by Jack Kincaid / jkinca1@cugkc.cjb.net
Well, the CUGKC no longer has a PO Box! The members decided not to renew it when the fees became due in June. I paid the fee in Jan for the next 6 months that would end in June, all well and good! At the end of Jan. they left a note in our box stating that the PO box would be moved from the Annex to the main Post Office at Westport by the end of Feb. Great, that will save me 5 blocks of traffic! So the first Saturday in March I go the Westport Post Office - they're CLOSED!! Why? I have no idea. The next time I am able to go to the Westport Post Office is in April at which time they tell me that the box has been closed since Feb. I told them that I had paid for the box until June. TOOOOOOO BAD! SOOO SAD! They gave me a form to open the same PO Box but did not have the check I sent them for the time between Jan and June. No wonder they raise the rates every time you turn around, they can't find the money they have!
The June meeting was held at Leslie's house, even Vance found it! Not as spacious as the library but we did have a phone line to the BBS and the Internet, which we used. We still have problems with Novaterm! We did contact the Club's BBS and looked at our Internet site, had a few problems there with the terminal program (AKA operators).
It was a small group, six, however we had three renewals - Lacy, Moloney, and Roach. Thank you all for your support even in light of our decreasing numbers.
I still have 64s and 128s with 1541 and 1571 drives. I also have monitors and printers just sitting in my basement doing nothing. For a small price they can be in your home doing something! Call or see me at the next meeting. My phone # is 816-761-4777 and I am home most days after 4 PM.
Financial Report
Balance May 2001..................... $174.45
Income: Jun. 2001
Renewal (3) .........................
$ 65.00
Expenses: ...........................-$ 0.00
Closing Balance Jun. 2001............ $239.45
by Scott Heider / sheide1@cugkc.cjb.net
The Group meeting for June was held on Wednesday, June 6th at the Lacy home. The attendance was 6 members.
The group took advantage of the working phone line in Les' basement: we dialed in to both the club's BBS and the Internet with Les' 128... Experienced some technical difficulties with Les' Novaterm 9.6 configuration, but they were fixed by the time the meeting was adjourned.
Finally, a reminder about the next Group meeting. See you at the Lacy home at 7:00 on Wednesday, July 11th (not the 4th)!
by Vance Kellinger / vkelli1@cugkc.cjb.net
Greetings to my fellow CUGKCers! I know that it has been a long time since I have written anything for the newsletter and even this will be cheating a little. I have just cut and pasted from some newsgroup articles that I have received. It appears that even though CMD has gone belly up as far as supporting the Commodore line of computers, a white knight has ridden to the rescue disguised as Maurice Randall! He will be going to Massachusetts the week after the Fourth, to finalize the deal with CMD and to take the hardware home. He has already announced some new software and hardware. One of the hardware items is a Zip Drive kit and I have already ordered one. The kit itself costs $55.00 and you also need to provide the internal 100 meg Zip drive. It also comes with an upgraded version of CMD's HD DOS that will be sold for $40.00 by itself.
Well, I best let you go and read for
yourselves. Don't think I will be at the July meeting, as my mother will have
been in town for the prior week and will be flying out that day, but we will
see. Till next time, take care.
Message #1:
Hello, brave Homesteaders... When the dust settles and Maurice Randall has completed the CMD acquisition and fulfilled all orders, I'd like to see some new innovations coming out for our classic Commodore computing platform:
* Giving the SuperCPU a separate power
supply.
* If a separate power supply can't be
worked out for the SuperCPU, how about having a separate power supply for the
SuperRAM? This way, SuperRAM would not introduce an added load on the host Commodore's
power supply and can be left on continuously, a la the RAMLink.
* A HD DOS that has partition
support beyond the 16Mb+ barrier.
* Programming documentation for the SuperCPU.
* Programming documentation for the CMD devices.
* Wheels SC, need I say more?
* If WDC comes out with the 65832, come up with a SuperDuperCPU. :)
* Scanner interfacing.
* Unless there's something wrong with my SID, my SmartMouse is already flaky
after a year or so of heavy use. Maybe a better quality mouse can be built.
* Bring back the StereoSID cartridge.
Well, enough daydreaming. I feel that
they are realistic goals. But, ultimately, I always leave it to Maurice Randall's
discretion and business judgment in coming up with new software and hardware
innovations for our classic Commodore computing scene. Enjoy.
-- Todd Elliott
Message #2:
On Mon., 2 Jul 2001, Todd Elliott wrote:
> When the dust settles and Maurice Randall has completed the CMD acquisition
and fulfilled all orders, I'd like to see some new innovations coming out for
our classic Commodore computing platform:
Hello. I've daydreamed some more. :) How about:
* Making good use of the rights to
the old RUN Magazine, such as publishing a RUN Special Issue or a special disk
containing the best RUN games, GEOS, utilities, etc.
* Having a 'DualCPU' upgrade or something similar. A casing similar to the SuperCPU
would be used and it would house a genuine 65816 along with a SuperRAM ramcard.
This would plug into the pass-through cartridge port of the first SuperCPU,
creating dual SuperCPU's. This DualCPU upgrade would not contain the needed
glue logic for interfacing it with the host Commodore computer. This DualCPU
upgrade would not have memory mirroring or optimization. The first SuperCPU
takes care of all of that.
