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Satisfactory Show

I am writing to congratulate yourself and your team on not only producing an interesting and varied magazine, but also for organising a new Atari Convention - after the news that Mike Goodman was no longer going to organise future events, I thought that was the end.
I attended the last show in Birmingham and was amazed to see so many people who still use TOS machines - and companies selling their wares. I purchased MagicPC and NVDI from System Solutions, who gave me a rather good deal, thank you very much!
However there was a flaw, and I think you have discovered it already, after a couple of hours, there seemed to be nothing else to discover, so I left, bored.
I was glad I went, but was dismayed at the end. So, when I read that you have teamed up with a general computer and consumer electronics convention this time around, I now believe we have the best of both worlds:
A get-together for Atari enthusiasts and, since the majority of us also use other machines, something to make the trip even more worthwhile - excellent!
I'll definitely be there - you can guarantee that! Hopefully, I might even buy that Falcon I've always been after!
I would also like to congratulate you on the AC website - it really is rather good.
One final point, am I the only person in Wales who uses an Atari machine? Please, please, please, someone else out there tell me I'm not, especially if you live in the Bridgend area - send me an email if you're online.

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Christopher Teague, Bridgend, Wales
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Email: chris@smb.clara.net
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Thanks for the encouragement, we're also looking forward to the show and believe it will offer the best possible show event for Atarians, see you there - along with all the other Welsh visitors!
** /B **

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Peripheral vision

I was pleased to see Atari Computing looking at peripherals and their place in Ataridom. It would also be of interest if someone could explain why PC Parallel peripherals are not for us, I ask this for three reasons:
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* The quest for knowledge of all the Atari quirks.
* Because over the years on more than one occasion, owners have been advised that, "outdated games machine" cannot possibly do this or that, only to find that somebody just did - and more importantly, are selling the bits to enable our machines to do the same.
* So often in magazine articles, what seems a vital piece of information to me, is mentioned in passing as if it is something everyone else already knows!
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What is the difference between Parallel and SCSI? Is it simply cabling, or more than that? I recently acquired a SCSI ZIP drive with 25 pin D-sub connectors instead of the 50 way Centronics style connectors on my SCSI HD and CD and I managed to source an adaptor from Maplins. Could the cartridge port be used?
As time passes we will have to become more ingenious and self sufficient to continue using our machines.

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Name & address mislaid!
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** B **
Sadly, the difference between parallel and SCSI connections, goes much further than cabling.
There was a CD-ROM IDE interface under development which plugged into the cartridge port but it was device dependent and fell by the wayside as faster cheaper devices became available.
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Making Tracks

Many thanks for tracking down John Hollis and much praise to him for his generosity putting out Trackman as freeware. I have no idea how successful Trackman was commercially but it certainly deserved to be.
Trackman easily held its own against software costing twice as much and is easier and quicker to use than a tape machine or as complex as you would ever need it to be. But what it does best is not get in the way, which is the most flattering thing you can say about any software.
For anyone contemplating a first move into software sequencing Trackman must be the best and least expensive way ever to get started.
As for the free software and the giveaway price for the manuals, if it's fully appreciated what's on offer here, you're likely to have your hands bitten off at the elbows.

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Ian Nicol
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I'm typing this with my toes so obviously the Reader Offer has been popular - and with MIDIman on Reader Disk this issue I'll probably be typing AC#11 using my nose. :-)
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Doing something right

I'm a German reader of your magazine and I like it more than the magazine distributed in Germany because the articles are better and hope there are at least another 100 editions to come.
At the Atari show in Neuss this March I was talking to Joe Connor about adding the URL and Email addresses of programmers and so on and one magazine later I see, he did - thanks!
Now something about me, I'm a crazy Atarian who loves programming for the 8-bit machines and writing for various magazines. Here's my systems:
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* Atari 8-bit: 130 XE, 800 XL
* Atari TT
* Atari Jaguar with CD-ROM
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Raimund Altmayer
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www.t-online.de/home/highland/
www.atari-computer.de/highlander/
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We're glad you're enjoying Atari Computing. I'd like to invite everyone to send us an article or PD review - without your contributions there's no magazine!
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