The Newsroom by Springboard

[Bill Lange]

Does anyone use The Newsroom by Springboard on Altirra?

 

Attached are the .atr files that I have, but no matter what options I choose, I always end up with a message "insert the newsroom program disk ..." See attached screenshot. The .atr files that I have are also attached.

 

The instructions for The Newsroom are available on Atarimania.

 

Regards,
Bill

SpringboardTheNewsroomAtari.zip

[flashjazzcat]

I seem to remember they were copy protected, and if so they might depend on a bad sector which doesn't work in emulation.

[Bill Lange]

 

 

I seem to remember they were copy protected, and if so they might depend on a bad sector which doesn't work in emulation.

 

I think you are right. I was able to load the atr file via SIO2PC and run The Newsroom on a physical 130XE successfully.

[Shawn Jefferson]

ATR files don't have any copy protection information though, so most likely something else is going on there.

[flashjazzcat]

It does seem to be something to do with the timeout value in DVSTAT or the SIO status... replacing SEC at $64A1 with CLC (while "Insert disk" is visible) allows the main menu to be reached. I'm not overly confident that's the best fix, but if the ATR is patched along those lines, it should work.

Edited November 23, 2014 by flashjazzcat

[Mclaneinc]

Hi there,

 

I can boot to the menu and run various parts of the program fine, it seems to like 3 things under Altirra (latest version)

 

Disk MUST be R/W enabled at the very boot up, not changed half way through a boot.

 

Seemed to like being set as a 1050 drive type

 

Accurate disk timing

 

Possibly SIO override protection in the drive settings

 

As said the disks I have boot with these setting, any variation and I get the insert program message.

 

The only crash I get is if you are in the Press programme section and choose Change Settings it crashes, otherwise what I have tried works.

 

Btw, the Atari was set to XL 64k

Downloads.zip

Edited November 23, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[phaeron]

Had to hook up my 1050 to test this... it's a disk drive emulation issue. The program relies on disk drive spinning up the motor for ~2 seconds when the door is closed -- it checks status bit 4, which indicates whether the motor is running. Altirra currently emulates the ~2 second motor turn-off delay but not the spin-up when the drive door is closed.

 

Can people test this BASIC program on physical disk drives? It just issues a status request to D1: over and over and prints the byte from DVSTAT. The behavior I'm seeing on a 1050 is:

• 8 when no disk is inserted
• 0 when disk is inserted, but door not closed
• 16 when the door is closed and the disk spins up
• 0 when the motor stops spinning

I didn't know that the 1050 has an optical disk sensor, but apparently it does. What I'm interested in is whether different drives like the 810 and XF551 also have this behavior.

10 POKE 768,49:POKE 769,1
20 FOR I=0 TO 8:READ X:POKE 1536+I,X:NEXT I
30 X=USR(1536):PRINT PEEK(746):GOTO 30
40 DATA 104,169,83,141,2,3,76,83,228

[_The Doctor__]

Yes the 1050,XF and indus gt run the newsroom just fine so the behaviour must be the same. Altirra seems to be at fault. I could try it on an 810 if need be, I know some programs used to check drive timing to make sure you didn't use and archiver, duplicator drive etc. which normaly responded much to fast..

[Madi]

Under Altirra:

It works fine with basic On or Off.

Memory size is not critical . It runs with 64k and 320K Rambo Ram disk.

The R/W must be enabled, otherwise it will reboot.

Accurate System Timing must be checked.

It runs successfully under 800B, 800XL, and omnimon XL OSs.

 

madi

Edited November 24, 2014 by Madi

[phaeron]

Okay, brainfart, was just using a write protected disk and being dumb. Yeah, it's just testing for a writable disk. I use virtual read/write (VirtRW) mode for things like this so it doesn't actually write back to the disk images.

 

Interesting thing, though, I don't see any signs of copy protection -- seems to work fine for me regardless of sector timing and there are no unusual read patterns.

[Mclaneinc]

Pah, no one reads my stuff, said about the R/W in post 6

 

The shame...I feel like the Unknown Soldier

Edited November 24, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[Bill Lange]

Once I set the emulated drive to R/W, it works. I'm using Altirra x64 2.5 NTSC 64K.

 

Thanks.

 

Bill

[+CharlieChaplin]

 

Had to hook up my 1050 to test this... it's a disk drive emulation issue. The program relies on disk drive spinning up the motor for ~2 seconds when the door is closed -- it checks status bit 4, which indicates whether the motor is running. Altirra currently emulates the ~2 second motor turn-off delay but not the spin-up when the drive door is closed.

 

Can people test this BASIC program on physical disk drives? It just issues a status request to D1: over and over and prints the byte from DVSTAT. The behavior I'm seeing on a 1050 is:

• 8 when no disk is inserted
• 0 when disk is inserted, but door not closed
• 16 when the door is closed and the disk spins up
• 0 when the motor stops spinning

I didn't know that the 1050 has an optical disk sensor, but apparently it does. What I'm interested in is whether different drives like the 810 and XF551 also have this behavior.

