Best wishes and hopes for a better new year and Greetings and Best of Health to all this upcoming Christmas season.
The regular meeting of SINCUS was held Wednesday, Nov 21 at 7pm. at the Chase/1st City Bank on the Vestal Parkway, Vestal NY, 26 attending.
The meeting opened with pizza and coke on the society’s 2nd anniversary. What a way to start the evening before Thanksgiving!
Gary Ennis started the meeting with updates on the new micro drive systems now for sale from Knighted Computers, among other sources.
Currently we list 52 Regular members in good standing and 10 corresponding members. We are swapping newsletters with 9 other user groups, some of which we have not heard from in two-three months. We send newsletters to many Sinclair related product businesses (15) for their info and to let them know of of our advertising reach. During the past month we have mailed newsletters to an additional 10 user groups not previously contacted with no response to date.
Clyde Tackley gave a short demo of BYTE-BACK’s modem with up/down load capability and RS232 port. He and Dave Schoenwetter talked about the local BBS situation. Recently a young hacker got into the files of local BBS’s and really messed them up. All shut down until this past week. All boards Sysops are now taking legal measures against the individual concerned . Dave talked about the protocal for BBS use and if you get into a problem Hang UP- then call the SYSOP to tell them and explain. They may be mad but you won’t lose your privileges. Take the time to learn from someone who has been thru the course and don’t wade thru another guy’s computer files like a moose on the loose, or someone may pull your cursor. Our TS2068 has a different setup than the PC’s,C64’s and TRS80s, so you have to be careful! I feel that if any SINCUS member deliberately wrecked a BBS, he should be banned from further society meetings and functions, we don’t need the association with such.
With the advent of micro drive systems, you need to copy all your copyrighted material to the new tape systems. Gary gave a class on how to use Wes Brzozowski’s Header program. The header on every program contains the info you need to know to load any program. If you missed this let us know and we’ll schedule a replay early next year.
We also had a corresponding member-John Livingston, of Port Washington, Long Island presnt at the meeting, he was home visiting relatives(Stan L.)for the holidays. Good to meet you John.!
On Tuesday, we meet for a programming class at the Vestal Public Library-our next is Dec 18 at 7pm at the VPL-all welcome. If you missed the last or last couple come on down. Our homework is to 1. Write out in English (not BASIC ) the step you would take for making the computer list numbers, like 1.456 and .6783 and 1.00006 all in a column with the decimal point in the same column. like
1.456 .6783 1.00006
2. Then on the program “PLAY” the one that you got with your 2068, write a “logo” program to make a sqaure,a rectangle,a triangle and 4 squares and anything else. 3. write out the Header pokes, and look up and write down the menomics for each step.
WINTER MEETING CANCELLATIONS
If there is a county “emergency road use only” status declared in Broome county the meeting scheduled for that night will be cancelled. We cannot get a room on short notice, so the next meeting will be the next month.