review by Gary W. Cox
(February 17th & 18th 1996, Tucson, AZ)
The "Best Fest in the West" is what the TI Fest West has been called in years past. Certainly Fest West 96 was still the best in the west although vendor and user attendance was not what it used to be... The weather for the Fest West 96 could not have been better with temperatures in the middle 70's and clear skies. The hotel was nice with the entrance to the fair room opening to an outside garden area with plenty of space all of which made for a pleasant atmosphere.
Many well known faces in the TI community were present at the TI Fest West 96! One such person whom I have not seen in a while was Ken Gilland of Notung Software. Ken had a new easy to understand and use solitaire game cloned from the windows solitaire game. The game can be used as an add on to the TI Casino or used as a standalone program. Ken also had his usual assortment of software including a book called "How to use Printers Apprentice and not go insane". Ken also demonstrated his Internet WEB page where many of Ken's paintings can be viewed as well as the WEB page contains a listing of what he offers for the TI99/4a... The Internet address of Ken's page is:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/notung/
Rodger Merritt and Steve Mehr were present from Comprodine Software with a wide assortment of their software at reduced prices! Many of the well know programs that they were selling were Hyperterminal, Maxflix, Grampacker and Reminders to name just a few of a long list of software!
A new vendor to the TI community as well as new for Fest West was Richard and Shawn Baron of Red Baron Software. All of the software presented by Red Baron Software is completely new and very reasonably priced! Red Baron software selections include "Our Solar System" ($10) which displays pictures and statistics on various planets... Also available on disk or in printed version was "Teach Yourself Assembly" ($5) which is a very excellent tutorial on TI assembly language. This tutorial compares EXTENDED BASIC commands with their assembly language equivalents thus for someone who can program in XB that same person should be able to more easily understand assembly. Furthermore, a disk of pre-written assembly language routines ($5) was available to aid in writing assembly language programs without having to re-invent the wheel! Also available is a new Tetris game ($3) plus an enhanced version ($2 more) which includes cheat codes for those who can't win the conventional way! Finally for only $1 was a program to view TI- Artist pictures.
Larry and Carry Hoffman of Texcomp Ltd was present at the event and while they did not have a large variety of items for sale they were passing out a very impressive and extensive catalog of products that Texcomp sells. Furthermore, Texcomp has a working prototype of a memory expansion daughter board for the Super AMS card which will allow for 1mb of memory in a TI99/4a system! According to Larry Hoffman interest in the daughter board will dictate whether the card will be mass produced.
Kyle Crichton and Jay Norlund of Competition Computer had on display their new TI CD-ROM which currently contains 120mb of Public Domain and Shareware programs obtained from various sources including user group libraries... A subscription to the CD will include updates as more software is added. However, the TI CD ROM can NOT currently be used on the TI since the DSR to control a CD-ROM on the TI is not complete on the SCSI card. Thus the CD must be used on a PC system and accessed VIA a TI Emulator or transferred over to a TI or Geneve VIA a "null modem cable" and communications software... Kyle mentioned that he is in the process of acquiring some materials marketed by Asgard Software and is looking into reproducing the TI manuals on the CD-ROM...
(TI CD-ROM pictured above)
Don O'Neil of Western Horizon Technologies was present selling SCSI cards which now work with the 4a to save and load programs from a SCSI drive... Don also had upgraded EPROM's for their AT keyboard interface which fixes a problem that exists when the 4a goes into screen save mode and will not come back from it... By the way WHT also preforms repairs on most 99/4a and Geneve equipment.
( SCSI Card )
The Southwest Ninety-Niners were not only the host of the TI Fest West 96 but are the producers of the Super AMS card which was available for purchase at the fair. The SW 99'ers also had a variety of software and other items for sale plus the Jim Peterson library was available for anyone to copy on a self service basis! Among those of the SW 99'ers present was BJ Mathis, Jack Mathis, Tom Wills, Mike Doane, Richard Baron, Jeane Matthews just to name a few...
Dave Connery of the Chicago TI Users Group had one of the largest assortments of software and equipment at TI Fest West! Gene Bohot and Ed Butcher of the Pomona Valley 99'ers had a near equal amount of equipment including some hard to find items such as a Gram Kracker, Myarc Expansion system and a Corcomp Expansion System... Earl Raguse of the Orange County Users Group was present selling out their stock of equipment... Jack & Myrna Workman and Hazel Knight represented the Vast 99 Users Group with a variety of page pro pictures which can be printed on paper and cut out and folded to make dolls, airplanes etc... Other user groups with miscellaneous items include the Southern California Computer Group (S.C.C.G.) and the TI North County 99'ers.
While representatives were present from various user groups across the country Barry Harmsen from Holland certainly traveled the greatest distance not to mention he won several items in the raffle!
