Yet Another Atari RAM Test

Do you have a spare couple of hours?

It's been yonks since I posted in our Software sections so here is a utility that is the bee's knees. Yet Another Atari RAM Test, by Christian Zietz, rolls through a number of intense tests that execute algorithms to help diagnose potential problems with our beloved Atari computers. Let's hope it finds nothing!

I won't pretend to understand its wizardry but I love utilities like this. I want my ST healthy so, I've had it running for what feels like a lifetime and it's still not (yet) found any errors. This is excellent news but, I'm thinking that this program could be helpful to anyone experiencing weird anomalies or peculiar crashes?

I enjoy finding programs like this lurking in the ST archives and I hope YAART proves helpful if you're suffering any hardware problems? The download comes ready to support the ST/STe/TT/Falcon but take a moment to read the text file and try to boot cleanly with as much spare RAM as possible (read YAART.TXT)

I hope you guys have healthy Atari computers? Let me know in the comments below. Good luck!!

BoinkSave

What, an Atari ST screensaver?

I've been digging through the archives again and found an interesting piece of software on Atari ST User's cover disk from August 1992. It's a screensaver by Damien M. Jones and works brilliantly to save your old CRT from burning an image of the GEM desktop. This can also be fully configured to use other graphics along with altering the timeout.

I love finding programs like this and we all adore a good Boink so, I thought this was excellent. If you don't have the cover disk lying about, like geeky old me, it can be grabbed off the Zogging Hell website. I hope you download it.

Of course, something like this is pointless but come on, it's incredibly and utterly fantastic!! I love it :-)

Deskpic

I was bored and converted a picture I found on the internet to 16 colours using Imagecopy 4. I figured it would make a great wallpaper background so I booted up Deskpic - which is on ST Format cover disk #60. Awesome sauce!

That's my rock and roll lifestyle, baby. Yep. Anyhow, that's enough for today. STay Atari.

GEM Desktop

When wallpapers weren't a standard...

DeskFX is a GEM utility that I thought was pretty cool and entertaining, if annoyingly flawed. It replaces three parts of our beautiful GEM desktop - the default font, a choice of wallpaper, and an animated mouse pointer. As you can see, above, the wallpaper feature only updates every 2/3 seconds which is a little lame compared to DeskPic. However, the new fonts are superb and (like a big kid) I just loved playing with various animated pointers!

It appears the author had an STFM and DeskFX worked fine on my computer in both resolutions. Sadly, I couldn't get it to work on my Atari STe in LOW resolution - only in medium which is probably better anyhow? Not in the sense of available colours but in terms of functionality, who uses low to work? Who still works on their ST? ;-)

I thought this was a nice utility to share and you shall find it on disk UTL-4410 over at Floppyshop.

MonoPack

The most exciting screenshot ever!

MonoPack was released by Shrimp of NewCore and allows the Atari ST (w/ colour display) to run in the high-resolution mode without the need for the correct monitor. Yes, there are already programs that do this but I think this is better because it saves itself onto the boot sector of a floppy disk. This means a fast way to activate. Plus it supports the Blitter coprocessor for faster rendering. Yup, this is an excellent utility!

Clickety-Click to download MonoPack and let me know what you think in the comments below.

uIP-tool

Easy-peasy transfers

As you may have read in my previous article, I've bought the NetUSBee. This is a gorgeous slab of hardware available from Lotharek. It's brilliant and has an ethernet socket to potentially connect to the outside world very easily.

It's possible to connect your ST to a Mac/PC thanks to Mariusz Buras who has developed a program called uIP Tool. This will transform your Atari ST into a file server without any configuration. Just load it up and it will automatically assign itself an IP - which you use in Google Chrome on your Mac/PC. Now you can access the Atari ST and begin transferring files.

NetUSBee with uIP-tool makes transferring files to/from your Atari ST a cinch...

In fact, you don't need to use a web browser at all. Load up uIP-Tool and then copy a file over to your Atari ST using the command line. It's geeky but it works very well so is lots of fun! Here is the example command to copy 'myfile.zip' over to the D-Drive on my Atari ST...

curl -0T myfile.zip 192.168.2.2/d/myfile.zip

uIP-Tool makes the entire process of getting files onto your Atari ST very easy. It's simple to use, with a great interface and gets the job done. Yep, NetUSBee is a fantastic piece of kit and uIP-Tool marries up very well. Excellent software!

