Building User Communities (long)

On Fri, 4 Jul 1997 10:54:05 -0700, Uncle Roger wrote: % %The biggest hurdle facing the general public in putting older computers to %work is the lack of support. (P.S., Cliff Stoll is an idiot sometimes.) %They can buy a PC at Circuit City and half their neighbors will be able to %set it up for them or answer questions. (Etc.) Not so with machines not %quite so mainstream. % %But if user groups made the effort to become known and to support these %computers, they could do a lot of good. Maybe even working with teachers or %youth programs to make the computers available, and the kids *WILL* use %them. I've seen it happen and I know it makes a difference. (My living %room is loaded with older Macs -- until school starts again.) % %Anyway, sorry to blather on so long, but I think that "obsolete" computers %are still useable, valuable, and beneficial. So lets talk about turning %people on to them! Personally, I don't think a lot of people will want to use older machines. Let's put it that way(perhaps speaking for myself): some of us are spoiled by multi-megabyte operating systems and programs we are familiar with. When I switched from the Atari ST to a 286 PC, I thought that Norton Commander sucks. Now, when I run Linux, I run Midnight Commander, an NC clone. When I turn on a 3B1 (aka Unix PC), I am lost because I cannot see all the files at once. However, as a nostalgia freak, I think that a user group like Abacus can do a lot of good for the future. One of the best things Abacus can do, is to get as much of the source code and rights to the source code as possible. I'm talking about source code to TOS (Tramiel's OS) in the ST and even the firmware in the 8-bit Ataris (I have an 800XL). There's a CP/M cdrom out now, and I think some people were talking about trying to compile all the CP/M source code they have and give it to Caldera so that the latter can do a general CP/M source code release a la OpenDOS. I think the Sinclair Spectrum people have managed to get at least one of the games companies to release its old Spectrum software to the public domain (or at least for public and free distribution). Abacus and other Atari user groups may want to work towards this aim, so that the day all the hardware die, we will still have software to run on the emulators. The other thing is to collect as much technical information on the machines as possible eg. hardware pin outs, the different video circuitry etc. Possibly even the original design plans of the integrated circuits. This is so that at least some of us can continue to maintain the hardware or even do some hardware hacking. Ben