Meeting Notes – August

The meeting convened in MEETING ROOM ‘A’ of the Fort Worth Public Library at 300 Taylor Street in downtown Fort Worth. The next meeting is scheduled for SEPTEMBER 10. 1988 in MEETING ROOM ‘A’. The meetings are on the second Saturday of every month from 1:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M. The meetings are open to all who wish to learn more about Sinclair, Timex, Amstrad, CP/M, and MS-DOS computers. This includes anyone using any type of disk system with their computers, or other computer operator/owners are more than welcome as there are many different types of computers, peripherals, programming languages, and programs that get discussed.

The meeting was called to order by our president, Chuck Dawson, who had just gotten back the day before from a trip to Boston. I don’t know if he went up there on business or pleasure, but I am certain that it was probably much cooler there than here. We went on the roundtable discussion, as usual, and added another new member to the group. WELCOME to Arthur C. McDuffie from Bedford, TX. Art is another 2068 fan who really enjoys using his Timex at home. He was looking through the latest TDM, the one with all of the users groups and newsletters and such, saw us and came to the meeting. We are glad to have Art with us and are proud that have another programmer in our ranks.

Frank Bouldin has been doing a great deal of house cleaning and getting everything in order. We have missed him from the last couple of months, but he has been quite busy. One of the things that he has donated to the club are most of his old computer magazines, SYNC, ZX COMPUTING, YOUR SINCLAIR, TIMEX SINCLAIR USER, CTM, and others. He also donated some books to the library, and since I am the librarian of hardcopy materials, I was pleased to see our library increase. I will have to take some time and sit down and make a data base of all of the information that we have one hand at the present. I would hate to think of all this resource material going to waste. But fear not, some of those old Sinclair Spectrum utilities may once again grace the pages of this newsletter, thanks to Frank.

Michael Hart was there and finally got up the nerve to re-connect the printer interface to his newly acquired 2068. The last time it was not in properly and fell off when he had turned his computer on…results, one fried computer. I think that the repairman, Dan, from Mo. might be able to help him out. We took some time to see if we could narrow down the problem to a specific area or chip. We did not do too well, but may be on the right track. Hope that Mike gets it in to Dan and has that back-up ready just in case. I figure that most of us own at least two computers just in case one of them gives up the ghost.

Fred Stockton has been working uith his 2068 more and more. He is really getting good at it, He did have some difficulty in loading a tape which he brought to the meeting to see if one of us could help him out. His main problem in loading the STAMP COLLECTOR was it was a 1000 tape and not a 2068 tape. I have brought the tape home with me, used EZ-KEY’s UPLOAD 2000 and now have a 2068 tape of the 1000 program. Fred should have no difficulty in getting this one to load. It looks like a very interesting tape. Fred is also still scouting around for a genealogy program for his 2068, but with little success. I guess that some of us will have to get together and make up a database for Fred to use. I was thinking of using VU-FILE, but I am not certain that this із what he would want. I also thought of using MASTERFILE, but then again, it might be better to just program the computer yourself to have it do exactly what you want it to do in the case of genealogy.