This way, the DualCPU can be used as a second coprocessor and it would have its own SuperRAM to play around with. A minimum ROM subset to facilitate multitasking and communications with the First SuperCPU would be used. Imagine Wheels SC taking full advantage of dual microprocessors.
Ah, well, sounds nice and I'll slink back into daydreaming... I know Maurice Randall has a lot to catch up in terms of hardware design. He may or may not be able to pull off any hardware innovations that he's currently dreaming about. I'll certainly support him in his endeavors, along with many dedicated Commodore hobbyist users. Enjoy.
-- Todd Elliott
Message #3:
Hi Todd, (you said),
> I've daydreamed some more. :) How about:
Don't stop dreaming... I'm listening. :)
-Maurice
Message #4:
>I've daydreamed some more. :) How about:
Todd, All good ideas and maybe some might see the light of day. How about:
* Adding the SGN function to geoCalc
so it can perform If/Then calculations (substitute it for a lesser needed function
or find some way to add it to the existing ones. (Care to tackle this one yourself,
Todd?)
* Get the rights to GeoWorld. While this mag is quite dated there are a fair
number of good articles and some helpful tips for users who may not be aware
of some of the history of GEOS and some of the things that can be done with
it. One issue contained three full pages of documentation for G.O. Bach that
did not appear in the GEOS Companion docs or in any issue of RUN.
-Bruce
Message #5:
Todd, (and fellow homesteaders)
I probably shouldn't say anything, but since the word is out about Maurice trying to secure the CMD line, I guess that it won't hurt to say this. (If I say this Maurice and I shouldn't have, then feel free to yell at me later.)
Once Maurice gets back with "The Goods", I am going to be helping him out, trying to help fill the orders that remain from the trip to CMD. I am really excited to be able to help him out. I have wanted to do something like this for a long time and this could really be alot of fun! Now, I want to emphasize that I am not exactly sure what I am able to do or not to do yet, but I do know one thing...I will be there to help Maurice get things organized and get as many orders filled as fast as we can!
The last thing I want to see is Maurice get overwhelmed by the amount of orders and not be able to also keep up with his "Regular" job. He can't do it alone and I see an opportunity to help him out, increase my "Technical" skills, and be of help to him as he gets this all set up and organized. This isn't going to be easy, but I am confident that we can get up and running in fairly short order. :)
I didn't want to say anything to anyone about this until Maurice announced it on his website, but now that it is looking more and more like the deal will go through for Maurice, I thought that I might as well tell you all that I am going to be helping out. Like I said earlier, I am really excited about this and I am hopeful that this will be a true success! So, get them orders in folks! :)
Isn't it nice to know that our Commodores refuse to die? We just keep getting better and better, with the likes of all the programmers and creative people we have in our community! Long live the Commodore!
-Tim
Message #6:
On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Tim Lewis wrote:
>Once Maurice gets back with "The Goods", I am going to be helping him out,
trying to help fill the orders that remain from the trip to CMD. I am really
excited to be able to help him out. I have wanted to do something like this
for a long time and this could really be alot of fun! Now, I want to emphasize
that I am not exactly sure what I am able...
On behalf of interested Commodore users through out the world, may I (we) thank you Tim for lending a hand to Maurice. I am sure he appreciates it. There is one price for a kit Maurice hasn't come up with yet, and then my order will go in. After the organizing is finished, will we be getting occasionally order listings like CMD put out? Maurice, what will your business name be changed to, or have you had time to think about this? Since Maurice is a true-blue Commodore user and supporter, I think this adventure of his will bring more and more new Commodore users into our fold, and hopefully to our two major discussion lists. I am praying earnestly to that end. Faith without works is dead, the Good Book says, and with workers like Maurice, God is sure to bless our Commodore World! If I offend anyone with my religiosity, hope you will forgive me.
A happy puppy,
Willis
Message #7:
Hi Willis, (you said),
> After the organizing is finished, will we be getting occasionally order listings like CMD put out?
I'm not sure yet how I will do that. I've thought about putting out a periodic newsletter with a price list in it along with other interesting articles and tech tips, news, etc. If I do it, it will probably be sent free with an order. In other words, order a hard drive and get so many issues free. Order a T232 and maybe get one issue, something like that. I would make it something that other programmers could participate in. They could give me an article about their program and I would put it in along with an ad for them for free. Somebody like Dale Sidebottom could put an ad for his LLD (and that one program called PostPrint) in it for free. The idea would be to support the programmers and people providing services. This will keep the users interested. In return, I would probably sell some more hardware and a few Wheels disks. So everybody's happy. But it's just an idea right now. The web site will also be used to advertise the products with a price list.
> Maurice, what will your business name be changed to, or have you had time to think about this?
It will still be Click Here Software. As for the CMD products, we haven't even discussed that. I don't know right now if they will still be CMD products or something else that I come up with. We'll know more in a couple of weeks.
> Since Maurice is a true-blue Commodore user and supporter, I think this adventure of his will bring more and more new Commodore users into our fold, and hopefully to our two major discussion lists.
Right now, my intention is to keep the users we already have. It's hard to get new people into a Commodore, but easy to keep existing ones excited. You just have to keep giving them new stuff to play with. :)
-Maurice
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 at the Lacy home, 6010 Sunrise Drive, Mission, Kansas. 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.
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