Meeting Notes, July/August 1989 David Clark and Al Hathway were sitting at the table in the Farmington Public Library when my wife and I arrived. Jim Taylor had left me a note on our board that David was looking for information and I had sent him a copy of the last newsletter; it was good to see a new face (and to see how effective electronic and conventional (US Snail) messaging is). It was a meeting which started out with only a few people. Diane Thome gave editor Taylor an article on macros. Newcomer David Clark owns a Commodore 128 and an Osborne. I passed out hardcopy of the August disk-based newsletter and encouraged him to fill out the application to join! He called in to our remote system a couple of weeks back and stayed for a bit. Hope CCP/M sees him on our membership list soon! Two computers were on hand and two presentations were given. Al Hathway, who has indicated he will serve again as the Program Coordinator next year, had a handout on Revision Management. His talk showed how with 4 aliases he has automated the archiving of program revisions. I showed how with menus and aliases I put a front-end onto my brother's Weather Almanacs. We both brought hard-copy of Jay Sage's ARUNZ documentation. Jay's extended command processor is at version 0.9Q as of March 2, 1989. With Al's aliases, Jay's ARUNZ releases could be managed quite nicely. The use of library files was common to both our applications. Naming my brother's almanacs AL(mmdd).CB (ALmanacs written in month mm on day dd by Chip Bradley), or naming software versions vv.ml (up to two digits for major version, one digit and possibly a letter for minor versions) and then compressing and adding them to libraries works out real well. Brian Nalewajek and the others present decided that there would be a regular second Tuesday meeting in August. Some groups drop a month in Summer but it was thought that it would be a good idea to hold a meeting for anyone desiring to come. No formal topic is planned. An Executive Meeting (to which any and all are invited) will be held on August 29th at the Newington Public Library. I'll try to secure the room from 6 to 9. The meeting will serve as the Nominating Committee Meeting and a CCP/M 1990 Planning Meeting. Where are we going, who wants to go there and how are we planning on getting there? The second issue of our now disk-based newsletter was available in hard-copy and in Kaypro, Royal and IBM format. It took a 40 page pamphlet this time to print the articles library. The disks themselves will be quite late this time because I was late sending Robert Person 20 floppies to format and load from a master. I expect to get them back on Monday next. You should have received yours by August 1. The September meeting's aftermeeting at George's Pizza will be paid for by CCP/M! We'll buy the pizza, beer, soda and anything else your little stomach desires. Party time. By then, we should have had a big Election Meeting and be ready to celebrate the new leadership and the future of the Connecticut CP/M Users' Group. I've decided I want to try running the disk- based Pieces of Eight newsletter in 1990. I herewith throw myself into the fray and hope any others that want the job either do it or start gathering material now and co-edit (sort of like Jim, Al, Brian, Rick and I have been doing for a while). I want to expand this newsletter to become national (something Taylor has suggested might prove interesting). Jim is the proud owner of a 286-based hard disk MS-DOS computer now. Treasurer Veile and he completed the deal about a week ago. Jim's primary interest is in using this large disk capacity and high-performance machine as a publishing tool. I expect the learning curve is a bit rough now for him. VDE11.EXE will be his editor for awhile. Daryl Gehlbach sent this via FOG to our remote a month ago at my brother's request. Jim has said he wants to do the newsletter on his new machine. I think it's clear that we are entering a new era of shared tools. As Jim has pointed out repeatedly, use several. His 20 mb IBM and Rod's Royal and Al's SB180 and Reno's Televideo and my new Xerox DEM II 16/8 etc. can be turned into a production network of exciting material if we let it. The budget will come up at the Executive Meeting. We are now beginning to be able to predict fairly reliably our newsletter expenses. 45 cents postage. 19 cents mailer. 25 cents disk. A few hard-copy issues have been available at no expense but there may be an interest in making hardcopy available. We should discuss this at the August 29 meeting. Perhaps the hardcopy pamphlet newsletter could be produced by certain members and marketed nationally. 10 disk-based issues run $12.50 in expenses a year. Our current membership fee is $15. Should cover it. A Few Specific Budget Proposals I propose that CCP/M actively support CP/M and Z-System program contributors financially. A Steven Perkins has recently released a game called QUATRIS2. Jim Taylor sent it to us and I in turn have shipped it down to Chris McEwen's Socrates Z-Node in NJ ((201) 754-9067). Chris runs a recently Z-Noded 60+ mb Z- System QBBS which I have called twice now. It is a terrific system. I will model my new system after his in part because it is clearly taking advantage of the new Z-System. Steven asks for $10 in his support text and promises another game and the source code (Turbo Pascal) to QUATRIS2. I recommend that CCP/M send him $10. I would also propose that CCP/M support our bulletin board (soon to be a Z-Node I hope) by paying $15 a month for its operation. We need to talk more about this in August but I think my expenses should be lessened and the Group's support made more explicit in 1990. Finally, I would like to send a check for $20 to Chip Bradley for his contribution to the August Newsletter and for his Weather Almanacs. We have a large resource now in his Almanacs. I want to begin to make CCP/M an organization known for its financial support for those that contribute to our effort to keep CP/M alive and kicking! Final Thoughts ... The Bylaws will be discussed and updated at the August and September meetings. It's a matter of combining revision suggestions from our last executive meeting with the standing text in our Bylaws. Our Guidelines and our Bylaws need to be reviewed and we need to get serious about the specifics they cover. Like budgets. The group should decide exactly how much money it has, will earn and where it is going to be spent. If being a money manager is interesting to you, consider running for Treasurer! I expect Al and I will put together articles on our presentations on aliases. I am looking forward to the day when people who get our disk-based newsletter will be able to take the menu and alias scripts we develop and adapt them to their own special needs. Al's Revision Management system and Chip's Weather Almanac System (a joint effort by an author and a technician) represent our first gift to the world via the Connecticut CP/M Users' Group (trumpet blast, drum roll, cheering crowd, general Chaos). I would like to personally thank everyone who has taken part in the 1988-89 year. We have added a few new members, started a pamphlet and disk-based publication, become Z-System software dealers, been blessed with ZDE, NZCOM, QL, ZPATCH, LSH and others and issues of The Computer Journal that seem to get more and more fascinating and an announcement of the PC-Z in 1989. What will 1990 bring? I think we should invite someone like Bill Juliani up (GEnie SYSOP) perhaps in September, maybe October to kick off the new year. Talk about ConnNET, StarLink, and where BBS's and GEnie might fit in in the coming year. That's one idea for a meeting topic. Chris McEwen's board has a C tutorial going on. Perhaps Steven Perkins would write an article on how he implemented QUATRIS2 in Pascal. Send YOUR ideas on people, topics, hardware, business applications etc. to Al Hathway. It's time to once again be able to know what our planned meetings will be at least three months in advance . Lee Bradley, trying to get communications going between First National Supermarkets' IBM mainframe and NCR Point of Sale scanning systems during the day and between a Z-System PBBS and remote callers at night. Communications. Communications. I recently met a guy who has programmed his IBM 386 in C and Cobol to do packet-switched message transfer thru ConnNET to a remote sight. His idea is to support Auto Car Dealerships, for example, with the hardware, software and expertise they would need. Where can I find a mint condition 1965 Pink Cadillac in the Northeast for around $15000? Could your business benefit from a micro-(not mainframe-) based communications network? Could a cluster of PC- Z's under the latest Fido-like network do the job? I am trying to begin to find out.