Main Floor
Review by Gary W. Cox
Main Floor
The 14th Annual Chicago TI Faire was held November 9th, 1996 in Evanston, Illinois! It's hard to believe that 14 years have passed since the beginning of the Chicago TI Faire, many people now in the computer field didn't even know what a computer was 14 years ago!
Hal Shanafield, Chicago Faire Chairman, once again did a great job organizing the event. Estimated attendance to the event was around 100 or so people although the floor seemed more crowded at times than last year. Vendor attendance was about the same but not quite as many items for sale this year as last. At the same time many new products were introduced as well as many user groups had a variety of products for sale.
Hal Shanafield
One user group headed up by Michael Mickelson of the Windy City TI Users Group had the largest array of used software and equipment for sale of anyone at the event. My group, the Mid-South TI99/4a User Group, also had an array of hardware and software for sale with items such as consoles for as little as $10 each! Other user groups had a variety of items for sale plus the usual promotions for their user groups. Dave Connery maned the Chicago User Group table with a variety of software for sale... Charles Good of the Lima TI Users Group had available for free copying the complete Jim Peterson library! William Lucid of the Indianapolis TI Users Group had a variety of items for sale as did the Milwaukee TI users group... Barry Harmsen of the Dutch TI Users Group from The Netherlands along with Gerd Weissmann. from Germany brought some interesting new TI hardware (mentioned later in this article)! Then last but not least the TI Users of Will County had a variety of items including flip strips for the TI console.
Someone who has not attended a Chicago TI Faire in a few years was Beery Miller of 9640 News. New from Beery is a CD-ROM containing the contents of TI and Geneve Public Domain and Shareware software. Most of the software was obtained from the Genie software libraries and the 9640 News BBS. Beery was also promoting the new Genie Interactive service which is a new internet based online service. The new interactive service can be accessed through any internet provider linking the user to much of the same information as is accessed through the regular online service...
9640 News CD-RoM & Genie Interactive
Bud Mills & Beery Miller talking
The most interesting part of the faire this time was a variety of hardware projects created by Michael Becker and demonstrated by Gerd Weissmann. One such product is the High Speed GPL Card for the TI PEB which allows the TI99/4a to run 8 times faster! A built on board EEPROM Programmer allows the storage of up to 16 modules! Also new was the SGCPU which contains the entire TI99/4a on a card. Right now a small TI99/4a Keyboard is needed to operate the device but soon an AT and option to use a AT Keyboard will be added. Gerd also demonstrated a 80 column card which operates at over 256k colors plus Michael also has available a DS/DD controller card... All these products are currently being made in Germany. Negotiations with a US supplier is underway to allow the products to be ordered from inside the USA. These are some really great products, which if they become available for sale from a US supplier, should be come a very popular item! Currently these items are available only for order from Germany. For more information contact: System 99 User Group (SNUG), Michael Becker, Diedesfelderstr.12, 68308 Mannheim, Germany.
Gerd Weissmann demonstrating the new German products.
High Speed GPL card from Germany
New CPU card
Keyboard that goes with the CPU card.
Mike Wright of Cadd Electronics was running version 3a of PC99 TI99/4a Emulator for PC's. Work continues on updates although no time schedule is being followed as to dates on the completion of updates... Mike, indicated the next release, version 4, of PC99 will hopefully contain Myarc Controller support as well as Speech... Mike is also placing a great deal of TI manuals on PC diskette complete with all original graphics. An executable program is included with the manuals so nothing additional is needed to view the documents plus a variety options are available including options such as printing the manuals or doing a search... Most manuals in the PHM module series have already been converted over to this online format with more on the way.
Bud Mills of Bud Mills Services was present with version 1.07 of the SCSI Eprom's for the TI and Geneve SCSI cards. Bud mentioned that they are one step closer to completion of all items promised on the SCSI controller. However, currently working with the SCSI controller is SCSI hard drives, Zip drives, Syquest drives and testing is underway with JAZ drives. A new version of the EPROM is currently being tested and should be available soon. Bud also mentioned he just completed an order of Horizon 4000 boards and thus the Horizon 4000 Ramdisks are once again available.
Bud at work on a SCSI card
Syquest drive attached to the SCSI card
Tim Tesch was present at the faire and mentioned he is continuing to work on updating PORT correcting various bugs... Tim is also working on the Geneve LOAD SYS which when completed and with an updated SCSI EPROM, which is in the works, the Geneve will be able to boot from a SCSI hard drive.
