Tonight's meeting started promptly at 7:00 PM. Stephen Griswold
read off last meeting's notes. Looks to me to have been a pretty
heavy duty meeting that I missed (moan).
Tom Mannion has started the Jim Taylor fund, to collect funds to
later present his son, Jonathan, with a gift certificate. We
will all miss Jim. Take a moment in silence to acknowledge Jim's
recent death before reading on.
Treasurer's Report
Tom Mannion tells us that the treasury was last confirmed at
$553.88, but after new deposits that will be made soon, it will
be brought up to around $600. Tom says we need to keep a balance
of at least $500, or we, the group, will be hit with extranious
charges by the bank he has our account in (sorry Tom, didn't
quite catch the name of that banking firm).
End of Treasurer's report
Breaking developments in the Yasbec project given by Stephen
Griswold and Lee Bradley. Steve tried to contact Cam Cotrill to
get the official Yasbec Starter Kit. Steve needs to get a new
boot-strap ROM. A deal has also been worked out between Lee and
Paul Chidley involving EB&C etc.
- "Remember, the Yasbec is a high performance, but unfinished
computer..." - Al Hathway. Support this project in your own way,
contact Lee at his independantly run BBS, The Mouse House at
203-665-1100.
Al gave us the rundown on PC Pursuit. PCP is a long distance
modem-lover's dream. It can save the average user mondo (I like
the word) deniros. There is a $30 flat fee per month, for this
service you get 30 hours of connect time + [didn't get the
additional $$$/hour over the 30 hours Lee, could you put that
in?].
You call one of your local dial-in numbers, and can reach many
major metropolitan as well as some good non-industrialized towns
in the U.S. But as always they restrict your time to call to
between non-peak hours of 6:00 PM till 7:00 AM, unless you want
to pay an additional charge.
StarLink, PCP's major competetor, had gone outof business
recently, affecting many people, so I take it that many of their
customers had to go to PCP.
You can get info for PCP by calling the 800 directory
(1-800-555-1212), ask the operator for PC Pursuit.
Lee got a call from a woman who intends to write an article on
our group. From what Lee read off at the meeting, there may well
be free publicity after all. I hope his letter gets through.
Gary Stagliano told us some things we may not already know about
Z80MU for the PC. Z80MU is a CPM 2.2 emulator program, that has
been released into the Shareware market to help get mainstreamed
as much as possible. Typical performance is calculated at about
5 MHZ Kaypro on an 8 MHZ IM XT. On my own Tandy 1000 286-10MHZ
it reported a 1.5 MHZ speed. And I have tested it on Central's
Zenith computers, and there is a significant speed increase, on
the order of 3 times. The faster the host PC, the faster the
overall emulation.
Many things can be changed in its built in AUTOEXEC.Z80 file,
such as terminal emulation (many of the most popular are
supported), processor emulation (z80 for the most compatible
set-up, but if you have an NEC v20 or v30 you can run 8088 mode
and have almost no software slow-down, very nice).
Stuart Holden brought up the age old topic of changing the
meeting date to something other than Tuesday nights, as this
conflicts with his schedule. But seeing such a large group, it's
hard to get everyone's schedule modified for any one particular
night. Steve Dresser brought up the suggestion of starting SIGs
(Special Interest Groups.) Many thought it was a good idea and we
tossed ideas around awhile. Nothing was voted on.
Well, it looks like our sister group, TCC, doesn't have much more
life in them from what I hear from Stephen Griswold.
Tom Veile is soliciting articles. If you write something you
might find of interest to the other member's, please submit your
article, manuscript, or book online to Lee's BBS (# given
earlier).
Al motioned that we bring the meeting to a close. Gary S.
seconded it, Eric Palm thirded.
Those in attendance tonight were:
Eric Palm, Bob Bates, Lee Bradley, Stephen Veile, Tom Veile,
Stephen Griswold, Carolyn Wyman, Gary Stagliano, Ray Brown,
Sigurd Kimpel, Steve Dresser, Stuart Holden, Tom Mannion, Al
Hathway, Reno Franconi, and CCP/M's newest paid member Mike
Dalene.
(Well I'm still taking notes so nyaaaaa)
Steve Dresser showed us Packet Radio, which looks like a nice,
but expensive-to-start-up hobby, that I myself would like to
someday get into, when my expenses should die down, and my
studies won't be so strenuous to handle it.
It looked like ol' Murphy and his Lawbook were at work tonight,
because Steve couldn't get things working for us. He DID have it
working at first, but something I did had messed things up for
him. He did come to his feet with another radio provided by
Sigurd Kimpel. They contacted the computer in the parking lot,
but for God knows what reason couldn't get a signal beyond the
parking lot. Probably something to do with the local of our
meetings why Packet radio can't get out. Excellent job Steve. I
liked your demo nonetheless. Thanks for sharing it with us. And
that's one hell of a braille terminal you have there, wish I knew
more about its operation; sorry for making you upset at the
meeting.
Mike Dalene tells us a little about OS/9 and gave the number to
his BBS at 738-3064.
Well that's it for tonight's notes. We were kicked out of the
Librbary post-haste as usual where members who wished to continue
their conversations later reformed at George's Pizza for drinks
and talk.
