Issue 38: Dec 2003
Features
- | Foreword
- | Tip of the day
- | Euro JagFest
- | JagFest Micro
- | Atari USA Meets Atari Netherlands
- | Atari Goes VST!
- | Adrian Mole's "Secret Diary" Is Dead Good
- | Wonderful CCChristmas Time
- | Visit The Christmas Market
- | Best Electronics Is Awesome!
M@ilbox
| Now is it me, or does Christmas arrive sooner each year? I should have seen it coming if I were honest as two weeks ago (almost on cue) my seasonal attack of the flu arrived knocking me for six. I have since managed to thankfully shake off my cold in time to enjoy Christmas. I have now begun the next phase of the festive season which involves waking up with a hangover following a night of partying. But hey, win some... lose some :-) So what will you be expecting to find under your Christmas tree this year? Will it be a Jaguar or Falcon as depicted on this month's cover by reader Clint Thompson? Or will it be a more traditional gift like socks? Don't chance your luck... why not write an e-mail to him this year from the comfort of your Atari at http://www.emailsantaclaus.com If this is the first you've heard of Christmas this year, you're probably sweating by now! However don't worry, as at the time of writing you've got at least another four days, but to make sure and find out how long it is until Christmas Day, visit http://www.santaclausonline.com My Christmas wish list: Marble Madness coin-op machine. Atari Lynx. Fast and feature-packed web browser (Highwire is coming close). CD of great Atari game tunes. Atari (Infogrames) to start using the proper Atari logo! Wishing you a happy and safe Christmas Matthew Bacon, Editor matt@myatari.net Season's greetings Welcome to the latest, or should that be most delayed, issue of MyAtari. At the time of writing I'm hoping we can make it in time for Christmas day, there is simply so much to do on the magazine. I've been distracted by, or spent time dreaming up new, Atari projects and events. Find out in this issue where a lot of my time went, and what cool stuff we can expect to see soon. To all those kind souls who've sent us articles, thanks for your patience as we work as fast as we can to produce them. My Christmas wish list is: Willie's Adventures for my Falcon. CyberTech S-Video card for my 2600. A Lynx for me, too. I never had one of my own. An XE Game System with Barnyard Blaster. More hours in the day to play with all this cool stuff! Great memories This month's cover picture celebrates ten years of the Jaguar and Falcon, each in their own way highly desirable machines, which many of us wanted to see under our Christmas trees. The Jaguar's tenth anniversary was celebrated in Germany at Euro-JagFest, a report of which you can read this issue. As an interesting side note, it's the first Christmas cover we've had that isn't a 3D render. I quite like it, I've always had this vision of portraying Atari stuff under a tree, I just got beaten to it! I didn't get my first Falcon until five years into the life of the machine, while the Jaguar came even later. That's just unthinkable in the PC world. Back in the land of STE After what seemed like an eternity, I finally got round to fixing my two STEs' very poorly floppy disk drives. How they got into that state is a story for another time, though I'll mention to anyone thinking of cleaning the heads the hard way, don't even think of removing the upper head assembly for better access, just bend your cotton bud so it can reach underneath. Otherwise you'll have a very tough time putting it all back with the correct alignment. I was lucky to have a second STE, with exactly the same Epson SMD-380 drive, and I had to pop the lid on that one anyway to do the same job, and I just aligned the first drive visually and by using a set of test disks. All seems fine now. Amid the delicate tweaking, a friend who supports PC systems for a living telephoned to chat. He was totally surprised and bemused when I explained exactly what I was doing. Once again, that's just unthinkable in the PC world. Merry mosh, everyone! Shiuming Lai, Features and Technical Editor shiuming@myatari.net
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