Utilities and (Semi) Serious Software News

It's like the Demo Scene News column, but with useful stuff!

So what's with the whole idea of "Utilities News"? I bet you're all thinking "With the fifteen years gap since the last proper Maggie, he's aged horribly and gone all GEM-Dad! There's grey nasal hairs there too, if you look really closely!" But that is not the case (just don't look too closely at the nasal hairs!)

There's quite a bit of cool stuff below. None of this is about clip-art or the best driver for a 1990 era inkjet printer. I gather a love for mono clipart closely follows the twitching, drooling and reading of Daily Express headlines aloud stage. So if I do get like that, then you have permission to shoot me.

WAIT!! (BANG!) - Missed!

(This time!!)

Anyway, read on.

We'll start with Lonnie Pursell or 'LP' to his friends - He's been busy recently with some new 'zView' codecs, and reworked many existing ones. One prominent example is a fixed animated gif codec, that gets rid of snowy backgrounds and non animation issues on some gifs. Also there are lots of other codecs for more or less obscure formats introduced as well such as TruePaint, Ascii Art, Spectrum 512, IFF and more!

All of this and lots of other stuff can be found at http://gfa.atari-users.net/atari/

D-Bug - Trans D-Bug Express - D-Bug released a new and completely retooled MSA disk imager at the Outline 2015 party. It not only looks good, but can back up difficult floppies where Jay MSA and others falter.

Also from D-Bug, there's a reworking of the original Falcon TOS underway, thanks to GGN and others. TOS 4.xx is now possible on STE, at least an emulated version of this. It's still in its early stages, but it offers the enhancements from this final TOS version. Also *some* extra resolution modes, such as a four colour 640 x 400 mode and sixteen colour 320 x 400 screen (both interlaced.)

It's still at an early stage. There are other enhancements in the pipeline, such as an improved text displayer or editor. (Room has been made by stripping out un-needed extras such as language resources.) A finished product could ultimately be a viable replacement TOS for all Atari hardware including the Falcon.

Exxos - There's a new version of GEMBench, 5.0 coming soon, with some additional tests. Although according to Exxos, this is currently stalled.

PARCP, the 1996 era parallel port file transfer widget, for transfer between Atari's and 'foreign' machines, has had a major update earlier this year. The newest update features PARCP-USB, in recognition of the fact that new PeeCees don't have parallel ports any more. This is the first major improvement for years. The software has been updated too. It is now at version 4.0.0 and can also run programs as well as transfer files, so it is almost effectively a desktop or launcher app in addition to its other abilities. The PARCP page is found at http://joy.sophics.cz/parcp/

Ace Tracker 2.0 by New Beat Developments- This one goes back to 2014, but is included here for the general awesomeness. As expected, v.2.0 is a major update with many new features and enhancements. Some of these are culled straight off the website and listed below.

Triangle wave.
Tri-saw wave.
High Pass, band pass and band stop filters implemented.
Filter disable implemented.
Square transformator added to oscillator 1.
Sawtooth sub oscillators added to both oscillators 1 and 2.
Hard sync mix mode implemented.
Possibility to disable reverb and delay (or output 3/4) per patch.
Two new source oscillators in F.M. mix mode.
Amplifier with or without limiting. Can be used for distortion effect.
Improved .WAV support.
Increased maximum number of samples to 256.
New tracker commands.

HD Driver - Is still being maintained and added to by Uwe Seimet. As of the 12th September 2015, it's at version 9.07.

Anima's done some work on an ST image converter/enhancer. The extremely simple version is getting two degas pictures to interlace the palette to get rather more than the bog-standard sixteen colours onscreen. This is very low on CPU cost and can be displayed with a special viewer on a standard ST/STE. It's not a true colour replacement but is potentially a usefully cheap way of getting more colours.

At least one demo uses something a lot like this with a gallery of pictures, namely the Sommerhack release 'Rebirth' by Cybernetics.

There is an online converter website that allows you to try it out for yourself at http://atari.anides.de - It has a useful link to the Atari- Forum.com discussion which goes into this in a lot more detail.

Sqward has been usefully busy in 2015. His 'UIP tool' allows ftp like file transfer via Netusbee ethernet from a host platform to Atari via the web browser on the other machine (Chrome is recommended for better support). This can be a PeeCee or Mac, as the main work is done at the Atari end of things. This one has a big advantage over most of the other file transfer applications, as it does not need Mint or another extended Atari operating system to work. More details can be found at Atari-Forum.com.

Easymint - Maanke has announced that version 1.19 is the final version of Easymint. He states that he is moving in other directions, and a lack of feedback has contributed to his decision to stop any further work here. The website remains up for the time being at http://atari.st-katharina-apotheke.de/

LDG, or Librairies Dynamiques GEM in French, is a plugin architecture for GEM applications to call on external modules. This is seen to greatest effect in the not so unknown 'zView' graphics gallery program and also MXPlay from Mikro.

