by Richard H. Wagner / rwagne1@cugkc.cjb.net
Hello From your Club President, it is too bad that we have not been able to get a newsletter out since I am too busy to write articles for our club. We have lost a lot of members since we have not been able to get a newsletter out. I will try this month to get Geopublish to work on my computer in an effort to produce a newletter. Leslie Lacy will help me produce it when we can get together.
Maurice Randall is still tinkering with his GEOS web browser for our Commodores. I thought it would be out by now, but supposedly he is adding more features to it.
Our Geos (S.I.G.) Special interest group was mentioned at the meeting and the next meeting is at Richard H. Wagner's house which happens to be me at 17635 W. 111th Terrace Olathe, KS 66061; it will be held if there is enough interest to see a demonstration of what Wheels 128 and Super128CPU can do for Geos. CALL (913)-888-6181 for More INFO. IF you want to see what Geos can do for your Home or Business then come and join us. Hopefully we can convince you to learn the ins and outs of this integrated software like GEOFAX, GEOCALC 128, GEOWRITE 128 & GEOCHART, GEOCANVAS 64 & 128, GEOPUBLISH, GEOPAINT, GEODEX, GEOFILE 128 and GEOTERM 128 and show you how much fun GEOS is. HOPE to see you at our next S.I.G meeting.
by Jack Kincaid / jkinca1@cugkc.cjb.net
What happened to - the month of May? Where did it go? I was there, but I don't remember doing the things that should have been done. Where did June go? I just saw it a day or two ago, it should be here somewhere. And where did all the people in the CUGKC go?? That is the question! And why? More questions and no answers! Sad! We are the same club we were six months ago, what has changed? I think I know one reason, some of the members have moved into retirement homes which are small rooms and not a lot of space for computers. And then there is just bad health, if you don't feel too good, you just don't want to go to a club meeting. What other reasons? Who knows - too much GEOS? no newsletter? no demos? AND where are we going to meet next? It is just a matter of time before the Library closes and we have no plans made!
On to brighter things! Green grass and gardens brought on by the copious rainfall we have had in this month. With all the genetic engineering they are doing, why can't they come up with grass that grows faster than the weeds? Oh well, maybe in another decade, if someone doesn't start an organization for the Ethical Treatment of Weeds.
At the May meeting - No renewals and no new members and not even a visitor! But there was a HOT BED of inactivity for the seven members that did show up ;-)
I still have 64s, 128s, 1541, 1571 drives, monitors and printers just sitting in my basement doing nothing. For a small fee they can be in your home doing something! Call or see me at the next meeting.
Is there anyone that would like to upgrade from a 64 to 128? 1 have two or maybe three 128s if someone wants them; call or see me at the meeting. Also available are monitors and disk drives, so if you want a spare or a second or third drive, now is a good time. I need to get rid of some of this stuff to keep peace in the household. I also have printers such as an Okimate 10 color with docs and interface.
Financial Report
Balance May 2000..................... $365.81
Income: June 2000
Sale of printer.......................$ 15.00
Expenses:
BBS Phone Bill.......................-$ 22.72
Closing Balance June 2000............ $318.71
(Editor's note: These numbers do not balance because Jack did not take into account some checks that were outstanding. For an accurate balance, please see July's newsletter.)
by Scott Heider / sheide1@cugkc.cjb.net
The Group meeting for May was held on Wednesday, May 3rd at the Plaza Library. The attendance was approximately 8 members.
The Prez was unable to attend May's meeting because of a bum transmission in his truck, so our VP Vance ably filled in. Vance's big news was that Nick Rossi has released Novaterm 9.6 as freeware. For those few of you who didn't pay $15 when it was new 3 years ago, here is your chance to pick up an excellent terminal program at a price that can't be beat! Vance has posted the program on our BBS for your downloading pleasure. If you would rather download it from the Internet, you can do so from ftp://ftp.exitlight.com/Novaterm/v9.6.
The Disk of the Month for May is outstanding. First, it contains the compressed version of the aforementioned Novaterm 9.6 with Patch C. If that's not enough reason for you to pick up the Disk, it also contains Unzip64, as well as D64 & D128 emulator file converters! If you would like to purchase this or any previous Disk of the Month, they will be available at the next Group meeting for the low price of $3 each.
Finally, a reminder about the next
Group meeting. See you at the Plaza Library at 7:00 on Wednesday, June 7th.
Note that this meeting will be held in the small conference room on the main
level of the library.
by Lenard R Roach / lroach1@cugkc.cjb.net
Did you ever get so frustrated that you have to stop whatever it was you were doing, leave that situation, and come back to it later? I've been practicing this little piece of advice from my doctor for quite a while now and found it quite relaxing; so much so that I've applied it to other factors of my life, including my work with the Commodore. But before I go much further I need to apoligize to everyone who reads this article and those who have been following my scribblings all this time. I have done a lot of useless whining about this person or that program over the last twelve to eighteen months. By stepping back and observing my situation from afar, I've been able to see things from a new perspective. Let's start with a look at my ongoing situation with Creative Micro Designs.
CMD is the owner of my program "Check It Out!" There's nothing I can do about it; that's the way the contract I signed reads; so I have to stop my useless whining and deal with it from that point. After a long conversation with our club president, I have been brought a different approach on how I can get what I need from CMD, and that approach is called "licensing." I've always known about licensing a program but my research was mainly from the license owner's point-of-view and not the person who is requesting the license. By the time this article makes "Ryte Bytes," I will have contacted CMD and negotiations will be on the way to get a licensing agreement signed and progress done on some programs I am sitting on.
