Top News im Juli 2014

More News im Juli 2014

FTP and e-mail via SSL on the Atari (16.07.2014 - 10:05 Uhr)

"Email Made In Germany" was the slogan of several large German email providers and they introduced what should have been standard by now: The encryption of e-mail traffic with SSL. For the Atari internet programs, however, this is a problem.

Except for the programs of Pierre Tonthat alias Rajah Lone: His FTP client Litchi supports FTP over SSL under MiNT/MiNTNet, it can encrypt the password for authentication or the entire file transfer. His e-mail clients Troll and Meg also make use of the SSL library (Polarssl.ldg). So Troll now supports secure e-mail connections via the POP3 and IMAP protocols.

Particularly pleasing for Firebee owners: Pierre always releases his applications in a version that runs on the fiery bee as well.

(mj)

Book "Atari Corp. - Business is War" announced (06.07.2014 - 18:35 Uhr)

Often the Atari story has been told, but never so detailed and from so many sources as in "Atari Inc. - Business is Fun". In the second book "Business is War" the authors Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel dedicate themselves to the company Atari Corp. under the leadership of Jack Tramiel. Tramiel, an Auschwitz survivor, had just been fired from the company he founded, Commodore, when he took over parts of the highly loss-making Atari. Under his leadership, Atari released products such as the ST, the Lynx and Jaguar game consoles, and the Falcon. As in the previous book, the authors spoke with former Atari employees, and Vendel can also still draw on his own extensive personal Atari archives.

(mj)

Hatari 1.8.0 supports Pasti (06.07.2014 - 14:45 Uhr)

Almost every commercially released ST game is likely to be archived, but mostly only in the version "edited" by crackers. From the desire to preserve Atari software "pure" and including the possibly existing copy protection, the Pasti image tool and the STX format have been created. However, those who do not use Windows with the Steem emulator could not do anything with the STX images, because Pasti support was provided via a Windows DLL file, the source code was never published.

Since the end of May there is now the first open-source implementation of an STX decoder and specifically in a preview version of Hatari. Thus the images can be used not only under OS X, Linux, Android and other operating systems, but other emulators could benefit from the work of the Hatari team. They had to do it without insight into the Pasti source code.

(mj)

Kiwi computer now available (01.07.2014 - 06:13 Uhr)

Lots of choice for those who like it unusual but Atari-compatible: Suska, MIST, FireBee and now the Kiwi. Kiwi is a 68k homebrew computer, a new computer system that could have been created in the 80s and early 90s. Simon Ferber's project is an unusual mixture: The 8/32 bit CPU 68008 from the Sinclair QL, the SID sound chip from the C64 and the Yamaha V9900 video chip, which was originally intended for the next generation of MSX computers and reaches almost Falcon level with up to 32768 colors, sprites and hardware blitter. From Atari's point of view, the porting of EmuTOS is interesting; simple TOS applications already run.

The Kiwi Homebrew Computer Kit is available now for 333.33 Euros - presumably an allusion to the Apple I, which sold for 666.66 US dollars in 1976. Unlike FireBee, Suska and MIST, the Kiwi is not fully assembled and is not intended for electronics beginners. It also requires some additional parts like RAM, SID chip and power supply.

(mj)