computer users groups: then and now....?

[Atari-Collector]

After seeing how a couple recent threads about our history in Atari and other computers have taken off, I thought this could be an interesting topic (ok, I've doomed this posted to died by the end of the day saying that...)

 

Are there still users groups? Back in the day there were groups for every computer platform it seems. Doing some googling I found a couple website sites for user groups, but not much. I forums like this have become the modern day user group. Sadly I couldn't find a forum for TRS-80 that had any signs of life... Seems the Atari has a far stronger following

 

Back in the day, were you in a user group? Perhaps more then one? I went to an Atari group meeting once.. But found the meeting unwelcoming and never went back. Lot's of people there, but nobody was interested in talking to the newcomer.

 

[+bob1200xl]

The San Leandro Computer Club still meets monthly - maybe half a dozen of us. Last month was a demo of 'Dungeon Hunt'. No more newsletter. We used to have members that worked for Atari and guest speakers/visitors from Atari. No more 16-bit members.

 

Bob

[gozar]

Check out maker clubs, it seems that there is a lot to the maker movement that reminds me of the computer movement in the '80s.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture

[jvas]

I'm member of this group currently: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Csokonai-Mikroklub/1472955952923592

Formerly it was an Amiga club, but now it is open for every platform. We hold our meetings every Friday from 6 pm to 9 pm.

[+slx]

Well, there was ABBUC, there is ABBUC and hopefully there will be ABBUC as long as there are Ataris

http://www.abbuc.de

 

There seems to be a quarterly Commodore meeting in Vienna, there is a very infrequent Atari gathering without a formal structure, and there is an active TI99 user group here who always have a table at the - more console oriented - retro exchange in December.

 

I used to go to a club meeting in Vienna as a teenager for a couple of months but didn't find it that informative as it was multi-platform and I got more Atari news from my Antic subscription than I go there (plus it was tedious to pack an 800/810) and tedious for my mum to drive me there. I mostly depended on magazine subscriptions, Compute! books and a couple of Atari-using friends (There were no BBS I knew of in my 8-bit years as there were no licensed modems, US modems weren't even sold and there were no free local calls. Our postal telephone system tried to cover the telecommunication market with a server-driven service called BTX running at 1200/75 - like French mintel but never really successful.)

[jacobus]

Back in the day, were you in a user group? Perhaps more then one? I went to an Atari group meeting once.. But found the meeting unwelcoming and never went back. Lot's of people there, but nobody was interested in talking to the newcomer.

 

I hope that wasn't the HBO Atari User's group ... we tried to be friendly!

[Shawn Jefferson]

I was a member of the Garden City ACE in my hometown in Victoria, Canada as a teenager. I was a little too immature to really get much out of the forth lessons and other "productivity" software demos, but it was great getting the newsletters (which I threw away years ago when I didn't think I'd ever pull the Atari out again) and of course getting to join the "Saturday" copy party.

 

The club also introduced me to memory upgrades, happy drives and SpartaDos. Those were good times.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Shawn Jefferson

[Stormtrooper of Death]

After seeing how a couple recent threads about our history in Atari and other computers have taken off, I thought this could be an interesting topic (ok, I've doomed this posted to died by the end of the day saying that...)

 

Are there still users groups? Back in the day there were groups for every computer platform it seems. Doing some googling I found a couple website sites for user groups, but not much. I forums like this have become the modern day user group. Sadly I couldn't find a forum for TRS-80 that had any signs of life... Seems the Atari has a far stronger following

 

Back in the day, were you in a user group? Perhaps more then one? I went to an Atari group meeting once.. But found the meeting unwelcoming and never went back. Lot's of people there, but nobody was interested in talking to the newcomer.

 

For the Tandy 100/102 and 200 there is the Club 100

http://www.club100.org/

 

there are also Tandy MC-10/Color computer forums on yahoo.

 

And in Austria there is a Psion user club.

[Muzz73]

When I was in junior high school (almost 30 years ago), my dad and I joined a Commodore User Group in Santa Cruz, CA (we used to meet at the Aptos library). It seemed that every time we went, people had a lot of questions about GEOS and, being newcomers, we kept asking what GEOS was and nobody would talk to us. The president would start talking about some software that he wanted to show, somebody would butt in and start and argument and they'd squabble away for sometimes 10-15 minutes straight and often argued more than once per meeting. I left after 2-3 visits. My dad probably lasted 2-3 more.

Now we (my dad, myself and now my son) are members of the Fresno Commodore User Group and everything is much nicer! Though the primary focus is definitely Commodore, they don't mind if we talk Atari here and there, because with Tramiel and Miner being involved with both companies, we're all in it together and everybody gets along.

