Atari Party 2011

Atari Party 2011
Talks

June, 11 2011
12:00pm-5:00pm

Yolo County Public Library,
Mary L. Stephens Davis Branch
Blanchard Community Meeting Room
315 East 14th Street
Davis, California 95616

(Learn how to attend!)



Along with games, movies, prizes and more, we also had some short talks from guest speakers again this year!

Paul Cubbage: "Atari Program Exchange"
[Paul Cubbage]

[APX]

(From Wikipedia) Atari Program Exchange (APX) was a division of Atari, Inc. that distributed software for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers through a quarterly mail-order catalog. It ran from 1982 to 1984. APX was a mail-order catalog of user-written software for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. APX allowed all programmers, not just professionals, to submit their programs for commercial distribution. If selected, that program was added to the catalog along with the credit to that programmer (unlike Atari's own mainstream software). Many APX programs were games, but also included a wide variety of applications, utilities, programmers' tools, and educational software.

Paul managed the software publishing operation for the Atari Program Exchange, working with developers to bring products to market. APX published 274 original titles from 108 different authors (including 16 teenagers) in the span of just over 2 years.

"APX - The First App Store" presentation slides (46KB PDF)
(Thanks to Paul for permission to duplicate them on this site. Also find them on Google Docs.)


Darek Mihocka: "Xformer and Gemulator"
[Darek Mihocka]

[Gemulator]

(From Emulators, Inc.) When released in September 1992 at the Glendale Atari Fair in California, "Gemulator" was the world's first Atari ST emulator for the PC. Written in almost nothing but 486 machine code, Gemulator 1.0 was capable of running Atari ST software at full 68000 speeds on Intel 486 based MS-DOS computers. Gemulator was upgraded in 1993 to add emulation of Apple Macintosh Plus computers running Mac System 6. This was followed in 1995 with releases to run on Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. In 1998 we added support for Windows 98 and NT 4.0, and spun off a sister product called "Gemulator SoftMac" (or simply as "SoftMac") which added the ability to emulate 32-bit color Mac models such as the Macintosh II and Macintosh Quadra. On November 30 2008, Gemulator 9.0 was officially released, supporting a built-in 68000/68030 debugger, improved compatibility with Windows Vista and recent multi-core 64-bit processors.

Originally released in 1991, PC Xformer and ST Xformer allow you to run non-copy-protected Atari 400/800, 800XL, and 130XE software directly on your PC or Atari ST. Copy-protected disks can also be run when using the Xformer cable and a real floppy disk drive.

Privately owned Branch Always Software, also known online as Emulators.com, develops virtual machines products for MS-DOS, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms. Our products - Gemulator, SoftMac, and Fusion PC - deliver extremely fast emulation of classic Apple Macintosh and Atari ST computers. Our emulators are ideal for those individuals making the switch from Mac to PC and wishing to preserve an investment in Macintosh software.

Sal "kjmann" Esquivel (Sorry, ran out of time!)
[Sal Esquivel]

[Tempest Xtreem]

Sal "kjmann" Esquivel, of Kjmann's Atari Sales and Service and Atlantis Games Group has in recent years helped work on Atari 8-bit game software projects such as Tempest Xtreem (based on the Atari Jaguar hit Tempest 2000) and unofficial conversions of arcade hits Outrun and Space Harrier. He also produces hardware upgrades such as S-Video upgrades for Atari 8-bits and Commodore Amiga, and power adapter replacements for Atari 8-bits.

Utilizing AtariMax's MaxFlash kit, some of the games he's worked/working on take advantage of the large, re-writable storage to provide high score recording, level unlocking, and option storage on right on the cartridge. Sal has offered to talk a little bit about this, and other development topics.



Would you like to speak at a future Atari Party, or have a suggestion for someone that you think should? Contact Bill Kendrick <nbs@sonic.net>. Thanks!


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Atari Party 2011 home | There is no registration: attend for free! | About Atari Party | E-mail Bill Kendrick <nbs@sonic.net>