I've been in contact with an Atari Club in the U.K. Their main interest is the Atari Portfolio Computer. I informed them that while our club intends to support _ALL_ Atari machines we didn't have a great deal of strong support for the Portfolio. If there is any member of the club who is aware of Portfolio support please contact me and I'll send you the U.K. e-mail address.
Members Mike Schmidt and Glen Kirschenmann were missed last month. It was brought to my attention that Mike had some minor surgery. Here's hoping that a full and speedy recovery has occurred.
The 1st ever auction was a success and the club netted a nice amount of cash. I expect the exact amount will be found in the Treasurer's Report. It is intended that we have another auction in July and September.
Speaking of July, don't forget to sign up for the birthday party. See Mike Weist for the list.
I need a volunteer to help with the entertainment for the July Birthday Party.
Again thanks to member Michael Current for making the home page for SPACE.
Well the BBS is back on-line (fingers crossed) fully. Any problems please leave e-mail with a description of what has occurred to you. The damage was more substantial than what was originally reported. The hard drive that was weakened did fail. The 4000A interface card needs repair.
The modem did finally fail. Fortunately, I had a 14.4 modem on my personal machine that is now on the BBS. The extra power supply starts out fine but shuts down when warm and/or a power demand is placed upon it.
In the past year there have been 3 hard drives fail; 2 interface cards (a 4000A & a 4070); two power supplies; and a 14.4 modem. This is a risk that seems to grow as equipment grows older and is used extensively as with a BBS. Replacement items are used.
Now the neat stuff, there is the start of a discussion on how to use the Atari Classic on the Internet. Also the latest version of Ice-T, an 80 column term program has been loaded on the BBS for the DOM folks to evaluate. If they chose not to use it will be placed in the general usage sig_file area.
In a discussion with Amos Jackson of WARP-10 fame and lifemember of SPACE, I was informed that the higher the level of PRO the greater the risk of incompatibility of 3rd party software such as f-mail. This has been or is being done by the current programmer, Steve Cardin, to reduce the number of backdoors into the system.
Thanks all for your patience during the time since the last BBS failure and restoration. If you haven't please re-log on as backup on the hard drive was lost when the hard drive failed.
Where can you get a computer for $8.00, or a disk drive for $2.50, or $200.00 of software for $15.00? At the SPACE Club auction that's where. If you happened to have missed out on the May auction don't despair. The Club has announced two more auctions for 1996. One will be held in conjunction with our July Birthday bash and another is scheduled for the fall, September?
Unfortunately the fishing opener and Mother's Day weekend kept our May meeting attendance down, and that kept the competition on the bidding at the auction from being what it could have been. Still, because most items were donated, the Club made almost a pure profit on the auctioned items.
Because our Membership Chairman was one of our fishing opener casualties we didn't have much in the way of software sales, but Terry did bring in some copies of the Disk of the Month and we sold seven of them. It looked like a great games disk and l hope Terry will make this disk available next month to those who couldn't make it to the meeting in May. We also picked up a membership renewal from the proceeds of the ST software that was auctioned.
Our total take for the May meeting including $69.00 from the auction was $105.00. Unfortunately we had a very large expense in May and that was the first and second quarter room rental which was $210.00. Along with the BBS phone billing our expenses outweighed our receipts by about $134.00 bringing our bank balance down to $377.46 for the month ended May 31, 1996.
Since we have the room rental out of the way through June we could really help our treasury by buying those Dom's and renewing those memberships, Also we need your support at the next auction in July. That means we need your bidding and we need more Atari items to auction off. Maybe we could expand one of these suctions to include items other than just Atari related. Come to the next meeting and give your input and support to your Club.
Space meeting for May 10, 1996 opened at 7:40 PM. Space club president, Mike Fitzpatrick, welcomed members to the meeting. Mike said the meeting would be an abbreviated meeting. He in-formed members that a software demo would follow meeting and auction.
Mike asked members if they received a Space club newsletter for May. Mike asked the membership to approve Minutes of April 12, 1996 and Treasurer Report as written in May newsletter. This was approved by the membership.
Mike Fitzpatrick talked to the membership about the Space club auction that was to be held after the meeting. Ray Wafer, a Space club member, asked if the auction could be changed to the Space birthday party on July 12, 1996 or September 1996 because of the lack of membership at meeting. Mike Fitzpatrick, club president, said the auction could continue in July and September to sell leftover auction items. Mike also stated that Don Langford will be the moderator for the auction. Members were asked to sign up for a bidding number.
Mike Fitzpatrick also asked membership to sign up for a potluck food item for Space birthday party, that will be held on July 12, 1996. A potluck food item sign up list will be on table by meeting room entrance this month and next month.
Terry Streeter, Dom Librarian, explained what was on the DOM of the Month for May '96.
Meeting adjourned at 7:50 PM
Mike Weist, Secretary
Published by the Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE), an independent organization with no business affiliation with ATARI Corporation. Permission is granted to any similar organization with which SPACE exchanges newsletters to reprint material from this newsletter. We do however ask that credit be given to the authors and to SPACE. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SPACE, the club officers, club members or ATARI Corporation.