¢ o=o=o=o=o=¢¢ PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE¢ by Jack Gedalius¢¢ May--June, 1998¢¢ At the May 16th meeting, Al Sharkis¢ discussed NassauNet, a new Internet¢ provider (via the Library System) for¢ Nassau County. Incorporated with¢ NassauNet is LYNX, a Web browser. ¢ Unfortunately, LYNX can only be¢ utilized for text entries and the¢ library will not allow us to use it¢ to download files.¢¢ Ron Fetzer demonstrated the features¢ and setup of a modem program called¢ Ice-T 2.72. We did not connect to¢ the Internet, however.¢¢ Al Sharkis discussed a program called¢ Ram Drive. It set multi-RAM disks on¢ the standard 8-Bit machine. He also¢ demonstrated San Leandro's February,¢ 1998 disk, consisting of movie-maker¢ files. Some examples of these files¢ are, a cartoon of a cat, the Irish¢ Jig, A Night Out, and Rose. There¢ was also a game in which the player¢ attempted to knock a cat off of a¢ fence. There was also a graphic¢ adventure game called Space Board.¢¢ The June 20th meeting was exciting¢ because out-of-state Atari users¢ enlightened us with their presence. ¢ Several of these Atari users belonged¢ to the Atari club, LIAUG. We were¢ delighted to have such a great turn-¢ out! We were joined by Frank¢ Walters, a Floridian member of Ol'¢ Hackers, who graciously demonstrated¢ the new features of TextPro which¢ will be discussed later on in this¢ president's message. ¢¢ My wonderful and intelligent thirteen¢ year old daughter Rebecca also¢ honored us with her presence, as she¢ demonstrated her new Compaq laptop¢ computer for the group.¢¢ Al Sharkis brought in a program¢ called XFormer 98, which allows Atari¢ programs to be used on a PC. We were¢ able to put Atari DOS 2.5 onto my¢ daughter's computer.¢¢ The most incredible part of this¢ meeting was the fact that we used the¢ Atari 8-bit to link ourselves to the¢ Internet! We would like to extend a¢ thank you to the Plainview-Bethpage¢ Library for fixing us up with the¢ proper necessities to make this giant¢ leap for Atari-kind. We explained¢ how to send and receive e-mail and¢ how to join mailing lists. Through¢ LYNX, we were able to connect to the¢ Internet. Sadly, due to Atari's¢ limited capabilities, graphics for¢ Atari systems are not available. On¢ a happier note, by using a system¢ called PINE, you can have an address¢ book, with the e-mail addresses of¢ all your friends. You can send a¢ letter to all of your friends at once¢ by using this convenient feature. ¢ PINE keeps your address book on its¢ server, so you don't have to keep it¢ on your system. International Atari-¢ oriented mailing lists are available¢ for your usage. One of them is from¢ Poland. Telnet allowed us to contact¢ a BBS. We connected to the FidoNet¢ National Atari Echo (8-bit) through¢ Docs Place BBS. Alan explained that¢ he usually called The Fordham Jesuit¢ BBS in The Bronx to do the same¢ thing. We sent a message to one of¢ our members, Tom Andrews, and in the¢ process demonstrated the features of¢ an address book, by sending the a¢ carbon copy of the message to Pat¢ Mulvey and to Alan Sharkis at his¢ Erols Address.¢¢ Ron Fetzer demonstrated ICE-T,¢ version 2.72. We utilized it as the¢ terminal program for the modem.¢¢ We celebrated the presence of our¢ visitors by eating, what else? We¢ ate pizza and drank Pepsi and 7-Up.¢¢ Frank Walters demonstrated the new¢ features of TextPro. Some of these¢ features are four banks in addition¢ to the main bank of memory, and the¢ artistic new Macro features. He also¢ showed his specialized handler for¢ the CX-85 numeric keypad to be¢ utilized with TextPro. Following this¢ we concluded the meeting and bade¢ farewell until July.¢¢ BYE FOR NOW,¢¢ JACK GEDALIUS¢¢ o=o=o=o=o=¢¢¢¢
