Shiuming Lai reports from the November
2000 meeting.
There's always fun to be had when
Atari enthusiasts convene, be it the wild antics of
the scene parties that seem to take place everywhere
in Europe except the UK (What's the matter guys, don't
you like our weather?), or the workshop atmosphere of
the smaller but more frequent club meetings.
This month I paid another visit to
the long-standing Cheshunt Computer Club, CCC, just
north of London. Unfortunately, this time I couldn't
find anyone free to help with navigation and equipment
loading, so I had to make do without my Falcon system
and take whatever small items I could by train instead.
Nevertheless, a decent noise quotient
could be guaranteed from club regular, James Haslam,
proudly showing his re-cased and modified Falcon, and
the only one to bring a pair of speakers! We were treated
to some pleasant ethnic music from a professionally-produced
album by Joseph Nsubuga, Cubase Audio Falcon user and
also a club member, though not present at this meeting.
James is in the process of encoding some of the tracks
to MP3 for Joseph's web site, which can be found at
http://www.impala.co.uk
Also conspicuous by his absence was
Steve Sweet and his mighty Mega STE, resplendent with
internal power supply hanging off the back (ousted by
the 40MHz PAK 030 accelerator), VME graphics card and
yet more wires and appendages sprouting everywhere.
Steve is the club's resident electronics expert, so
without him there was no open-heart monitor surgery
taking place.
Seeing Derryck Croker with his notebook
PC running the Atari800Win emulator, I couldn't resist
having a go on some of the games, in particular, Archer
Maclean's superlative Defender interpretation, Dropzone.
Next to Derryck was a heavy jinnee desktop icon editing
session on a Falcon, attended by most of the members
at some point during the course of the meeting. Peter
and Derryck (together with Dennis Vermeire in Belgium)
are responsible for the English translation of jinnee
2.51, which will be reviewed here soon.
How not to prepare for a club
meeting
Details matter. Time came
for me to demonstrate a beta version of ACE, a sound
synthesizer for the Falcon (preview in December 2000
issue). I had with me the program, MIDI lead, and a
collection of MIDI files on the Ultimate Cubase CD-ROM.
Since I don't currently have a keyboard (for MIDI input),
the idea was to slave a Falcon to another machine playing
MIDI files.
First of all I needed a Falcon with
FPU. Peter's machine would do the job nicely, but had
no speakers and wasn't near another machine to receive
the MIDI data. That was quickly solved by moving it
across the room next to James. Everything was configured,
loaded and connected, popped the Cubase CD into the
CD-ROM drive and proceeded to look for a MIDI file player...
Here's where the problem started - we couldn't find
one. To be honest, I did think of copying one onto disk
before setting off, but a lack of time and the fact
I don't immediately know of any MIDI file player on
any of my Atari machines left me hoping there would
be one on the Cubase CD. Yes, there was a demo of Cubasis,
but for Macintosh! Too bad.
Much head-scratching ensued and the
search for a MIDI file player was on. We rummaged through
hard disks, while Paul dug out his palm-top PC and rigged
it up to his mobile phone to get on the internet and
search some FTP sites. After some frustration here with
Windows doing its party trick (crashing) and a fiddly
method for performing a right-click with a touch-screen
stylus, we were on-line but by then it was time for
me to leave or risk missing the last train home.
Derryck gets stuck into a slice
of retro-gaming.
Peter West, software translation
specialist (German to English).
Looking busy as usual.
Just like the A-Team building
a contraption to get out of another
tricky situation.
Same computers, different casings.
Ready for a demonstration
except for one vital missing link...
Classic game from the early
years of the Atari 8-bit era. I must
have been seven years old when I first played this,
and never
remembered the name until now (the title screen with
the
entrance to the cavern brings it all back!)
Tea time! Paul Gibbs (club
chairman) is serving the drinks.
What's inside that cupboard? Good question.
OK lads, heads together...
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