I certainly wish there were more retro-computing user groups than there are, but they are a dying breed, I'm afraid...

[+David_P]

I've got a stack of old MACAM (Montreal Atari Club Atari Montreal) newsletters that I need to scan so they can be preserved; I've also got a bunch of diskette newsletters I should transfer to ATRs and share with the world.

[Atari-Collector]

I hope that wasn't the HBO Atari User's group ... we tried to be friendly!

 

I don't recall the exact name of it, but it was in Windsor Ontario, early 80s..

[Atari-Collector]

For the Tandy 100/102 and 200 there is the Club 100

http://www.club100.org/

 

there are also Tandy MC-10/Color computer forums on yahoo.

 

And in Austria there is a Psion user club.

 

Actually I just bought a Model 100 (Radio Shack branded, not Tandy) Found the Club 100 page on google but haven't explored it much yet. It's funny, the same technology the has displaced out older machines not gives us a walk to connect to others that like the old machine too.

 

Edited January 15, 2015 by Atari-Collector

[kogden]

My parents took me with them to NOVATARI user's group meetings in Northern VA when I was a kid. They had moved to the ST by that point. There was an active 8-bit sub-group still so I typically would hang out over there as I had the 130XE. The ST side of the NOVATARI group was HUGE. We ran ARMUDIC BBS out of our basement for a while too on an ST with Michtron BBS.

 

We also attended WAACE AtariFest events several times, once or twice as a vendor. That was a really cool experience for a kid. I got to play with a Lynx when it was new, got some free Balsa Wood airplanes and shirts from the Atari booth.

 

Then overnight, the community just seemed to fade pretty rapidly. The Mac felt similar to the ST on the surface and was a pretty easy switch, Mac users were typically more douche-like than the Atari users but a lot of them were helpful on BBS's as I learned HyperCard and such. The 68K Macs were nice, just very expensive.

[Drummerboy]

Back in the 80s, i was "Club Atari, Costa Rica" member. Was an Atari 8Bit Computers Users Club. Had many own software developers. I thinks is hard to recover something, but i know a guy maybe could have some disks.

A friend of mine, made a Intelligence Artificial, program, called "The Thinker". You can talk with your Atari 8bit, about anything, the computer learned about you, and if you used many times, the computer trust most in you. Was interesting and worked very good.

[Subby]

If you want to attend a user group meeting, start one!

It'll probably be a slow burn to get started, but that was ok with us. It gave us time to find a good permanent meeting place.

The Atlanta Historical Computing Society just held it's monthly meeting this past Saturday with about 15 attendees.

[kogden]

I was kind of hoping the ARM SBC's may start another "home computer revolution" encouraging young hackers to find cool uses for the hardware, start user's groups, etc.

 

A little quad-core ARM machine with a 3D accelerator and SDXC & eSATA storage would be the modern answer to a home computer if you stuff it in a nice little box with a sturdy built-in keyboard. It's the software stack that's currently lacking on these things right now. And the fact that most of them only support hardware accelerated OpenGL-ES, not full OpenGL.

 

I'm not too interested in reliving the past and talking about the glory days once a month, I'd like to see that same adventurous spirit and sense of community continue on with tomorrow's nerds.

Edited January 20, 2015 by kogden

[gilsaluki]

I always belonged to AAAUA, San Antonio as a subscribing member. Got great info from them and support all the way till about 1998 or 99, especially Thelma Sunvision. I have all the newsletters from those days and read them from time to time. I was living in New Mexico, Holloman AFB; no clubs there. So, when I was transferred to Tinker AFB, OK (OKC,OK), my hometown, I was excited they actually had a user group. Well, just like the guy who talked about being shunned by the know-it-alls who only wanted to talk about BIOS and would not tell them what a BIOS actually was (computer snobs)--that is exactly what I experienced with the Tinker Atari Computer Enthusiasts (TACE) user's group. The first (and last) meeting I went to (had to drive 35 miles from suburb Edmond to suburb Moore) I arrived all excited about the "bonding' we Atarians were about to experience. Well, no one greeted me, asked who I was, gave a shit. I sat there watching a few people play around with there things (errr, 8-bits), never interacting with one another. It was pathetic. I got up and left after about 20 mins and never returned. Lost opportunity for those guys. No wonder these boneheads folded. Atari has always been a lonely journey for me. But, I still love it.

