Issue 36: Oct 2003
Features
- | Foreword
- | Tip of the day
- | Digiscoping Or How I Saved $68,000
- | JagFest UK 2003 Aftershock
- | Mod Shop Horrors
- | Broadband ST
- | Atari Goes Metal: 2
- | ABBUC Highscore Chat
- | Activision's "Forgotten" Years
- | Keep That Atari!
- | MiNT And I
- | Atari Logo Evolution Continued
- | Atari In Argentina
Reviews
- | Painter
- | Laser Squad
M@ilbox
| Atari In Argentina by Facundo As you can see, this is my 1040STFM, with 4 MB of RAM. I had a dream of having it fully working with a hard disk drive and connected to the internet. I had a dream of being a GFA developer. I had a dream of being part of Atari meetings here in my country. Now, it's resting, lonely, under my bed. Why? It's very hard to be an Atari fan in some corners of the world: I bought it for almost US $200, two years ago (Think it's too much? Keep reading). I wanted to have a hard disk for it, I paid $200 more to ICD for a Link II. They never sent it. I bought a Supra 20 MB hard disk on eBay ($60). It arrived broken, it never worked. A friend of mine from England sent me a complete set of hard disk, SCSI adapter and CD-ROM drive. It never reached my country (the mail office have lost it, I paid $40 for it). Now my country is having economical difficulties, and we're in "default". That means all the people here have three times lower salary than two years ago. So, it's impossible for me to buy even a $50 Ethernet adapter or SCSI adapter. The only technician who knows the Atari hardware and could help me to improve my Atari doesn't reply to my mails (he's having lots of work I heard). I started to develop software for the ST. My first project was HTMLGen (http://www.myatari.net/issues/apr2001/html_gen.htm), a very tiny automatic HTML generator. But without a hard disk it's very hard to keep different versions of source code, and compilation times are long. So I gave up. Hey! I wanted to make my contribution. When I entered the Atari scene almost three years ago, the story was completely different. There was even an "Atari Fan Club" with almost ten members. Today, no more fan club. Although there are many Atari fans here in Argentina, it seems that there are no efforts to make a meeting, a party or something like that. Sad... Another interesting thing is that in my country the STs had a golden age, they were even built here in Argentina. My 1040 was built in the province of San Luis. Because of that, there are many STs going from here to there in this country, but there are only three or four Falcons (which made me realize that I was never going to have that incredible machine), and no TTs. I also had a web site called Alternarama, a site fully dedicated to alternative platforms such as Atari, Amiga, Mac OS... The site was in Spanish and after almost two years I decided to stop it because of the very poor visits it had (no more than 15 per day). As you can see, I tried everything. I tried being a member of a fan club, I tried to have a hard disk for my 1040STFM, I tried to have a web site for alternative platforms, I tried to develop new applications... and everything was a disaster. Incredible, huh? Yes, it's way too much. I give up. But don't misunderstand me, I'm not against the platform. I love it. I love Atari. But as it seems, I'm not chosen to be an Atari fan. farena@tectimes.com
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