Another thing I've been a fool on is my hurrying the work on "Obligator Coordinator 1.0." I so wanted to have this done by summer of 1998, but it wasn't until Christmas of that same year that I presented the work for beta testing. All those who participated in the test gave me new insights into it, so I made adjustments and ran into some problems with those adjustments; problems so mean that I put the program away for a good nine months while I did something else. Now I've pulled it out, worked on it some more, and made all the corrections I can with a new perspective, and even if I do say so myself, the changes are marvelous. The program seems to flow smoothly and gives you, the user, easier access to all your functions, plus it helps if I have a properly functioning Commodore 64 to type the code in on.
My upgrade, called "Obligator Coordinator 1.5," or "OC v1.5" for short, gives everyone hopefully what they've asked for. First came an error trap on a "DEVICE NOT PRESENT" message when the user attempts to access the printer. Thanks to Mr. Walker, I have a small subroutine that accesses a quick message telling the user of the problem without crashing the program altogether.
Next came a directory reader. When I asked the members of the Commodore Users Group of Kansas City for such a reader I got a flood of responses. Many of those that came to me were directory designers and only two were readers: one I found and one that came from Mr. Walker. Naturally my ego told me to merge my reader with "OC v1.5" and put Mr. Walker's on a disk and shelve it. Now my ego was going to pay me back.
At every filename request, the user could type "Dir" and the directory would be read to the screen, but with my directory reader after the reading the program locked up. I wrestled with this for months not allowing humility to set in and believing that my directory reader could be the problem. Finally out of frustration I put "OC v1.5" away. Now, nine months later, with that fresh view I mentioned earlier, I have ceded to my humility and found that Mr. Walker's reader was more user friendly, so I scrapped my directory reader and permanently inserted his.
While running "Obilgator Coordinator 1.0," I stumbled across an error that missed even the beta testing and that was when the user was building his debt file, he couldn't read the error message when he overtyped the limit set by the program, so I added a carriage return (CHR$(13)) at the end of the error message. Now the message remains on the screen until RETURN is pressed instead of flashing across the screen in a fleet second.
Finally, I reduced the number of spaces in the CR$ (Creditor string input) and N$ (Notation string input) from seventy to thirty characters, not knowing at the time I was dealing with a bad memory chip inside my Commodore 64 as well as the aforementioned lock up with the directory reader. I thought the problem lay in my N$ and CR$ inputs, so at that time I reduced them from seventy to sixty. When the program resfused still to function, I again did a reduction from sixty to fifty, then from fifty to forty, finally stopping at thirty. After a nine month hiatus from programming and some earlier corrections, the input statements work fine. The reason the CR$ and N$ strings stay at thirty characters is to make the file easier to read when used in viewing mode. The whole package makes a nice block on the screen, full of color and hopefully information.
The biggest change came from the boot programs. "Obligator Coordinator 1.0" had boot programs, but for some reason the boot did not load the entire program. It was so bad that after forty lines of text was loaded into memory, the program collapsed within itself, so I took the boots out of the first version. Mr. Searle gave me a copy of "Compute Gazette" from December 1985 and in this magazine was an article on program chaining. I followed the instructions listed and now my boot programs work with "OC v1.5" perfectly. When the user types LOAD"*",8,1 in 64 mode, he will get a graphic greeting, followed closely by a second screen which contain the loading command menu where the user can go on to "OC v1.5" or exit to BASIC. As more programs are developed, I hope to chain them to the loader and make them part of the debt management series package.
For GEOS nuts, I have transferred all of "OC v1.5" programs and boots onto a GEOS formatted disk so GEOS users should be able to load "OC v1.5" as a GEOS file and click onto the C64 file marked "OC v1.5" and avoid the loaders altogether. Due to the disk open/close commands written in BASIC 2.0 and not 7.0, "OC v1.5" will only work in 64 mode. For the next upgrade I'll problably try to make "Obligator Coordinator" work in both 64 and 128 modes as well as 40/80 column screens. Sorry, I didn't change the icon for the GEOS load since I don't know how this is done. Maybe someone will be nice enough to show me how this is done. I'm also looking at modulating many of the larger subroutines so editing the program to fit your personal criteria will be easier.
I do hope that the changes, corrections, and inprovements to "Obligator Coordinator" meet everyone's apporoval. Those of you who are currently using "Obligator Coordinator 1.0" please let me know so I can get you the upgrade; but before any of that is done, I would like to make another beta test run with "OC v1.5" to see if anyone else can find faults with its makeup. I would especially appreciate any suggestions on how to make the screens easier on the eye. Right now I have a black background and for the on screen text I use the other fifteen colors.
I am personally inpressed with "Obligator Coordinator Version 1.5" and I hope you can share in my enthusiasm as you use and apply this debt manager to your every day business life.
The Commodore Users Group of Kansas City is a not-for-profit educational support group for persons using Commodore computers.
Membership benefits include a monthly newsletter as well as access to CUGKC's Bulletin Board System (BBS) open 23.5 hours every day, with upload and download privileges, plus electronic mail, and access to over 500 doors of the FidoNet (part of a world-wide network). Also, members receive access to a library of over 1000 public domain and shareware disks.
Dues are $30 the first year, $25 annually thereafter. Disks of the month and library disks cost $3 each for members.
Meetings are held on the first Wednesday of every month in the Lower Level Meeting Room of the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library, 4801 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri. Visitors are welcome to attend any meeting. For more information, contact any officer:
Email us at cugkc@cugkc.cjb.net
or visit our web site at http://cugkc.cjb.net.
Our snail-mail address is:
CUGKC
PO Box 36034
Kansas City, Missouri 64111