DON'T MISS THE MAY CUCUG MEETING!
You could win hundreds of dollars in valuable prizes!
Well, kids, it's that time again! This month's CUCUG meeting (Thursday, May 18th) is our annual Spring Computerfest and Swap Meet and one meics Machine is available from Ron Hackley, The FGM Connection, P.O. Box 2206, Roseburg, OR, 97470, for only $24.95. For more information, call 1 503 496-2234.
Thanks to Dennis for a great presentation of a great program!
The April meeting of the CUCUG executive board was held on Wednesday, April 26th at 7PM at Kevin Hisel's house (address and phone number, both in the book). Present at the meeting were Jim Huls, Mark Landman, Mike Latinovich, Craig Kummerow, Kevin Hopkins, Anderson Yau, Richard Rollins Jon Sago, Mark Bellon, Emil Cobb, Kevin Hisel and Jim Lewis.
Mark Landman: We had four new members join us in March. We had none in April.
Mark said he returned the unsold books to Intangible Assets.
He informed us that the $10 per month donation to Prairienet had begun on the 15th of the month.
Mark said that he had our taxes prepared at the Tax Shop at a substantial savings to the club.
The club's investment CD is maturing nicely.
When asked about our application to the IRS, Mark said there was nothing new. They're still stalling.
Mike Latinovich: Mike said he enjoyed the PhonePak demonstration. On the topic of the Commodore buyout, Mike says he is "iffy". "I don't care as long as my machine keeps running. I'm generally disappointed with how things are turning out."
Craig Kummerow: Craig began by extending a "welcome back" to Anderson Yau and Mark Bellon. This was echoed by the rest of the Board.
Speaking of the C64/128 SIG, Craig said he was real pleased with how the Fun Graphics Machine program turned out. Eight members were in attendance. The noise of the meeting hall was not distracting.
Craig handed out a tentative program calender for the rest of the year.
Craig will bring the Gast/Stevenson software to the next meeting.
Kevin Hopkins (KH2): Kevin presented the exchange newsletters and handed out the mail. Kevin informed the Board members that we have received newsletters from two new groups: Civic 64/128 in Oxnard, California, and Amiga Atlanta (Georgia). He also pointed out an article in the Northwest Amiga Group's newsletter (Portland, Oregon) which detailed some of the difficulties they have been going through, problem with a familiar ring. Kevin later posted this article to the Board section of the BBS so it could be examined more easily. (Thanks to Garry Stasiuk, President, NAG)
Jim Lewis: Jim said he was impressed with Quentin's GVP PhonePak presentation.
On the topic if the new meeting hall, Jim said his vote was to stay there. The people he talked to said they liked it more than didn't.
Jim reported that the Corporate Report has been filed.
Speaking on the Commodore buyout situation, Jim said it was "interesting." He's not worried. He's puzzled. He believes it would be a same if someone doesn't produce Amigas. Jim Huls interjected that over in Europe, people seem to be pretty happy with the outcome.
Jon Sago: Jon said he has received a fax from CEI saying that Escom will produce machines.
Anderson Yau: Anderson said he thought everything went pretty well at the meeting. "I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while. Glad to see everyone."
Richard Rollins: Rich said he'd just installed the new drive for 330 megs more storage on the BBS. "We need a Y-cable for the tape backup. We have room for three more drives."
Speaking on the April meeting, Rich said, "Quentin did a fantastic job."
Mark Bellon: Mark informed everyone that memory prices have been going up as much as $30 a day recently. With the release of Windows95 coming soon, there is a fear that memory will disappear the way floppy disks did when Windows 3.1 was released. Win95 is another memory pig from Microsoft.
High density disks will also be the target of hording since Windows95 will require 25 HD disks per copy for its release. Five other major applications for Windows95 are also scheduled for release at, or about, the same time. All requiring numerous HD disks. So, if you need disks, get them now.
Richard Rollins: Rich suggested that due to Commodore's uncertain circumstances and the effect that has had on our raffle contributions, we should consider purchasing a 28.8 modem to insure a decent prize. We could price the tickets at $3 or $5 to defray the cost. Kevin Hisel recommended that maybe we could get one of the new Iomega Zip drives. Mark Bellon said that MacWarehouse has 20,000 Zip drives on back order. Iomega is shipping 3000 drives a week but orders are running 5000 to 8000 per week. However, through Mark's corporate connection he said he might be able to get one. The Board authorized Mark to try.
Mark Bellon: Mark then made the proposal that brought him back to the CUCUG Board. He and Richard Rollins would like to start a Macintosh SIG under CUCUG's auspices.
