Notes

CRAGIST: Cedar Rapids And Greater Iowa Sinclair Timex. First meeting January 19th 1986.

Meetings have been sparsely attended, overtime and company trips have interferred.

I have had a number of inquiries both by phone and by letter about various T/S questions. All prompted by CRAGIST being listed in Computer Shopper in the User’s Groups. I see that Computer Shopper seems to have dropped the User’s Groups in addition to having previously dropped Classic Computers. Another magazine “Vulcan’s Computer Buyer’s Guide” is trying to pick up where Classic Computer left off. I sent in an article to them and they called the author so apparently it will be published.

Here are the addresses:

• BRET A. GAGNON; 141 North Maple St.; Florence, MA 01060
• GEORGE AVENT; 909 Texas Street; Columbia, SC 29201
• HARRY UFFLEMAN; 734 Woodmont Place; Shreveport, LA 7110
• JOE TISCHER; P. 0. Box 145; Poncha Spgs, CO 81242
• MIKE LAMPKINS; 306 Sugartree Road; Piney Flats, TN 37686
• PHIL BROWN; 118 Muirfield Court; Wichita, KS 67209

The following are in business, send LSASE for catalog:

• LARRY ZUNK; ZUNK CUSTOM ELECTRONICS; 1419 Ferris; Waxahachie, TX 75165
• BYTE-BACK CO. ; Rt. 3 Box 147 Brodie Rd.; Leesville, SC 29070

Lots of action, some is rather hazy in detail, Frank Davis is using a LASER PC3 to upload to a T/S 2068 and possibly download to the T/S 2068. The LASER is a spelling checker with extra features and according to the LASER technician uses a Z80 and has 32K memory. It is an upgrade from the LASER Compumate2 which does not have the serial port. Frank’s address is FRANK DAVIS; 513 E. Main; Peru, IN 46970.

I was at the Collins Disposal Store and met Gary there last month and he was frantically pawing through the tubes of I. C. s and he found a bunch of 43256-10LL SRAMs and I managed to get some from him afterwards. When I ordered mine for the Ramdisk last year I paid $105. for 4, and then last month I got 26 for $4.00. But then they could have been zapped. However the ones I bought tested good on the Ramdisk board. Now I will have to increase it to maximum size. The LL suffix means that each chip will draw 50 microamperes of current on standby, a single L would mean that they draw twice as much. I was in there last Thursday and saw a short tube of flat I. C.s and since it was $0.50 for the works I took it to see if I could figure out what they were. They were 27C64 EPROMs and 13 were J hook ones for sockets (I think) spaced at .Ø5 inch with leads all around the little chips and 8 were surface mount. Speeds were 150 nanoseconds. The month preceeding I had found some 2764-15 or 25 or 30 EPROMs socketed on boards three to a board ard the boards were a buck. If I ever get to programming EPROMs for the ZX81 I will have them to use.

If you have the Larken disk controller for the T/S 2068 and especially if it has version #3 EPROM then you will want to get Bob Swoger’s AOSDOS which will reduce the number of key punches to LOAD operating programs on disk. It is a disk operating system and will come up running an drive on any drive working from Ramdisk or drive Ø. I am a slow man to figure out things so I can’t explain it more but there is a lot of stuff there and it is on disk not in the computer memory. Bob’s address is: NITE TIME NEWS EDITOR; BOB SWOGER; 613 Parkside Circle; Streamwood, IL 60107.