Help for those using WiFi
If your router is in a different room to your Atari ST then you might think uIP-tool isn't compatible with your setup unless you have a mega-long ethernet cable? Not so. My router is located downstairs so I bought myself a very short ethernet cable to physically connect the Mac to my Atari STe.

To provide uIP-Tool with a working IP address - just enable the Mac's Internet Sharing. Sorry, I don't own Windows or Linux, but I expect a similar function exists? Just follow this:

 1) load up System Preference (via the Apple menu)
 2) click on Internet Sharing (view me)
 3) choose WiFi in the dropdown menu & tick the ethernet box (view me)
 4) lastly, tick the box left of "Internet Sharing" to activate this service.
 5) now quit System Preferences.
 6) load up uIP-Tool on the Atari ST and note the IP it displays for you.
 7) enter that IP into Google Chrome so you can now access your Atari ST. Job done!

Ultimate Virus Killer

Ugh, bugs!

Since getting my UltraSatan, I've been stuffing the SD card with lots of Atari ST files (okay, games!!). Now, I don't wish to compromise my collection of ST goodies so I check for errors and viruses regularly.

There's only one real Atari ST virus-killing program worth its salt and that's Ultimate Virus Killer by legend Richard Karsmakers. Thanks to Chris aka Exxos, we have the complete and last edition freely available to download but is it still worth it after all these years? Surely the dreaded ghost virus is now extinct?

Sadly, I feel this program is still needed because most ST software is now archived online which means there's a chance for various nasties. It's like they're frozen in time just waiting to thaw and inflict their curse all over again. So let's kill 'em all using this amazing program which I highly recommend, even today!!

Waste no more time and get Ultimate Virus Killer downloaded right now :-)

Who needs Chrome?

Netscape

Do you require a fully-featured web browser for your Atari computer? NetSurf is an excellent choice and something I've enjoyed using for well over a year. You will need a decent spec running MiNT OS (check out my virtual Falcon). To download NetSurf (click here) and for the bleeding-edge builds (click here).

Atari Mega STe

Mega Hertz

I recently asked Peter Putnik, from over on 8BitChip, if there was a program that allowed the Mega STe to flip between 8 and 16MHz - but without having XControl preloaded. He basically said yes, no reason why not. And a couple days later he had created it!! What a great Atari community we have - my sincere gratitude to Peter. Thank you, mate!!

The download link is available via the AtariAge forums.

SysInfo

In need of tech support?

SysInfo is a useful utility that can display a whole raft of details about your Atari ST (it recently helped me diagnose a problem with my Mega STe's audio!). It can diagnose everything from TOS/GEM details to the more technical aspects like the Cookie Jar, VBL, traps & other mind-boggling jargon.

Helpful and perfect for geeks! You can download SysInfo at Atarimania.

Universal Item Selector

Let's patch a bland part of GEM...

The excellent Universal Item Selector by Application & Design Software, released here in the UK by ST Club. The Atari ST has always been blessed with a small, but great, selection of replacement file selectors but UIS is the best of all. Only this weekend, I trudge through a folder containing over 100 tracker mods, deciding which ones to keep or delete. It was mad so I installed UIS which made the job 100x easier because of its integrated tools.

Click here to download this great program with its PDF manual available via Atari Document Archive.

Bootsie

A boot sector program that's useful

Bootsie, a utility by Stefan Krey that writes a boot sector on a floppy to perform nifty system init functions. These are useful for Atari's with a hard drive or those fortunate to own a MSTE, TT or Falcon. By default, my Mega STe boots up in an 8MHz "compatibility mode" which is great for gaming but pretty lame for everything else. After all, the entire boot process from start to end will be a lot slower than it could be if it was running at 16MHz.

Enter Bootsie that can set the processor speed to steroid mode and it will also do lots more cool stuff, such as CPU caching, activate the Blitter chip, 60Hz display, and much more. What a fantastic utility that helps make a computer as zippy as is possible. Download it right now from Atari ST Essential Software List.