Wednesday, March 20, 7pm SINCUS held its regular monthly meet at the Chase/1st City BAnk on the Vestal Parkway, Vestal, NY. 26 attending.
Gary Ennis started the meeting with the clarification of newsletter policy – 22 lines free per member – per annual subscription.
Nominations for society officers were opened to the floor and the following were nominated:
President- Gary Ennis
Vice-President- John Sims
Treasurer- Glenn Wilson
* Recording Secretary- Paul Hill
* Financial Secretary- Wes Brzozowski
Trustee #1-Dave Schoenwetter
Trustee #2-Don Lamen
* these positions are under proposal for change at the April meet.
The Computer Shopper offer was announced again-6 months for $5, try it! you’ll like it. Bring cash or check made out to Computer Shopper, to the next meet and we’ll mail ’em off for you.
DEMO- Charlie Keoth’s “the talking Gorilla Banana”. We were treated to another very organized talk by Charlie, not only on the nuts and bolts on the how to’s but the reasons why and how comes. Outside of the potential uses of speech being paired up with computers for games and education, there is also security uses,keep track of time, and the handicap could find many uses. Charlie’s chip the SPO256 generates speech using allophones, 42 in the English language and pauses. The SPO256 uses 59 allaphones and 6 different pauses in its chip. With the book “How to Make Your Computer TALK” by Steven J. Veltri, Charlie got into the basics of building speech. The sounds generated almost were recognizable the first time one heard them. By adding more pauses and slowing down the allophones the voice became understood-plus one’s ears got atuned to its sound.
DEMO-the Sinclair Microdrive on a 2068/Spectrum with Zero IF by Wes Brzozowski-WOW-fast-priced reasonably-$125 for the inter face 1 and one drive. Wes researched all the alternatives and felt this to be best bang for the buck. If you can build the Zero IF, you probably be in the same price ballpark as the micro drives on the US market. On the British market there are books on the drive, lotsa software plenty of 3rd party support. I imagine if you are using disc on an IBM or similiar the Micro seems clunky-but after cassette tape anything is better.
DEMO-“John’s Print Shop” by John Colonna. John wrote and demoed his large print generator program. He showed some of the problems and cures for designing your own print faces. Apparently his two year old is learning the alphabet faster with the larger letters.
CLONE, as of yesterday still had the bug, but today, March 30 Wes came up with the answer that works on my set up-version 3 is coming out and copies will be available to all who bring in the first version. Apparently some signals get inverted by some tape recorders thus causing a loading problem. We thank you for your patience. Corresponding members will be able to purchase CLONE for $6 post paid. Any profits from this go back into the society to keep dues down, so the more sales the better you make out.
Welcome to new local members, Alan Pace, Dunsmore PA and Hubert Kessel, Binghamton, NY and to William MacDougall, Ottawa, Ontario; Phil McConaghey, Pembroke Pines, FL; Russell Wiles, Sioux Falls,SD and John Constantine, Chapel Hill, NC. our new corresponding members!
On Saturday, March 23,1985 the hardware class was held, the subject of photo-etching and copper plate etching was covered by yours truly as Glenn had to work at the last minute. Dennis Dale covered basic terms and concepts for beginning hardware putter together-ers. As a novice in breadboarding I strongly recommend wire wrapping- soldering and etching can come later!
Thursday, March 28, the programming class by Ennis and Sims was conducted at the Vestal Library. Gary covered arrays and Dim strings and John started into basic structed concepts of programming. To get us started in MC, the homework is to write a MC program to clear part of the screen.
Paul Hill
Rec Secy
SINCUS