Bill Harmer
97 Ruskin St
Ottawa
Canada K1Y 4B3
Dear Bill,
You suggested in your last TS Bulletin that you might be at an impass as to where to turn with your publishing hobby. You seem to not be tied to a user group any longer. I have some thoughts about that in regards to T/SNUG and ZXir QLive Alive! I would therefore like to know a BIT more about you and your situation.
To do this I will tell you about me. I am almost 48 years old. I have been programming almost entirely in BASIC since 1972 as part of my job at Motorola, INC. I have tried IBM, XEROX and DEC mainframes, COMMODORE, TI, TANDY Color Computer, MACINTOSH and IBM P.C.s through the years but none of them suite me like the TIMEX/SINCLAIR 2068. I have owned the TANDY Color Computer II and III, ZX80, ZX81 and now several TS2068s with the full LarKen disk system and four disk drives. I use the MACINTOSH XE at work. I was the Sysop of the club PDP 11/60 and wrote the BBS for it. I put out the newsletters of four different groups and am the President of the Motorola MicroComputer Club. The Chicago Area Timex Users group found me in 1988 and I am now its Newsletter editor. Our group has about 14 members which is a mix of TS2068 and QL users. We lost 2 members last year to IBM and 1 to the Marines. That should be the end of it. This is because the rest of us are of the ‘fixed income’ variety and love the machines we have. If you and your previous (I presume) group are as intrenched in the use of the ZX81 type machines as we here in Illinois are with the QL and TS2068, then Don Lambert and I would like to invite you to use your writings for the ZX81 section of the ZXir QLive Alive! newsletter. I thought that some time back you had announced that you would cease publishing but I see your publications keep coming. I would like to know if you have numbers and locations of those folks still using ZX80 and ZX81 type machines?
I feel that the TS2068ers will stay as they are here in Illinois, all are using disk drives of one sort or another. The QL guys are looking to upgrade their hardware in the following manner: At the last RAINBOWFEST here in Schaumburg, Illinois, put on by RAINBOW MAGAZINE, the magazine for the Tandy Color Computer, three computers were shown, two of which blow IBM P.C.s away. These computers are trying to be the computer for the TANDY CoCo people to migrate to. These two machines are called the TC70 by Frank Hogg Labritories and the MM/1 by IMS. Both use the 68070 microprocessor. These two machines can run at least 16 tasks at the same time under the OS-K (another name for the OS-9) operating system. These machines use IBM hardware platforms. At present Nazir Pashtoon here in Illinois, OMAR Firestone in California and Europian users are looking for a hardware platform to move to with Q-DOS, SuperBASIC and QL software. One of these two may fill the bill. (It has been reported that the Spectrum may wind up in IBM hardware in Europe somewhere but that report may have been an April fools joke.)
Now tell me something about you. Let me know your phone number and let me know if you would become the Vice-Chairman of the ZX81 clan to keep the T/S community informed as to what is happining in the ZX80/ZX81/TS1500/ACE world. Folks could then keep reading TS Bulletin with less cost to you. This may be what will become of Classic Computer/Craigist newsletter by Don Lambert.
Regards,
Bob Swoger
–==GATOR==–
Bob Swoger
613 Parkside Circle
Streamwood IL 60107-1647
H708-837-7957
W708-576-8068