Even in Newport, Herb and I carpooled and thus had a chance to talk about what to think about, look for, or wonder about. Herb, as one might expect, had about twenty items on a written list and I, as usual, had a few vague ideas on my mind. So, we were well prepared for an unstructured meeting and it was a good one.
We arrived early enough to help set up. Herb helped and I supervised – a good way to meet the vendors and get an idea of what they were displaying.
I decided make a clockwise circuit, starting with Bob Dyl, who with his associates, had appropriate T shirts, Quanta Library and memberships plus a few other goodies.
Next, I met Bill Cable to learn more about his fantastic financial program. I had heard it was better than Quicken the super IBM program which works well with Conqueror S.E. and Gold Card. I had to make several visits because others were interested too. It is an Archive based program and designed for business use rather than home finances. It is good but my decision was to stay with Quicken.
Next was an exhibition of how a QL can be adapted to a PC tower. The advantage escaped me especially since, to me, the small footprint of the QL is one of it’s greatest features. Frank Davis, his wife and Paul Holmgren of Mechanical Affinity had several tables of good desirable software and hardware for the QL, 1000 and 2068. Wow – I could have spent a fortune there and eventually I will. They had most of the items our English friends had and will have them for future purchase. I felt torn between buying American or trying to encourage our visitors to come back. They had everything! Minerva, Hermes, keyboard interfaces, membranes. I did get a neat floppy drive ribbon arrangement of connectors to make it easy to disconnect without bending pins on the Gold Card (ugh).
Tim Swenson, his wife and one and one half children were nice to see and talk to. He was pushing his his Newsletter along with an appropriate T-shirt. What a pleasure to see them again. And of course, they wanted to be remembered by all the CATS we left behind.
Next, the Toronto Timex – Sinclair Users Club gave us back issues of Sinc-Link their super newsletter (30 pages more or less per issue). Well worth joining! TF Services demonstrated Minerva and promoted Hermes plus other items from stock. Tony demonstrated Minerva during the afternoon and, on Sunday, setting up a bulletin board (I missed that.) Bill Richardson of Ltd had an interesting hard disk concept for the QL along with and a wide assortment of hardware, membranes etc.
Stuart Honeyball of Miracle Systems was the star of the show with the half-card to convert the PC to a QL. Very Impressive but not quite ready for delivery. I was disappointed by the screen size. One problem being solved is BASIC. He had Gold Cards, of course, and was making repairs for any one with a problem.
It was a good meeting. About 55 were there and 42 stayed for dinner. We had plenty of time to circulate and talk to vendors or people with the same interests. I’m typing this on my new keyboard via the QL-KEYBOARD-90 which Herb installed for me. I did get an extra membrane in case on of my other QLs needs it.
I got the impression that our friends from across the way are pushing Mechanical… [text lost] … their preferred distributor along with Bob Dyl. IQLR is widely accepted as a good International report and it will be supported overseas. Finally, many raved about our CATS fest and were suggesting we do it again and felt assured the English friends would come back for it.