** 1 page regular! / 870 words **

CyberSTrider Files

Cybes recently sold his Falcon and has been in mourning since...

The Falcon had been sitting here for months without being switched on so to stop it gathering any more dust I've now sold it to someone who will enjoying using it.

While clearing the hard drive - which took me the best part of three days, I caught a bad case of nostalgia! I ran some programs I hadn't used for a while, played some of my favourite Falcon games Spice and PacThem and watched some demos. This was when I rediscovered The Lost Blubb demo. I remember giving it an excellent review in Atari World (RIP) and I think it remains the definitive Falcon demo - with the benefit of decent speakers and a bass booster it was a spine tingling experience.

The demo lasts around five minutes and features stunning music and graphics based around a woman dancing and performing various moves against a variety of backgrounds - a music video feel to it. It occupies 7Mb of hard disk space and needs 3.6Mb of memory and a TV/RGB monitor to run but, if you have the resources, do check it out!

I felt very sad posting the Falcon off to its new owner - it took a huge chunk of my Atari life with it. Re-reading Joe's Milan article in AC#11 numbed my memories a little - guess what's top of my wants list?

At least my TT could get a new lease of life soon thanks to Centek, the company that developed the Centurbo II Falcon accelerator. They're developing a similar product for the TT. The upgrade will boost the CPU to 64MHz and allow up to 64Mb memory with an estimated retail price under œ200. The only snag is Centek want at least 20 orders "up-front". Guillaume Tello, who wants the upgrade himself, is maintaining a list of people who want to buy the upgrade so if you're interested do us both a favour and get in touch with Guillaume at:

** BC **
Email gtello@wanadoo.fr
** /BC **

Toad Computers, once the biggest dealer in the US Atari marketplace, have recently sold the domain names atari.net and ataricentral.com which have been taken up by Multimedia 1.0 (http://www.multimedia1.com). Multimedia 1.0 plan to provide references to Atari resources and a strictly Atari search engine.
Happily the http://www.ataricentral.com/ domain will retain the message forums for general Atari messages and they're planning some other nice surprises apparently. Currently no plans have been announced for http://www.atari.net/ but watch this space.

As self-appointed arch advocate of getting on the Internet I'm always happy to report tangible evidence. Colin Polonowski, publisher of the Atari Times disk magazine for the last two years, has decided to discontinue the disk magazine (boo) and recreate Atari Times, in a different format, on-line (hurrah). The Atari Times web site should be on-line by the time you read this, so surf over and make encouraging noises at:

** BC **
http://at.atari.org
** /BC **

The web site can be updated quicker and much more easily than in the old format. The web site will contain the same mix of articles and news that made the disk magazine successful. Colin still  intends to release occasional printed Atari Times Special Editions which will contain selections of the best articles from the web site along with some exclusive articles. Until next time, I remain, your friendly neighbourhood CyberSTrider

** BLUBB1.GIF overlapped if you like **
** BLUBB2.GIF **
** Caption (for both) **
The Lost Blubb Demo - every Falcon owner should have one
** /caption **

iPRN

Tired of slow printouts from your supposedly fast inkjet or laser printer? Author Peter Missel and Denesh Bhabuta recommend you try iPRN...

iPRN has been available for over two years and users have been experiencing up to ten-fold increases in print speed. The author's own print data-rate benchmark shows the ST increases from 2 to 64 Kb/s and the Falcon from 3 to over 120 Kb/s. Additionally there is no trade off in reliability for speed due to the way iPRNs timings are fully controlled by the printer.

A recent joint effort between the authors of NVDI and iPRN have resulted in an optimised printing environment for MagiC. While NVDI v5 introduces background printing, it's still up to the operating system to feed the data to your printer. This is where iPRN for MagiC comes in. It adds buffered background printing specially optimised for NVDI v5, and makes full use of MagiC multitasking to save every microsecond of your machines precious computing power, letting you continue to work while the print job is completed.

There are currently two separate iPRN versions - one for TOS and one for MagiC Atari/PC. For more details and downloads visit the  cyberstrider web site at:

** BC **
http://www.cyberstrider.org/computing/files/atari/
** /BC **

** boxout **
iPRN Special Offer

For two months from the publication of AC#12 iPRN is available for just œ11 (instead of œ13). To take advantage of this special offer:

** UL **
* Quote the reference "AC12"
* Include registration fee
* If you require a master disk please add œ1 (UK) or œ1.50 (ROW)
* Clearly state which version you require (TOS/MagiC)
** /UL **

Post to: CyberSTrider, PO Box 2023, Wickford, SS12 9RX, England
** /boxout **