[ricortes]

hehe BAAUG. Should have been the best user group since it was closest to Atari headquarters but ended up being the worst experience for me. We had a president who was an ST fan boy and openly hostile to anything 8 bit. Like going to a religious cult meeting where you are targeted for abuse for not having the same beliefs. I owned two STs but letting it be known that I also had some 8 bits got me singled out for derision in front of whole club at a meeting. "Oh no! Not another one of those!" So another dufus runs for club president after that guy terms out. I ask him in front of the club ~"Are you going to be include all things Atari?" and he responded yes. Sure enough, first meeting I think he asks for a show of hands for who owns an ST followed by who owns an 8 bit. I raised my hand both times of course but during the show of hands for 8 bits he says ~"I don't see why anyone would want to use one of those." That was my last meeting. Same sentiment was reflected to a lessor extent on the club BBS. I caught flack for volume of 8 bit posts. The bbs had an 8 bit section, you just got in trouble if you wasted precious space that could be used for ST talk.

 

But that was my only bad user group experience. It was a hell of drive going to SLCC, it was and probably still is a great club. Ditto for other clubs and club members I had contact with or joined. Much of my early training/info in digital electronics was from a couple of Home Brew members Dick Prather and Fred Knox. I think Fred may still be keeping a light on for Home Brew but things change. Next gen would rather have contact in WoW or HALO.

[Atari-Collector]

hehe BAAUG. Should have been the best user group since it was closest to Atari headquarters but ended up being the worst experience for me. We had a president who was an ST fan boy and openly hostile to anything 8 bit. Like going to a religious cult meeting where you are targeted for abuse for not having the same beliefs. I owned two STs but letting it be known that I also had some 8 bits got me singled out for derision in front of whole club at a meeting. "Oh no! Not another one of those!" So another dufus runs for club president after that guy terms out. I ask him in front of the club ~"Are you going to be include all things Atari?" and he responded yes. Sure enough, first meeting I think he asks for a show of hands for who owns an ST followed by who owns an 8 bit. I raised my hand both times of course but during the show of hands for 8 bits he says ~"I don't see why anyone would want to use one of those." That was my last meeting. Same sentiment was reflected to a lessor extent on the club BBS. I caught flack for volume of 8 bit posts. The bbs had an 8 bit section, you just got in trouble if you wasted precious space that could be used for ST talk.

 

But that was my only bad user group experience. It was a hell of drive going to SLCC, it was and probably still is a great club. Ditto for other clubs and club members I had contact with or joined. Much of my early training/info in digital electronics was from a couple of Home Brew members Dick Prather and Fred Knox. I think Fred may still be keeping a light on for Home Brew but things change. Next gen would rather have contact in WoW or HALO.

 

Good point about the online games like WoW, people today that claim to be "into computers" or geeks, are just using appliances, they really don't have any interest or understanding of how a computer works. I remember a few years back I was selling a couple air conditioners that won't fit where I moved to, and girl in her early 20s was interested but never actually bought one,, but I got talking to her a while, and she proceeded to tell me how she had learned all about computer because she bought a smart phone... I was all I could do to keep from laughing at her.

 

And the "fan boy" snob stuff extends to other hobbies also. When I first got into ham radio, one of the local offered let let me use his USA mailing address to buy a radio cheaper from a US dealer, but only if it was a Kenwood, which is what he uses. And I like the Yaesu radios better, which is what I bought with out his 'help'. But it's been months since I was last on the radio. But that's another story of clicks and boredom..

[Bill Lange]

Between the spring of 1982 when I purchased my Atari 400 through the summer of 1986 when I left for military service, I wasn't a member of any official Atari Users Group. If there was an Atari Users Group in my area, I wasn't aware with it. During my freshman year in high school, starting in the fall of 1982, I had access to the Apple II computer in one of my classes after I taught my teacher the ins and outs of BASIC. I was allowed to use the computer whenever I wanted as long as my class work was done. The Apple II had a Hayes SmartModem hooked to it and I started calling local BBSs.

One of the most popular ones in the area was called The Jersey Shore Telecommunications Breadboard System (JSTBBS) based in southern Ocean County, New Jersey, running on some flavor of TRS-80 I believe. For Christmas 1982, I received a Hayes SmartModem 300. I hooked up the modem to my 850 interface and then to my Atari 400. +++ AT S11=50. I called JSTBBS more often and started calling other local boards as well. I met a lot of local people, many my age, some older, through BBSing. There was never a shortage of information or software.

Some of the JSTBBS crew would meet up for breakfast at a local Dennys every Saturday (or maybe one Saturday a month) from Sept to May and talk computers. The summer months were too crowded with tourists at the Jersey shore.

Good times.

Bill

[ricortes]

 

Good point about the online games like WoW, people today that claim to be "into computers" or geeks, are just using appliances, they really don't have any interest or understanding of how a computer works. I remember a few years back I was selling a couple air conditioners that won't fit where I moved to, and girl in her early 20s was interested but never actually bought one,, but I got talking to her a while, and she proceeded to tell me how she had learned all about computer because she bought a smart phone... I was all I could do to keep from laughing at her.

