The 13th annual Chicago TI Faire (November 1995) has now come and gone. This years 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 TI'ers 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 TI99/4a 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 office scans this bar code to determine 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 TI99/4A, CC40 and Myarc products but can often repair some third party products as well.
Ada and Ron Markus of Ramcharged Computers had several tables of mostly software and some hardware such as the Asgard Mouse... Recently Ramcharged Computers purchased the remaining stock of Asgard Software which was on display and updates to some of the programs are expected in the near future. New for the faire was a neat Tunnels of Doom game called Hall of Lost Moria which sold for only $4.95! Also new was a version of Clippix called Clippix Plus which is written for systems with an 80 column card. An announcement of other new products for Ramcharded Computers are expected soon!
Bud Mills of Bud Mills Services was giving out EPROMS for the SCSI cards! On a Geneve and using MDOS 4.0 any SCSI hard drive can be used. At this time CD-ROM's are limited to just playing music with the current version. Version 4.01 of MDOS, expected to be released soon, will provide floppy drive and ZIP drive support! On a TI99/4a the SCSI EPROM is still in the beta test stages but in it's current version it will still control a SCSI hard drive. The hard drive can be accessed in the same manor as any other device such as typing "OLD SCSI1" the same as using "OLD CS1"... Bud also had his assortment of the usual Horizon Ram Disks!
Bud Mills of Bud Mills ServicesBarry Harmsen of the Dutch TI Users Group in Asterdam, The Netherlands had a really neat new device which plugs into the PEB and replaces the TI99/4a console GROM 0-3. With this GROM card in place and some modifications to the TI console the TI99/4a will run 6 times faster! The card which was produced by Michael Becker and Gerd Weibann in Germany is not yet available in the USA. However, you can write to them if you wish by writing Gerd Weibann, Konigstrabe 17-19, D-67655 Daiserslautern, Germany or Michael Becker, Diedesfelder St. 12, D-68309 Mannheim, Germany. Perhaps one of the TI vendors in the USA can pick up on this new card?
(Picture of GROM card)
Mike Wright of Cadd Electronics was present showing a pre-release version of PC99 (TI Emulator for PC's) version 3a. This new version included upgrades in some of the utilities such as a "disk find search for any TI file on disk" and an artist utility which can display TI Artist files. An overlay function was also added to PC99 as since an overlay can't be placed on a PC keyboard like on a TI99/4a the function keys to obtain the functions of the overlay on a PC is displayed on the screen. Another feature added was a TRACE function to trace the progress of events as the system runs... Mike also recently obtained permission from Texas Instruments to release all of TI's disk based programs (like the ones with the brown label) and already has permission for the cartridge based programs. He also can 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 it's original format rather than a text only conversion of the manual. Those who have purchased PC99 will be receiving update information in the mail when the latest version is released.
Ricky Bottoms of RBD Enterprizes had an assortment of equipment and cartridges for sale including TI modulators, various PEB cards, keyboards etc...
Bob Retzler of JOA Midwest had a huge assortment of mostly PC CD-ROM's for sale including games, utilities, programs etc...
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 TI99/4a. 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, using these glasses and viewing images written in 3D graphics format 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 setup where any program from Jim Peterson's library could be copied as well as Charles had copies of the demo version of TERM 80 and RXB (Rich Extended BASIC).
William Lucid of the Hooiser 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 CC40 items. Peter Kraus of the Will County TI users group had a variety of hardware and software as well for sale! The Mid-South (Memphis) TI users group of which I am President had a table with a variety of hardware and software for sale including a Geneve. While some other groups didn't have a table, representatives of several other user groups were present at the faire. Then last but not least John Koelen of Micropendium was present and had free copies of Micropendium available for everyone. If I have left anything or anyone out I must apologize but hopefully 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 for all the hard work and effort, it is appreciated!
If at all possible please try to attend a TI faire and support the vendors... Other fairs coming up is the Fest West February 17th in Tucson, Arizona and the Multi Users Group Conference May 25th in Cleveland Ohio. Barry Harmsen of the Dutch TI users group mentioned that a TI Faire is planned for Germany and hopefully 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 meetings, buy from the vendors, tell the shareware authors at least thanks for their work and last but not least continue your support for Micropendium. Without Micropendium the TI community would fall apart fast!
(Hal Shanafield, Don Walden & John Koloen)
VENDOR LIST:
Arcade Action Software, 4122 Glenway, Wauwatosa, WI 53222
Bud Mills Services, 166 Dartmouth Drive, Toledo, OH 43614, Phone: (419) 385-5946
C.A.D.D. Electronics, 45 Centerville Drive, Salem, NH 03079-2674, Phone: (603) 895-0119 or (603) 893-1450
Chicago TI Users Group, P.O. Box 7009, Evanston, IL 60204, Phone: (708) 864-8644
RBD (Ricky Bottoms) Enterprises, 643 Fair Ave., Shelbyville, IN 46176, Phone (317) 392-0293
Cecure Electronics Inc., S74 W17000 Janesville Road, P.O. Box 132, Muskego, WI 53150-0132, Phone: (414) 679-4343 or 1-800-959-9640, FAX: (414) 679-3736
Hooiser TI User Group, P.O. Box 2222, Indianapolis, IN 46206-2222, Internet: lucid@indy.net
JOA Midwest, 776 Willow, Elmhurst, IL 60126, Phone: (708) 782-6012
Lima TI User Group, P.O. Box 647, Venedocia, OH 45894, Phone: (419) 667-3131 or Internet: cgood@osulima1.lima.ohio-state.edu
Marcel's Software, 5705 40th Place, Hyattsville, MD 20781-1727.
Micropendium Magazine, P.O. Box 1343, Round Rock, TX 78680, Phone: (512) 255-1512
Mid-South (Memphis) TI99/4a Users Group, P.O. Box 38522, Germantown, TN 38183-0522, Phone: (901) 358-0667, Internet: gary.cox@stjude.org
Milwaukee TI Users Group, 4122 Glenway, Wauwatosa, WI 53222, Phone:
(414) 422-9648 or (414) 679-4343
Ramcharged Computers, P.O. Box 81532, Cleveland, OH 44181, Phone: (216) 243-1244
Vereniging TI-Gebruikersgroep (Dutch TI USer Group), le Osterparkstr. 141e 1091 GZ Asterdam, The Netherlands.
Will County TI Users Group, 1400 Caton Ave, Joliet, IL 60435, Phone: (312) 283-2359
Windy City TI User Group, 1549 Webster Ln, Rosemont, IL 60018-1423
