Review by Gary W. Cox
The annual Chicago TI Faire was held November 8th at the Evanston Library in Evanston, Illinois. Attendance was quite low this year with only about 50 people attending the event and some notable vendors were missing!
However, despite those who were missing a variety of seminars were held through out the day and some bargains could be made. Bruce Harrison of Harrison Software was the first to demonstrate his products starting with SCSI CAT. SCSI CAT is a new cataloger program which will catalog a SCSI drive as well as disk drives and ramdisks.. Bruce's main demonstration was a new improved version of Midimaster 99. Midimaster 99 will work with or without the AMS card and now includes a much wider octave range and a variety of additional features and bug fixes... Other products Bruce demonstrated was an addition to video titler which now includes 23 transition wipes and a new catalog feature. Upgrades for video titler are $1 if for those who already own the program or $7 for a new copy. Also updated is AMS slide show with additional features and bug fixes.
Bruce Harrison's Demonstration
Bruce Harrison's MIDI keyboard connected to the
TI99/4a
Mike Wright of Cadd Electronics demonstrated the latest version of PC-99 TI99/4a Emulator for PC's. Besides a variety of bug fixes the new version has what is called "aspect mode" which displays the screen all centered instead of offset as in previous versions. Added to the debugger was the ability to see GPL instructions as they execute. Those with microchannel PC's the com ports are now working and now included is Myarc 512k card emulation and Myarc XB2 as well as AMS emulation. PC99 is becoming a quite impressive program!!!
Mike Wright
Vick Sterrup who had a huge assortment of software from Asgard Software represented Ramcharged Computers. One item that I have not seen in a while was the Thorn EMI game software, which includes some impressive games for the 4a! Another item that I have not seen before was recipe writer and some additional recipe's to go along with it. All in all Ramcharged computers has a large assortment of products new and old so if you are looking for a product that is no longer around check with Ramcharge Computers as they may have that product in their stock! Additionally they still had a few Prosticks along with plenty of parts to repair old Prosticks with the exception of the cases. Vick noted that if you have a Prostick that is bad or no longer want please send it to Ramcharge for recycling!
Bud Mills of Bud Mills services had a variety of items at his table... Bud mentioned that he is starting a new run of the Horizon 4000 cards so those who want a new Horizon Ram Disk can order them now! Bud also mentioned he will be publishing a fix for the P-GRAM card which corrects a problem of program loss when a system is powered off. The modification basically includes adding a resistor and diode that anyone with soldering iron can do themselves.
Bud Mills
Dan Eicher and Jeff White were present representing the Hoosier users group with a variety of publications. Dave Connery had his impressive Geneve system setup and running. Charles Good of the Lima users group had his usual assorted library including the Jim Peterson collection available for copying. The Will County users group had a variety of program disks and blank disks for sale. The Chicago TI Users Group had their software library available as well. Barry Harmsen of the Dutch TI Users Group discussed new products in production from Europe... Cerebral Software had a table which provides custom software for the TI and other platforms and will be the future home of the Chicago TI Users Group Home Page on the Web. The Mid-South TI99/4a Users Group (Memphis) had a variety of consoles and other equipment for sale ad did the MADHUG Users Group and a variety of other people had quite a few pieces of equipment for sale as well.
Charles Good of Lima users group
Hal Shanafield Chicago UG Faire Chairman handing out
awards at the Saturday night dinner
All in all it was still a good time and good to see all the TI regulars. Make it a point to attend a TI faire this year and keep the TI alive!
Gary Cox of the Mid-South TI99/4a User Group
BUD MILLS SERVICES, 166 Dartmouth Drive, Toledo, OH 43614, Phone: 419-385-5946
C.A.D.D. ELECTRONICS, 81 Prescott Road, Raymond, NH 03077, phone: 603-895-0119
CEREBRAL SOFTWARE, P.O Box 1651, Arlington Heights, IL 60006-1651, phone: 847-392-3860
CHICAGO TI USERS GROUP, P.O. Box 7009, Evanston, IL 60204
HOOSIER USERS GROUP, P.O. BOX 2222, Indianapolis, IN 46206
LIMA USER GROUP, C/O Dr. Charles Good, Phio State University Lima Campus, Lima , OH 45804
MADHUG (Minnesota and Dakota Home User Group), 293 Circle Hills Drive, Grank Fork, ND 58201
MID-SOUTH USERS GROUP, P.O. Box 38522, Germantown, TN 38183-0522, contact: Gary Cox (901) 383-7269.
RAMCHARGED COMPUTERS, 6467 E. Vancy Dr., Brookpark, OH 44142, phone 1-800-669-1214
TI USERS OF WILL COUNTY, 1400 Caton Ave., Joliet, IL 60435, phone: 815-886-5326
VERENIGING TI-GEBRUIKERSGROEP, 1e Oosterparkstr, 141e 1091 GZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
