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                  Crazy Party Maniacs (CP/M) tour 2k2 Part I
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The Year is  half over, and we  already  celebrated 5 meetings! At  least 4 will
follow. Besides 8 bit dominated meetings, there  were also  2 collector meetings
already, and one will follow.

February
--------
We  started  the  season  with  the "8 Bit vor 12" (8 Bit  before  12) Party  in
Kellenbach / Germany. This  meeting is mainly thought  for playing games. We did
a Gaming decathlon with 10 games  on 10 differnt  ATARI machines (VCS, 7800, XE,
XL, XEGS, ST, STE, Falcon, Lynx, Jaguar). Even  at  this  meeting  we  got  some
users, who joined our endless Party tour.

2 Weeks later  there was  a collector  meeting  in  Vienna / Austria. Mr.XY / F2
attended to the show and reported that even some guys from USA came. There  were
a lot  of  old  consoles, and  they  enjoyed  watching  movies  from  the  ATARI
Headquarter at the beginning 80's.

In Slowakia  there  was  the  Forever 2e3 Party. I don't  have  much information
about it, but in the next years, I hope to get there at least one time.

March
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The anual Schreiersgruen 8 Bit Meeting took  place. This year we did a Multris &
Multicervi MulitJoy8 (8 Joystick Adapter for the  8 Bit) Competition. Mirko Sobe
showed a new Version of BOSS, the  ATARI Windows System. Andre and  Bertram from
Plauen made  a presentation of  AFLOS: ATARI Flash Oprerating System. You have a
1MB Flos ROM in your ATARI, and could use  it for having a much different DOS as
you want only by selecting them in a menu. You could also dump the 64KB Ram into
a ROM Bank, and get  it back also  by selecting it in a menu. This project has a
great potential, and  we looking forward  to see the  latest version  later this
year at the Unconventional.

April
-----
Once again  the ATARIADA was held in Prostejov / Czech Republic. This year, Jiri
Bernasek  (BeWe Soft) presented  his  16 Player Network Racing  game. You  could
connect 16 ATARI's together and play a  racing game in  the  Lotus Esprit style.
(You drive a Skoda instead of a Lotus.) The game has verg good graphics, and the
network works very  well, only the  controll of the  cars is not so good. In the
MultiRace competition  I finished  at the  13th place  of 16, but I finished the
race.
Jiri Svoboda  showed the  latest version  of  the ATARI 800 emulator port to the
Compaq iPaq. Very funny.
Raster / CPU (-> Computer Platform Unlimited) and  Zdenek Burian / ACP (-> ATARI
Club Prostejov) compiled  another  Flop Mag (Nr.45). On  the disk  was a  lot of
stuff  from the  Forever 2e3 and  some fine  tools, like an  editor and a Sprite
Editor, a puzzle  game from Raster  (very good) and a lot of czech text, which I
didn't understand (sorry).
Bohdan Millar / ACP present  a version of his  MINT distribution. At  the end of
the day  we made a  little  Bugger Competition on  the Falcon. Fox / MNX was the
best.

At the end of  april there was  another  collector meeting in Frankfurt. The RAF
(Regional Abbuc group Frankfurt) ran's a  stand there  and showed  the things we
get at the  ATARIADA and  some other thins. There  we get in  contact  with some
other guys. One joined  our tripp  to the  PLATARIADA later, and  another one is
coming to our monthly meeting. So it was very successfull.
We  also  organised a  MultiCervi  Multijoy8 Competition. Mad  Butscher / F2 and
Florian Dingler have won.

June
-----
While I'm  writing  this  text I  just returned  from  the  PLATARIADA in Czeske
Budejovice (Budweis) / Czech Republic. If you rembember the PMP in Utruecht 1999
then you know what happened. We did not found the way for an hour, the party was
located in a Scouts home, and it was very very hot.
TXG brought a Computer  with him, with  1MB Ram, a  16 Bit Processor, a Ethernet
Adapter, and a AFLOS build in. The 1MB is running for years now, SATANTRONIC for
Slowakia also  released one at  that time. The 16 Bit Processor still only works
in the  compatibility mode. The  Ethernet Adapter is  allready  connected to the
mainboard, but the Software is in development at the moment.
CAS / RAF ported a text adventure from David Raymond from Linux to the 8 Bit.
Someone from Czech Republic is building  the sio2ide interface for 32 Euro each.
The sio2ide is a  development  from Poland, which allow  you to connect a MS-DOS
formated ide  harddisk to the sio port. So it is possible to load ATR Files from
the harddisk into the ATARI without a full PC.
Foundation Two  was very  busy programming  on  a  MultiJoy8 racinggame (project
title F2). F2 should be playable at the Unconventional.

Monthly Meetings
----------------
This  year  our  group in  Frankfurt  was  growing, which  is a  reaction of the
permanent presence on every  meeting. If all people come, we are 9 persons. This
year  we  got 3  new  people  to  come, and  Kemal Yun (better known as KE Soft)
reactivate himself.
At the moment  we are  still producing sio2pc interfaces  and we are testing the
sio2ide interface. We're also programming 4 !! new Multijoy8 games: A ice-hockey
game (4 on 4) and a simple  cards game  is developped by Florian Dingler, then a
collect  items  game is  developped  by KE Soft, and  a 4 player  racing game is
developped by Foundation Two.

Others
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Besides  our meetings, we  also made  a fototour  to all  former ATARI buildings
around Frankfurt, and we  made a birthday  cake for Harry Reminder at the 6.5.02
(also  known  as the  CPU of the ATARI 8 Bit). You  could have  a look  at these
happenings at myatari.net

Conclusion
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We 8 Bit Byters are very  active, and loocking forward to a ATARI summer meeting
in Poland, the Unconventional, the ATARI Hody  in Brno / Czech Republik, another
collector meeting in Frankfurt and the ABBUC JHV of course.

All dates and other things are online at: http://unconventional.atari.org

ATARI rulez

                                                   Mad Butscher / Foundation Two
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