There's a new LDG package after 10 years, now at verso 2.35, which features Coldfire support. It can be found at - http://ldg.sourceforge.net/

Atariuptodate - I might mention an incidental but potentially useful place to go. This is a release version tracker website from Matthias Jaap. It is good for keeping up with the state of activity on up to 8000 listed applications including games and demos. It can be found at this place http://www.atariuptodate.de

Raptor Basic - For the Jaguar, there's a complete new set of development tools from Reboot and friends. There's lots of information about it on the Atari Age forum. If you're into coding for the tragically cut short final console from Atari, now just about anyone who cares about this wondrous beast can have a go at making something new for it. This is a far bigger deal than I can make out in a single paragraph.

ST-Sound News - SC68 tunes are now playable on Mac (and other systems) natively via the Videolan VLC Player. There's a new plug-in coded by Benjamin Gerard. This includes STE-DMA playback, Quartet and Amiga Futuresound stuff. This is a breakthrough that supersedes the very long in the tooth 'XSC Player' at long last.

There's also some news on the latest update of the ST SNDH archive. This is now at v4.5 as of the 1st August 2015. There are 355 new files with 1731 sub tunes. Highlights include soundtracks for Sierra games, an unreleased very old Mad Max track, Dave Lowe's digi music for Carrier Command and Afterburner, two versions of gwEm's Kraftwerk music, and more! The goodies are at http://sndh.atari.org/

Hatari 1.9 - There's a *BIG* update with two major upgrades worthy of note. It now has improved CPU emulation right up to (an imperfect) MC68060. Also TT RAM or FastRAM is now available as an option. The WinUAE version of Hatari gives a pretty good emulation of the Falcon, almost there in fact for a standard machine. There is still a fair bit to do, but this will do nicely for the time being. See the separate report with much more detail, elsewhere in this issue of Maggie.

Photochrome V6 - Doug has been talking to RA (Ralph Zenker) as the new Photochrome version features the capability to generate medium res hi colour images up to 704 x 440 for an STE. Also for making tri-field and quad-field images simulating many more colours (up to 226,981 on STE, which is almost four times more than the Falcon's Truecolor mode!) This has been released with a brand new manual. Like Photochrome 5, it focuses entirely on converting pictures, with a massive array of options for anyone wanting to dabble with enhanced hi-colour images for their own productions.

Update:- A new viewer, capable of viewing the new enhanced .PCS formats has also been added. Further improvements are to follow.

All things Doug related can be found at http://www.leonik.net/dml/sec_atari.py - This one is well worth a visit.

CosmosEx - The massively multifunctional hardware add on, replacement hard drive, Floppy drive emulator, networking widget, USB keyboard adaptor, erm, whatever you want it to be, from Jookie, has now had proper SCSI support. This enables you to connect one of these to a Falcon at last!

A small batch of these was sold in November, further batches are possible in 2016. You can find out more at http://joo.kie.sk/

Nearing the end..

Whilst I'm here, I thought it would be worth a couple of minutes to briefly note some of the other features intended for this special issue of Maggie, but not realised, at least not this time around.

Firstly, and the cause of most guilty reflection on my part, is the missing write-up of SuperVidel. This has been installed in my CT60, displacing the CTPCI with separate graphics card, which worked quite well. SuperVidel worked, but the host Falcon/CT60 isn't quite playing ball now. There are unresolved powering up issues with the new switch with the PicoPSU that was installed. It also appears that the Falcon's DSP is prone to go to sleep.

I haven't had the time or inclination to get to grips with it this year, so that is one for 2016.

Also, there isn't a review of Ace Tracker 2. At least there wouldn't have been a review from me that could have done it justice. A proper expert musician or composers point of view is needed. One has not been forthcoming, so far at least.

Another one that is in the "When I can be arsed" pile, is a review of UIP Tool. I do have an unused NetusBee, and this would be the ideal tool to connect my CT2 Falcon to other hardware for easy file transfers. (I have a working Ethernat USB transfer on my CT60.)

Finally, I have an idea which is perhaps better presented as a forum thread. Which could be best described as "Keeping track - half-forgotten hints and tips for people returning to Atari computers after a long time away." - This would take in all manner of things like keyboard shortcuts, more or less obscure settings and shortcuts, useful reminders for obscure but powerful apps. Things perhaps familiar to people long ago, but lost when no longer in daily use.

Anyway, it's been fun doing this one, see you all again soon.

CiH - For Maggie 25th Anniversary, Various in 2016.

Back to the Seriousness.