Last but not least I finally met in person Bill Gaskill who sells a variety of products including Card File v3.1, Check Plus v3.0, Mailing List Manager v1.2 and Microdex 99. However, Bill is most well known for his many TI history articles published in Micropendium and various newsletters around the country. In the seminar that Bill Gaskill put on we had a discussion of where people famous in the TI community are now and just generally what is going on in the TI community. Through the discussion I discovered that Ramcharged Computers have purchased all of Texaments products and Steve Lamberti of Texaments is now working in Oklahoma with Barry Boone at Creative Labs Inc. (makers of the Sound Blaster...). Chris Bobbitt (Asgard Software) is now working for the National League of Cities as a PC troubleshooter. I discovered that Dennis Faharity who wrote TI-Artist (as well as TI-BASE) made around $30,000 on TI-Artist but did not do very well on TI-BASE... Craig Miller of Miller Graphics (Gram Kracker) is still writing programs but for other systems and is now living in Diamond Bar California. Roger Dooley of Tenex is now in the PC business. Lou Phillips is now a vice president with Chase Manhattan bank in New York... I wonder if they use Geneve's in their bank? I suggested to Bill Gaskill that he write an article on "where they are now" telling where the former TI community front runners are now so hopefully we will see something more on this issue sometime soon...
I definitely had a great time at TI Fest West 96, I commend Tom Wills, BJ Mathis and many others in the South West 99'ers who worked hard to make this event possible. I must say that the event was very well organized and a FREE lunch was even provided for all the fair goers!
Finally I had the opportunity at TI Fest West 96 to talk some with Bill Gaskill and find out a little about him... Bill is definitely a TI99/4a historian as is evident by the articles that he writes and I was curious as to how he got started and where he obtains all his information on the TI... Thus I discovered that Bill Gaskill is 46 years old, is married and has a daughter (17) and a son (19). Bill's "real job" is a lieutenant for the police department in Grand Junction, Colorado. Bill said that his "romance" with the TI99/4a started when he was in college and used a TI99/4a. After the class he purchased a Commodore 64 and the quality of the C64's were so bad that the first and second C64 didn't even work out of the box. Then in January 1984 TI bailed out of the home computer market, JC Penney had a TI99/4a for only $49.95 which he purchased. In 1985 Bill had his first Ad in Micropendium where he sold copies of Personal Auditor not to mention it was also listed in Tenex's catalog. Then he started joining various TI user groups across the country joining around 10 groups. In researching the history of the TI99/4a he obtained a great deal of information from Jerry Price former owner of Texcomp as well as Steve Mehr of Comprodine Software. It seems that in obtaining all this information he wrote a great deal of letters and made many phone calls... Bill says that his basement is one third full of just TI99/4a stuff! Bill said that his "very inquisitive nature" is how he has obtained so much information. I asked Bill why he is still involved with the TI99/4a and his answer was "it's the people who keep me involved" and "the reason we come to the fests and fairs is to see the people and to sell back to them what we bought the year before"! I asked Bill as to if he will ever give up the TI99/4a and he said "as long as there is another 99er involved I will be" and I think that holds true for many of us dedicated TI99'ers!
I would like to end by saying that I too stick with the TI99/4a not only because it was my first computer and it is certainly a classic but it is the people in the TI community that keep it together and make it fun. Please support the vendors, the people, the user groups, the fairs and keep our community alive. Most of all support Micropendium magazine who continues to support us as without them we would have no TI community!
Remember other TI fair's coming up is the Multi Users Group Conference in Cleveland, Ohio on May 25th and the Chicago TI Faire November 9th in Evanston, Illinois!
TI FEST WEST 96 VENDOR LISTING:
Bill Gaskill, 2310 Cypress Court, Grand Junction, CO. 81506, (970) 242- 8842
Chicago TI Users Group, attn: Dave Connery, P.O. BOX 7009, Evanston, IL 60204
Competition Computer Products, 350 Marcella Way, Millbrae, CA 94030, 1- 800-471-1600, (415) 697-1108, fax (415) 697-7406
Comprodine Software, 1949 Evergreen Ave., Fullerton, CA 92635 (714) 990-4577 (variety of software)
Notung Software, 7647 McGroarty St. Tujunga, CA 91042, (818) 951-2718 (now carrying MS software), email: 102277.3452@compuserve.com
Orange County 99 User Group, 17161 Edwards, Huntington Beach, CA 92647 (714) 847-5875, attn: Earl Raguse
Pomona Valley 99'ers, C/O Gene Bohot, 11824 Butterfield Ave., Chino, CA 91710, (909) 628-6886
Red Baron Software, 8427 E. Cambria, Tucson, AZ 85738, 1-520-885-4812
Southern California Computer Group (S.C.C.G.), P.O. Box 152535, San Diego, CA 92195, (619) 264-6515, BBS (619) 263-9135
SouthWest 99'ers, P.O Box 17831, Tucson, AZ 85731, attn: Tom Wills, (520) 886-2460, BBS (520) 290-6277
Texcomp Ltd., 425 East Arrow Highway, Suite 732, Glendora, CA 91740- 5684 Phone: 1-800-846-3474, (818) 339-8924 or fax (818) 858-2785 (recently purchased TM Direct Marketing stock), email: texcomp9@idt.liberty.com
TI North County 99'ers, 16560 Casero Rd., San Diego, CA 92128
Vast 99 Users Group, P.O. Box 37725, Phoenix, AZ 85069, (602) 437-3187, BBS (602) 267-1419
Western Horizon Technologies, C/O Don O'Neil, 3297 Woody Lane, San Jose, CA 95132, (408) 934-0352, fax (408) 934-9682.
