is also being developed to run on OS/2 and Macintosh. / ICD is developing software for the ZIP drive. / Toad Computers is advertising the SyQuest EZ-135 at $209 with 100-megabyte disks at $24.95. / Atari ST computers can be upgraded to use 1.44 megabyte disk drives, but a new controller chip called AJAX needs to be installed along with a hardware modification for 16 MHz. / Silmarils of France has issued enhanced versions of Robinson’s Requiem and Ishar 3 for the Falcon 030 in CD format. / Anthony Jacques has released a STOS game programming language update for the Atari Falcon 030. / Jabran Akhtar has released Mnilu Tranquil, a freeware compiler for GFA BASIC Version 2.0 that will also compile most GFA BASIC 3.5 programs. / Gribnif has released a resource file editor for RSC files called Interface. / Bob Lussier (Vancouver, BC) has sent G.C.A.C.E. Issue #2 of Atari World magazine, purchased at Falcon Systems in New Westminster.
ST Catalogue Update by Ted Skrecky:
The latest disk additions to the ST club library are listed. The Commodore Amiga 500 computer is discussed. Listening to MOD music files is a definite pleasure as the Amiga 500 has excellent stereo sound. The Amiga also has the Agnus chip for memory management and the Denise chip for graphics, giving it an edge over the Atari ST. On YouTube, search for “Spaceballs – State of the Art – Amiga Demo” as it is a good example of what the Amiga can achieve. However, in my opinion, the Atari ST easily beats the Amiga in overall ease of use.
GCACE Meetings by Rowland Grant:
Many Atari 8-bit games, including Star Raiders, were demonstrated at the September meeting. / Ed Jones from the Mid Island ST users group in Courtney, BC, attended the October meeting. He uses Timeworks Publisher ST and a dot-matrix printer to produce the MIST newsletter. / John Picken demonstrated the latest version of XL2 on an Atari 130XE. / Craig Carmichael mentioned he programmed a game for the Commodore 64 called Viking Raider, published by Interphase. (Update: You can watch YouTube videos of Viking Raider. It is an Ultima/text adventure game.) / The October 1995 issue of ST Format had a two-page review of Craig Carmichael’s OMEn operating system.
PC-Mask! by Bob Lussier:
I searched the internet and found nothing about the PC-Mask software emulator for the Atari ST.
On a completely different note, has anybody heard of the Acorn Archimedes computer? It was released in England in June 1987 and was very popular in British schools. In the UK, the Commodore Amiga sold 1.5 million units, the Atari ST sold 950,000 units, and the Acorn Archimedes sold 200,000 to 300,000 units. The Acorn’s poor sales were due to its high price.