New card from Germany
boosts TI speed 6 times
By GARY W. COX
The 13th annual Chicago TI Faire has now come and gone. This year’s faire was held at the Evanston Public Library in Evanston, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. The weather this year, as is usual, was wet as vendors carted equipment into the library. Some problems with both Holiday Inn and the library slightly dampened the event but these problems were out of the control of the Chicago TI UG. However, the library meeting room was plenty large and the seminar room very close which made for a good event. It was also really good to see all the hard core Tiers once again!
Attendance to the faire this year was about the same as last year’s event but vendor attendance was down. Scheduled to have tables were many different user groups, many of which didn’t show, and a few regular vendors were noticeably absent.
Despite a few missing vendors many new products were released at the Faire. Those coming into the faire were given a special event newsletter as well as a free copy of an electronics/computer/ham radio magazine called Nuts & Volts which was used for some of the advertising for the Faire.
New from Cecure Electronics was a very neat program called TI BAR CODE written by William F.S. Dowlding. TI BAR CODE will run on a T199/4A or Geneve in Extended BASIC. This program produces the bar codes used by the post office in routing your mail! Thus, with the ability to create the same bar code that the post office creates to route mail, already having that bar code on the letter saves the post office one step! You may have not noticed this bar code before but take a look at some of your mail and often you will see a bar code printed on it somewhere below the address. A computer at the post offlce scans this bar code to deter.mine the destination of a letter thus eliminating the necessity of a human having to do the routing by hand. This program sells for $15. I commend William Dowlding for a job well done writing a complicated program to produce these bar codes!
Don Walden of Cecure Electronics also had clock cards available for the 4A for only $34. Don also was selling a neat device which splits off the audio from the 4A console to where head phones can be connected, thus allowing one to listen to the sounds from the 4A privately. Also remember Cecure Electronics is an authorized repair center for all T199/4A, CC4O and Myarc products but can often repair some third party products as well.
now provide the documentation for many of the programs on a PC disk with a special viewer to view it showing the manual in color with graphics; thus, the manuals are displayed in their original format rather than a text-only conversion. Those who have purchased PC99 will be receiving update information in the mail when the latest version is released.
Ricky Bottoms of RBD Entcrprizes had an assortment of equipment and cartridges for sale including TI modulators, various PEB cards and keyboards.
Bob Retzler of JOA Midwest had a huge assortment of mostly PC CD-ROMs for sale including games, utilities and programs.
As for the user groups, the Chicago TI Users Group represented at the table by Victor Steerup and Dave Connery had the user group library as well as an interesting 3D display on a T199/4A. Victor had a console setup running TIM (80 column device) connected to some electronic 3D glasses which are in turn connected to the video output of the console. Therefore, when using these glasses and viewing images written in 3D graphics format, the images appear to our eyes to be in 3D!
Also available at the Chicago TIUG table was a new assembly language poker game by Marcel’s Software with assistance from Bruce Harrison.
Charles Good of the Lima TI User Group had a system set up where any program from Jim Peterson’s library could be copied. He also had copies of the demo version of TERM 80 and RXB (Rich Extended BASIC).
William Lucid of the Hoosier Users Group (assisted by Jeff White) had a variety of publications available. Michael Mickelsen of The Windy City TI User Group had a variety of hardware and software for sale.
The Milwaukee Area Users Group also representing Arcade Action Software had a variety of hardware and software including some CC4O items. Peter Kraus of the Will County TI users rroup had a variety of hardware and soft.re as well for sale! The Mid-South
TI users group, of which I am resident, had a table with a variety of hardware and software for sale, including
a Geneve.
While some other groups didn’t have tables, representatives of several other user groups were present at the faire. Then last but not least John Koloen of MiCROpendium was present and had free copies of MlCROpendium available for everyone. If I have left anything or anyone out I must apologize but I hope John Koloen will cover in his article what I missed in this article.
I would like to thank Hal Shanafield (Faire Chairman) and the Chicago TI Users Group for all the hard work that they put into getting this event together as I really had a good time! Thanks again Hal!
If at all possible please try to attend a TI faire and support the vendors. Other fairs coming up include the Fcst West Feb. 17 in Tucson, Arizona, and the Multi Users Group Conference May 25 in Cleveland, Ohio. Berry Harmsen of the Dutch TI users group mentioned that a TI Faire is planned for Germany and I hope that information will be in MICROpendium as soon as the details arrive. The TI community depends on the support of everyone reading this article. Support the fairs, go to your local user group meet.ings, buy from the vendors, tell the shareware authors at least thanks for their work and last but not least continue your support for MlCROpendium. Without MICROpendium the TI community would fall apart fast!
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