10 POKE 768,49:POKE 769,1
20 FOR I=0 TO 8:READ X:POKE 1536+I,X:NEXT I
30 X=USR(1536):PRINT PEEK(746):GOTO 30
40 DATA 104,169,83,141,2,3,76,83,228

 

Hmm,

 

there is a nice graphical program for the 1050 with write-switch available, which also shows other features of the 1050 drive (lever opened/closed, disk inserted or not, busy light on/off, power on/off, etc.). But this program will most likely only work with a 1050 drive...

wrswitch.zip

Edited November 26, 2014 by CharlieChaplin

[Bill Lange]

I wrote a blog post on The Newsroom which references this thread.

[+Philsan]

I am sorry but in Altirra the program crashes when I go in Press/Change setup.

 

It works on real hardware with SIO2PC USB (RespeQt).

Edited November 20, 2018 by Philsan

[Gunstar]

I recommend XLEnt Software's Printware series which can do everything Newsroom does and more and is a MUCH better desktop publishing series than Newsroom.

Typesetter, Rubber Stamp and Page Designer...a league above Newsroom or News Station.

 

I remember Antic doing that whole write-in campaign to get Newsroom published on the Atari, everyone screaming that we needed great productivity software like it on the Atari 8-bit, and all along XLEnt Software was already there, ads in nearly everyone of Antic's issues, with productivity software that was superior to the 16-bit stuff of the time. Really, take a look at it, it puts Newsroom to shame, like it's PD software in comparison!

 

It's better than 16-bit Pagestream software!

Edited November 20, 2018 by Gunstar

[Mechanicjay]

Yes Newsroom is super duper sensitive to disk timings. I can only get it to work on real hardware with a real 1050 -- (Somehow I still don't have an Sio2pc device).

I just grabbed all the XLEnt atr's I could find and will totally be messing around with that tonight, thanks for the tip Gunstar!

[flashjazzcat]

Do the XLEnt tools provide quality proportional fonts in different sizes (NOT simply 8x8 fixed spacing scaled to suit)? They were the reason I used Newsroom at the time.

Edited November 21, 2018 by flashjazzcat

[Gunstar]

Do the XLEnt tools provide quality proportional fonts in different sizes (NOT simply 8x8 fixed spacing scaled to suit)? They were the reason I used Newsroom at the time.

YES. Just take a look at manuals or old ads in Analog or Antic for details described. As I said, it totally leaves Newsroom in the dust with all it can do. They also support expanded memory which greatly expands the resolution abilities too, which is why I said it's better than 16-bit Pagestream (or at least as good) The ad below has some description of what it can do, plus the ad itself was created using the Printware series.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Gunstar

[flashjazzcat]

I don't see any proportional spacing at all there, unfortunately, unless I'm missing something. The proportional fonts really set Newsroom apart from other tools for me and I got some really nice results.

[Gunstar]

I don't see any proportional spacing at all there, unfortunately, unless I'm missing something. The proportional fonts really set Newsroom apart from other tools for me and I got some really nice results.

Well, it's just one example they used for an ad. I'm not exactly sure what you are referring too, but just take a peek through the manual of Typesetter, it would surprise me if it wasn't capable of proportional spacing...can you post an example from Newsroom of exactly what you are talking about?

 

And did you read the entire ad or just glance at it? It talks about high-resolution proportional text in the first paragraph for Rubberstamp. (click on it to enlarge for easier reading)

 

You aren't limited to a banner and panels like Newsroom which makes it much more versatile IMHO. Which the ad clearly shows.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Gunstar

[flashjazzcat]

Google 'proportional spacing'. The fonts we use on this forum are proportionally spaced. Switch the post editor to BBCode view and you'll see monospacing.

 

I didn't read the whole thing (there is no need to actually comprehend what's written when looking for proportionally spaced text), but you would think they would have typeset the passage which advertises the feature using a proportionally spaced font.

Edited November 21, 2018 by flashjazzcat

[Gunstar]

Well, whatever, don't look into it. If you are happy with Newsroom, then more power to you!

[flashjazzcat]

No: if the XLEnt tools wipe the floor with Newsroom as you enthusiastically assert and they support proportionally spaced text, I'm completely open to the idea that it's the best tool if I can simply be shown proportional spacing on the page.

[Gunstar]

It says right in the ad that there isn't enough room to describe or show all it's features. But as I said, is says right in the ad it does support 16x16 proportional text (which I assume means also proportional spacing).

 

I'm certainly no expert on it, I only recently started using Typesetter/Rubberstamp myself, after using Newsroom years ago, and already it seems far superior to me.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Gunstar