The reasons for this proposal are that the local Mac group is dead. The UI group is "in your face insulting to anyone who is not connected with the University". What both lack is a strong organization with a desire to serve the community. CUCUG has these strengths.
What Richard and Mark offer is Richard as SIG Chairman and Mark as Librarian. Both would be wiling to demonstrate software and hardware at the meetings. Mark says he has 13 megs of choice Public Domain software for Library disks, enough for the next year. This would provide significant revenue for the club. They also have 15 to 20 people who have expressed an interest in joining such an organization.
What they would desire from CUCUG is a place to meet along with us and perhaps a page in the newsletter.
Mark said there are similarities between the Amiga and Mac communities and he feels they could coexist quite well under the CUCUG banner. He said, although the Mac is achieving the Amiga level a decade late, it is getting there.
Needless to say, this proposal sparked an extended discussion. The fundamental themes that were heard in the discussion were that, with the state of Commodore and the Amiga so much in doubt, the long term future of our group is cloudy. Our numbers and income are murky, at best. A developing and supported technology like the Macintosh would bring interest, enthusiasm, new members, and new resources into the group. On the other hand, diluting the focus of our group away from the Commodore family could open up the gates to factionalism. The 8-bit SIG and the Amiga SIG have lived together harmoniously since the inclusion of the Amiga group in October of 1987. It is a testament to the quality of our members that we weathered that change. We could probably expect to see the same thing happen with taking the Macintosh under our wing. That being said, at Emil Cobb's suggestion, the Board decided that on an issue so large we should discuss it with the members at the next General Meeting.
Richard and Mark offered to do a Macintosh demo at the May meeting so that CUCUG's members could see the Mac close up. They also offered to give a special demo to the Board at Mark's house on May 13th at 1 pm. With that the issue was tabled.
Emil Cobb: Emil said, "Good meeting last month."
Jim Huls: Jim said the May meeting will be at the Union Hall. There was a discussion of perhaps partitioning the room up to reduce the competing sources of noise. It was suggested that if we moved to the Union Hall full time, we might be able to persuade them to give us other rooms to handle the problem. Jim said maybe we should make the jump and get it over with. Richard Rollins moved that we make the change in meeting site to the Electricians Hall permanent. Craig Kummerow seconded the motion. It was approved.
Jim said he is still trying to swing the deal to purchase modems from USRobotics at User Group rates. He said they seem to want to come to one of our meetings. Everyone said, "Fine."
Kevin Hisel (KH1): Kevin's characterization of disk sales in April is unprintable, according to the guidelines the newsletter has been given on such linguistic matters.
On the topic of raffle donations, he had this to say, "The donation of prizes is down, but that should be expected given the current state of affairs. However, we do still have lots of stuff to give away, including a very special "premium" item, and it's almost guaranteed that everyone who buys a ticket will win a prize!" [It seems that this has markedly improved since the Board meeting.]
There was a discussion of the prizes and how to price the tickets.
Finally, Kevin reported that Hobbico had donated a C64, a BusCard II IEEE interface and an SFD-1001 1.2 meg IEEE floppy drive to CUCUG.
Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. at the IBEW Local 601 Union Hall (352-1741), located at 2901 Research Road in the Interstate Research Park in northwest Champaign. To get there, go north on Mattis over I-74 and turn right at the second stop light, onto Interstate Drive. Then take the first "real" left at Research Road. The Electrician's Hall is the third building on your left. There's a big flag pole right out front and it's directly across the street from one of Hobbico's signs. You should park and enter the building in the back.
ASCII text files of all recent Status Register newsletters are available for downloading on our BBS or our WWW site. Other user group newsletter editors may leave a comment to the BBS Sysop to request free access. To initiate a newsletter exchange, just send us your newsletter. As a matter of CUCUG policy, a newsletter exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.
This newsletter was prepared with PageStream 2.22 on an Amiga 3000 25/100 and output to an HP Laserjet IIP plus. Pagestream was donated to CUCUG by Soft-Logik Publishing Corporation.
For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers(all at area code 217):
President: Jim Huls 892-8730 jhuls@cucug.org Vice-President: David Witt 684-2815 maddog@prairienet.org Secretary/Editor: Kevin Hopkins 356-5026 kh2@uiuc.edu Treasurer: Mark Landman 398-2910 mlandman@prairienet.org Corporate Agent: Jim Lewis 359-1342 jlewis@cucug.org Librarian/Sysop: Kevin Hisel 352-1002 khisel@cucug.org C64/128 SIG: Craig Kummerow 784-5919 cwkummer@prairienet.org Board Advisor: Richard Rollins 469-2616 RERollins@aol.com
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