4 Jul
1997
4 Jul
'97
8:54 a.m.
At 02:04 PM 7/3/97 -0700, you wrote:
of the fun is sharing it with other TI users. And part
of the fun of
having this old computer is that there are other people bucking the
trend along with me. In other words, we have a TI computer user
community, and that is a very hefty reason for sticking with the TI
[...]
exciting new "modern applications" or
attracting new people to adopt a
simple machine that can perform "common everyday household computing
tasks" that they DON'T need a Pentium to do.
[...]
hoping to create a dialog for HOW to do this,
particularly strategies to
attract people to join the community, and to share technology of "modern
applications" that one community may have successfully achieved and
I am facing a similar situation in the Atari community. I have to admit
that I gave away my 600XL in favor of the ST long before the thought of
collecting computers ever hit me. Similarly, my ST's and Falcons are pretty
much dedicated to studio stuff (and I don't get to "play" with that much
these days) and I use my windows laptop almost exclusively (6-16hrs/day).
Nonetheless, I am president of ABACUS, the Atari Bay Area Computer Users
Society, and probably will continue to be for a long time. Atarians are
somewhat lucky in that there is a reasonably strong vendor market, good user
groups, and wonderful emulation options.
Still, ABACUS has been experiencing a seriously declining membership
recently as people traded in their ST's for PC's. We talked about it, and
decided that what even the PC people didn't want to lose was the "family"
we
had built up in the club. There are lots of PC user groups, but none with
the character of ABACUS. (How many clubs have a Land Rover owner, a waffle
collector, and a 76 year old newsletter editor?)
So we changed a bit to meet the new focus of the club members. We now have
a "PC SIG" and demo PC software and hardware at the meetings, along with ST
stuff. We feature general interest (computer) articles in the newsletter
(such as my never-ending part 2<x> of my 3 part series on building web
pages) as well as humour and general commentary. We continue to support the
ST/Falcon folks as we expand to service the new interests of members.
This lets members move on to newer things (graphical web browsers (yes, we
know about STiK/CAB, but it's not netscape), CD-ROM's, etc.) while still
keeping the ST alive.
But, we've not done much about getting new members (either PC or ST). Your
message has gotten me thinking, though. Every now and then I get a call
from someone who's got an ST for sale, and I have
to tell them there's just
not much market for them here. Perhaps we could set
something up to get
those machines into the hands of someone who could use them and is otherwise
unable to afford them. (Goodness knows we've got enough kids with no $
around here!)
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!
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
4 Jul
4 Jul
11:30 a.m.
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
9:55 p.m.
On Fri, 4 Jul 1997, Uncle Roger wrote:
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.)
Unfortunately, teachers won't use them in schools because they simply are
not PCs, and the curriculum is intended to teach the kids skills which are
directly applicable to the real world. Now I'm sure you could argue that
at the very least these machines could be used to teach basic computer
skills and programming, and I would agree with you. But the position of
schools is, if it not a 386 or greater (in other words runs Windows) then
they don't want it. That's why they've been slowly dumping their Apple
][s and other computers.
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!
Right on. At least WE can keep them alive. That's the point.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
5 Jul
5 Jul
6:40 a.m.
Sam Ismail wrote:
On Fri, 4 Jul 1997, Uncle Roger wrote:
> 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
Unfortunately, teachers won't use them in schools
because they simply are
not PCs, and the curriculum is intended to teach the kids skills which are
directly applicable to the real world. Now I'm sure you could argue that
This is kind of off topic, but I have been working with several people
over the past 5 years or so to put low end computers in the classroom.
The main problem is the administration and their perceptions. Second,
the teachers are generally not trained on how to effectively use
computers in the classroom. Stepping on soapbox, effective use of
computers in the classroom is NOT, repeat NOT, for teaching how to use
computers, but rather to help learn other subjects. i.e. we use books in
classrooms but not to learn how to use books. Stepping off soapbox.
Hmmm, maybe it isn't off topic since the computers we put in the
classrooms (approximately 100 or so) were mainly PC's (4.77 MHz, 5 slot,
circa 1981 machines) donated by local businesses who didn't want to just
junk them.
9858
days inactive
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days old
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bluesky6＠ix.netcom.com -
dastar＠crl.com -
marvin＠rain.org -
sinasohn＠crl.com