 

And the "fan boy" snob stuff extends to other hobbies also. When I first got into ham radio, one of the local offered let let me use his USA mailing address to buy a radio cheaper from a US dealer, but only if it was a Kenwood, which is what he uses. And I like the Yaesu radios better, which is what I bought with out his 'help'. But it's been months since I was last on the radio. But that's another story of clicks and boredom..

The modern user group. Minecraft and some Zombie shooter.

 

I guess we should be happy. First programmable anything I got to see in person was a Monroe Programmable Calculator that was used in a college physics class. Used punch cards and students weren't allowed to touch it. Next up was a Wang 700<?> we had at work that was for maybe 40 people. That was what really got me hooked.

 

My first personal system was an 1802 kit which got my son exposed to computers when he was 5ish. He was mostly about games until his 20s the Doom, Quake, original Warcraft, all forced him to learn networking for weekend gamer WAN and LAN death matches. Probably about 6 of his friends from that period went on to work in the field. He's been mostly employed in support/system admin. I would say that these were really the 2nd generation of user groups. Heavily into computer performance so as to get a technical edge in any game and they were really into networking Kali type stuff. Oddly enough he has a tendency to forget how recalcitrant he was to anything to do with the internet. He was right in the middle of Fidonet and Wildcat bbs frenzy at the time so didn't see the potential. Oddly enough, I am starting to think the old networked bbs system had a lot to be desired.

 

Now the third generation of user groups has completely eliminated the need for face to face. My granddaughter is nine and is already learning the addresses for game servers the way we used to remember phone numbers and snail mail addresses.

 

I think Skype is becoming really popular among large segments of the younger generation now. It certainly has the potential to restore some of human interaction but I don't think it well impact the way things happen. If you just take Atariage as an example, the demos and what not are now being posted as videos to Youtube. Seems like the WIki and Youtube are becoming the next medium of info exchange.

[+Allan]

I've got a stack of old MACAM (Montreal Atari Club Atari Montreal) newsletters that I need to scan so they can be preserved; I've also got a bunch of diskette newsletters I should transfer to ATRs and share with the world.

Please do before they go bad.

 

Allan

[cx2k]

I always belonged to AAAUA, San Antonio as a subscribing member. Got great info from them and support all the way till about 1998 or 99, especially Thelma Sunvision. I have all the newsletters from those days and read them from time to time. I was living in New Mexico, Holloman AFB; no clubs there. So, when I was transferred to Tinker AFB, OK (OKC,OK), my hometown, I was excited they actually had a user group. Well, just like the guy who talked about being shunned by the know-it-alls who only wanted to talk about BIOS and would not tell them what a BIOS actually was (computer snobs)--that is exactly what I experienced with the Tinker Atari Computer Enthusiasts (TACE) user's group. The first (and last) meeting I went to (had to drive 35 miles from suburb Edmond to suburb Moore) I arrived all excited about the "bonding' we Atarians were about to experience. Well, no one greeted me, asked who I was, gave a shit. I sat there watching a few people play around with there things (errr, 8-bits), never interacting with one another. It was pathetic. I got up and left after about 20 mins and never returned. Lost opportunity for those guys. No wonder these boneheads folded. Atari has always been a lonely journey for me. But, I still love it.

 

I was the Vice-President of AAAUA for many years back in the day. We had a great group of people from young to old. We even held many of our meetings in the Federated Store (owned by Atari at the time).

 

[ACML]

When I first got into Atari, I lived in Coral Springs, FL and they had no user groups. We had our own little Atari 8-bit circle. I remember the SDACE San Diego Atari Computer Enthusiast and the Mira Mesa Atari User groups in the mid 80's. There was also one in Santee, CA, but the name escapes me. A lot of pirating going on, but those that dabbled in upgrades brought our rigs to show off what we did. I had an 800XL with 256K, four OS's, and I added multi color LEDs for ramdisk busy and some other indications. I remember being told that 1200 baud was the fastest data transfer that was possible over a phone line. My older brother designed and sold Atari printer interfaces that worked off the joystick port (yes, you can do bi-directional data transfer through a joystick port).

Edited February 9, 2015 by ACML

[Bryan]

 

Back in the 80s, i was "Club Atari, Costa Rica" member. Was an Atari 8Bit Computers Users Club. Had many own software developers. I thinks is hard to recover something, but i know a guy maybe could have some disks.

A friend of mine, made a Intelligence Artificial, program, called "The Thinker". You can talk with your Atari 8bit, about anything, the computer learned about you, and if you used many times, the computer trust most in you. Was interesting and worked very good.

 

I'm in Costa Rica. There were Atari users here?