Bruce Harrison had several new programs including a new version of Loadmaster (version 2.2). Loadmaster is a really neat program which will identify most file types on a diskette and inform the user on what is needed to use that file. Thus if the file it a TI Artist picture Loadmaster will indicate that in the file catalog. If the file is an Extended BASIC or Editor/Assembler option #3 or #5 it will run the file... Loadmaster will also print a disk catalog in the form of a diskette sleeve and the speed of the program's overall operations is much faster than previous versions. The program is written jointly by Mickey Cendrowski and Bruce Harrison and is distributed as Shareware. Loadmaster is available from various user groups or Charles Good will send anyone a copy by sending $1 to, Charles Good, P.O. Box 647, Venedocia, Ohio, 45894. Be sure to read the title screen for instructions on sending in your donation for the program, it's well worth it!
Barry Harmsen (left) and Bruce Harrison (right)
Bruce Harrison also had a new program called AMS Slideshow which uses the AMS card to display TI Artist pictures. AMS Slideshow can be set to change pictures at a selected interval in time up to 0.1 seconds between pictures or set to look for a keyboard press before going to the next picture! AMS Slideshow requires the AMS memory card in order to function at it's best performance! Also new from Bruce Harrison was Speed Reader which teaches a person to speed read!
Don Walden of Secure Electronics was present with a variety of special interest parts such as replacement GROM connectors, TI99/4a replacement keyboards, Rave 99 Speech Cards plus a variety of CC40 equipment at discounted prices. Don also mentioned he now has a new address and phone number which is listed at the end of this article.
Ken Gilliland of Notung Software talked about plans for additional TI Casino games... Also Ken's Solitaire game is now available as a stand alone product or as an addition to TI Casino.
Victor Steerup represented Ramcharged Computer with a large table full of software including Asgard products not available anywhere else! One item which caught my eye that Ramcharded Computers was selling was Rapidcopy ($9.95) which is an excellent disk duplicator program. Rapidcopy has been around for a while but it is the best program available which copies diskettes at lightning speed! New from Ramcharded were several new game programs ($7.95 each) for the Geneve including Train Twister, Time Guardian, Jungle Terror, Submarine Revenge, Sea Teller, Cave Explorer and Space Champions. Ramcharged also had available a spell checker called Spell it in SS/SD, SS/SD, DS/DD and Harddrive format versions.
A table full of software from Ramcharged Computers.
Finally, at the banquet following the faire Dave Connery received an award from the Chicago TI Users Group for his outstanding work for the group... Then the John Birdwell award for outstanding commitment and contributions to the TI community went to a very deserving person, Bruce Harrison!
Dave Connery
All in all the 1996 Chicago TI Faire was a success and a good time for all! A video tape was made of the event by the Chicago TI Users Group and hopefully will be available soon. I hope to see everyone at Fest West as well as the Lima TI Faire!
The Windy City TI User Group had this display!
Mac Swope (Mid-South 99'ers), Michael Mickelson, Charles Good and Ken Gilland (in
background)
9640 News, P.O. Box 752465, Memphis, TN 38175-2465, (901) 368-1169
Bud Mills Services, 166 Dartmouth Dr., Toledo OH 43614, (419) 385-5946,
CaDD Electronics, 45 Centerville Drive, Salem, NH 03079-2674, (603) 893-1450 or (603) 895-0119, EMAIL: mjmw@xyvision.com
Cecure Electronics Inc. c/o Don Walden, P.O. Box 132, Muskego, WI 53150 1-800-959-9640 (orders only), (414) 422-1010 (voice), (414) 422-994A (tech line), BBS (414) 422-9669).
Harrison Software, 5705 40th Place, Hyattsville, MD 20781-1727 (301) 277-3467.
Hoosier TI Users Group, P.O. Box 2222, Indianapolis, IN 46206, email: lucid@indy.net
Mid-South TI99/4a User Group, P.O. Box 38522, Germantown, TN 38183- 0522, (901) 358-0667, Email: garycox@netten.net
Lima TI Users Group, C/O Dr. Charles Good, Ohio State University, Lima Campus, Lima OH 45804.
Notung Software, 7647 McGroarty St. Tujunga, CA 91042, (818) 951-2718 (now carrying MS software), email: empken@loop.com, Web page: http://www.loop.com/~empken/
Ramcharged Computers, P.O. Box 81532, Cleveland, OH 44181, (216) 243- 1244
TI-Gruppe Mannheim: Koenigstrasse 17-19 D-67655, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
TI Users of Will County, 1400 Caton Ave., Joliet, IL 60435
Vereniging TI-Gebruikersgroep (Dutch TI Users Group) le Osterparkstr. 141e 1091 GZ Asterdam, The Netherlands.
Windy City 99 Club, 1549 Webster Ln., Rosemont, IL 60018-1423, (312) 444-5680
