December 1980 — Vol 2 No 12

Overview

The year ends with substantial structural maturation of Pi as an organization, paired with one of the most-honest member moments of the year — outgoing Program Chair Susan Zakar writing a stern Letter to the Editor publicly calling out the disrespect shown to speakers at the November meeting (75% of attendees left, transacted business, or chatted while Stuart Milner and Charles C. Philipp presented). Urban's published reply: "I agree with Susan… It was a rather poor performance on the part of many of the attendees, but I feel that I must take the blame… Never again!" The 1981 dues will be voted at the December 20 meeting (Board recommending $18/year). Masthead now lists SIG Chairs with phone numbers — Jim Rose ASMSIG, Charles C. Philipp EDSIG, Al Weiner NEWSIG, Tom Woteki PascalSIG, Alban Gass SIGAMES. Pi's ABBS sign-up moves to the club phone (no more postcards). Headline content includes Steve Hadley reviewing the Electronic Communication System (paid pre-Internet messaging service), Bill Wurzel's reviews of the Epson MX-80 printer, linear scaling in HI-RES, and a Toolkit Assembler bug; Dana Schwartz's hex loader and DOS 3.3 changes; and Genevie Urban's "ABBS, from one user's viewpoint."

Table of contents

Articles

Editorial (page 1) — Bernard Urban

"May you all have pleasure, peace and satisfaction in this holiday season. Enjoy your APPLEs." Short and warm.

Officers, SIG Chairs, Roster (page 1)

First time SIG chairs are formally listed on the masthead:

Plus standing officers and the new Howard Lefkowitz Group Purchases + Tom Jones Membership Chair roles.

ABBS Notes (page 1)

ABBS sign-up moves to the club phone: call (301) 468-2305 with your name and WAP number; the message is forwarded to John Moon. (Replaces the previous postcard process.)

Event Queue (page 1)

• December Pi meeting: December 20 (3rd Saturday, holidays). Business meeting includes a vote on 1981 dues and budget. Social gathering with refreshments afterward.
• NOVAPPLE: Dec 13 + Jan 10 at Kings Park Library

Minutes of Executive Board 11/12/80 (page 2)

12 attendees at Urban's home. Items: - Urban's "statement of club directions" reviewed; comments incorporated into the November editorial - Wasserstrom to oversee the financial system formation - Lefkowitz to pursue a public-place documentation library - December meeting moved to 3rd Saturday - Need for revised ad-rate schedule and overseas mailing rate policy - Sales during formal presentation will stop; financial incentive for prepay-by-mail disk orders picked up at meeting - Enthusiasm for the newsletter's "new look"; encourage continued investment

Minutes of General Meeting 11/22/80 (page 2)

~105 members attended. Most of the business session reviewed the November editorial proposals (ABBS, Newsletter, Finance Committee). 1981 proposed budget distributed for member study. Vote at December meeting. Program: Stuart Milner, Chuck Philipp and Nancy Philipp (and their children) presented on Apple education applications.

"Letter to the Editor" (page 2) — Susan Zakar

A remarkable in-house critique. As outgoing Program Chair, Zakar publicly rebukes the November meeting attendees:

"Instead of cooperating with the speakers' request to divide into interest areas for the session, fully 75 percent of the membership either left the meeting, began transacting club and/or personal business, or just created a disturbance by talking. I wish I could say that this was discouraged by the officers present, but unfortunately they were in some cases the instigators of the problem."

Proposes a new agenda: - 9:00–9:45: library and group purchases - 10:00–10:45: meeting + speaker (only) - 10:45+: business meeting

Urban's published reply: "I agree with Susan. It was a rather poor performance on the part of many of the attendees, but I feel that I must take the blame… Never again!"

"Electronic Communication System: A Review" (page 3) — Steve Hadley

Review of Ed Magnin's Electronic Communication System (Telephone Software Connection). Paid pre-Internet messaging — $3.75/hr off-peak (min $6.25/mo) + $0.04/2K/month storage; peak $16.50/hr. Connect, set up account (AmEx/MC/Visa) before going online. Access at (213) 347-1200 (110 or 300 baud); username/password NEW/TSC. Special-interest bulletin boards include: Amateur Radio, Apple Questions, Atari, Financial, Games, General Interest, Legal, Mail Wanted, Medical, Modem Questions, Open Forum, Photography, Practice, Product Reviews, Science Fiction, S100, Telecommunications, TRS-80, plus ~20 state boards. Hadley's first message landed 10 replies including a Seattle dentist's data-base review and a California geneologist asking about Quakers in his family tree. Pro tip: POKE 1784+SLOT,0 disables the D.C. Hayes Micromodem's lower-to-upper case translation.

"Washington Apple Digest" (page 4) — Dave Efron

Detailed abstracts from Creative Computing November 1980: Computer Ambush (game review); Effective Documentation; Sorting; Systems Analysis; Interactive System Design; Software Authoring.

"A Review of the Epson MX-80 Printer" (page 5) — Bill Wurzel

The Epson MX-80 enters the Apple world. Wurzel reviews the printer that would dominate small-business and hobbyist printing for years.

"Comments on Prettylisting" (page 6) — Stephen E. Bach

The serial pen-pal from Scottsville responds again — this time critically to Sand's "Prettylisting" from November.

"Blaise Away" (page 7) — Dr. Wo (Tom Woteki)

PascalSIG monthly Pascal column.

"A Page from the Stack" (page 12) — David Morganstein

Librarian's column — also references Urban's commitment about meeting conduct.

"The ABBS, from One User's Viewpoint" (page 12) — Genevie Urban

Personal experience report on using John Moon's ABBS.

"Flavors: Little Tidbits" (page 13) — Burton S. Chambers III

Programming tips column continues.

"Comments on Visicalc" (page 14) — Walt Francis

A first member look at VisiCalc — the spreadsheet program that would make the Apple a serious business machine.

"Linear Scaling in Hi-Res Graphics" (page 17) — Bill Wurzel

Cover-highlight. Technique for proper linear-scale rendering on the HI-RES screen.

"A Bug in the Toolkit Assembler" (page 18) — Bill Wurzel

Bug report for Apple's Toolkit Assembler.

"Dana's Hex Loader" (page 18) — Dana Schwartz

Cover-highlight. A simpler way to enter machine-language programs in hex via a loader utility.

"Changes for DOS 3.3" (page 20) — Dana Schwartz

DOS 3.3 patches/changes overview, presumably incorporating the Mike Wise / Val Golding fixes plus Schwartz's own experiments.

"Questions, Questions, Questions" (page 21) — Mark L. Crosby

Crosby's recurring Q&A column.

"Printing out the Hi-Res Screen" (page 22) — Howie Mitchell

Cover-highlight. Generic HI-RES → printer dump (presumably not Paper Tiger-specific now that more printers are around).

"Equations for (Some of) The Bessel Graphs" + "Column-Formatter for Apple Pi" (pages 24, 27) — Howie Mitchell

Mitchell's prolific output continues.

Reprints (pages 29, 31)

• "Information in the Post-Gutenberg Era"
• "The Dreaded Computer"

Classifieds (page 3)

• Lear-Siegler ADM-3A dumb terminal $475 (Reds)
• Apple II + 48K + 1 drive + comm cards + extras $2,300 (Kirk Balcom)
• Scooter (Conrad) is selling his entire Apple system for $2,200 — interesting moment, given Scooter was just elected MAL earlier in 1980
• IDS 440G never used $750 (Raphael Thelwell)

Plus a year-closing Ted Kennedy quote ("To reach our port, we must sail sometimes with the wind, sometimes against it. But we must sail, not drift or lie at anchor.")

Club news / events / announcements

• Dues vote December 20 (Board recommending $18)
• ABBS sign-up via club phone
• Sales pause during formal presentation now policy
• SIG Chairs published on masthead
• December meeting: December 20, GWU Building C, 9:30 AM; social gathering after

Notable advertisements

• Computerland Tysons Corner (page 2 — simplified layout, just the store name + Apple logo)

Key quotes

• "Instead of cooperating with the speakers' request to divide into interest areas for the session, fully 75 percent of the membership either left the meeting, began transacting club and/or personal business, or just created a disturbance by talking." — Susan Zakar (page 2)
• "I agree with Susan… It was a rather poor performance on the part of many of the attendees, but I feel that I must take the blame… Never again!" — Bernard Urban (page 2)
• "May you all have pleasure, peace and satisfaction in this holiday season. Enjoy your APPLEs." — Bernard Urban (page 1)
• "It has been written that the great challenge in this world is not so much where we stand as the direction we are moving. To reach our port, we must sail sometimes with the wind, sometimes against it. But we must sail, not drift or lie at anchor." — Ted Kennedy, Fall 1980, reprinted (page 3)

Entities

People: Bernard Urban, Genevie Urban, Rich Wasserstrom, Robert Peck, Dana Schwartz, Mark L. Crosby, Sandy Greenfarb, Hersch Pilloff, David Morganstein, Howard Lefkowitz, Tom Jones, Jim Rose, Charles C. Philipp, Al Weiner, Tom Woteki, Alban Gass, Susan Zakar, Bill Wurzel, Stuart Milner, Chuck Philipp, Nancy Philipp, Howie Mitchell, Walt Francis, Burton S. Chambers III, Steve Hadley, Ed Magnin, Stephen Bach, Bill Bowie, Brian Dormer, Scooter Conrad Topics: Meeting Conduct, Pi 1981 Dues, Linear Scaling HI-RES, Toolkit Assembler Bugs, Hex Loader, Electronic Communication System, VisiCalc on Apple References: Epson MX-80, Electronic Communication System, VisiCalc, Telephone Software Connection, Kings Park Library

Connections to other issues

• Urban's reply to Zakar follows directly from his November editorial commitment (1980-11 — V02 N11)
• $18 dues recommended in 1980-09 — V02 N09 Exec Board minutes
• ABBS sign-up evolution: postcard (1980-10 — V02 N10) → club phone (here)
• VisiCalc arrives in Pi — will become a recurring theme as the Apple becomes a business platform

Open questions

• Did the $18 dues vote pass on December 20?
• How did the new meeting agenda (per Zakar's proposal) work out in early 1981?
• VisiCalc adoption — track in 1981 issues