Your User's Groups Experience -- Back in the Day

[gilsaluki]

I was speaking of my one and only User's Group Experience here recently. Albeit, I went to my one and only Atari User's Group meeting late in the 8-bit's viable life (1992), my experience was not good. I was ignored by the members, it was not a welcoming experience. I never attended another meeting. Sad, because I was really looking to connect with 'real' Atarians, to share a common interest with them.

 

QUESTION? What was your Atari User's Group experience like back in the day (for those of us old enough to have been around when there were real Atari club meetings at the local library, etc.)? I would like to know if your experiences were positive, or negative like mine. Do you still maintain contact with its past members.

 

Thank goodness for Atariage. A virtual Atari community is better than my one and only real interaction with 8-bitters.

 

[+davidcalgary29]

Doesn’t sound like an uncommon experience. I mean, we were all pretty much teens (or younger) at that point, and user groups weren’t really nice for youngsters. Nobody at TAF was really supportive except the section leader, so there was little point in attending.

You should attend a meeting now, though. Those weird kids have matured into...really weird adults.

[fujidude]

I was a member of a local Atari UG back in the mid '80s. It was a small group of maybe 12-15 people. I absolutely loved the experience! Everyone was enthusiastic about our Ataris and it was very informal and super friendly. They were the kind of get-togethers that you wish could keep going after the allotted time ran out. Later, when I had moved away from the mid-west to Hawaii, I joined an Atari group in Honolulu. That was in '89. This group was a bit larger. I don't recall very exactly; but perhaps 25-30 people. This group was a little more formal, and meetings a little more structured. It was friendly enough and enjoyable, but not as much so as my previous experience. Much much later, well after I had moved back home to the mid-west, I joined a local PC user's group. That was around 2002-2003ish.

 

Now, I had purchased my first PC in 1993 (a 486DX/33 with VESA local bus graphics etc.) but for some reason didn't explore the PC user's group for about 10 years. Anyway, the PC UG had a much larger membership. The meetings were held in an auditorium or lecture hall style room and the meetings were fairly formal and structured. No one was unfriendly or anything, but I did not really enjoy the experience. They were very focused on each meeting having a theme/topic and a speaker. Everyone was obliged to sit in their seat and pay attention to the speaker of course, and then the speaker would open for questions. I didn't usually have much in questions because I usually already knew as much or more than the speaker on the topic, or it was a topic that held little interest for me. I derive satisfaction from learning something new, or teaching someone else something new to them. So I wasn't getting an opportunity to learn things that I found interesting, and when people asked questions they were directed at the speaker. Other audience members could and did to a small extent respond to such questions, but it was awkward. The microphone was at the podium so it was hard to be heard by some, and there was no way to communicate your answer outside of verbal methods only. So the teaching part a pain as well. I ended up drifting away from it before too long.

[darwinmac]

I had a positive experience in both LCACE (Lake County, IL) and MilAtari (Milwaukee, WI). I was in college when I started going to their meetings. Back in the day, I started in Atari with the ST. I had an Apple II+ first, but their groups were too big and impersonal.

 

Since I was willing to write reviews for the newsletter, I got to meet more people in the group. Both groups were very welcoming to younger people. I am still Facebook friends with the founder of LCACE (which has been a PC group for many years after Atari collapsed). I don’t keep in contact with the old members now because I’ve relocated too many times.

 

I like most of the conversations on AtariAge, but I miss my retro computer group (SCAT - Suburban Chicago, stayed Atari even after all these years). It’s where I obtained an appreciation for the 8-bits and one member gave me the XEGS that I still own.

 

Overall, I had a very positive Atari user group experience.

 

Bob C

[Mclaneinc]

I was speaking of my one and only User's Group Experience here recently. Albeit, I went to my one and only Atari User's Group meeting late in the 8-bit's viable life (1992), my experience was not good. I was ignored by the members, it was not a welcoming experience. I never attended another meeting. Sad, because I was really looking to connect with 'real' Atarians, to share a common interest with them.

 

QUESTION? What was your Atari User's Group experience like back in the day (for those of us old enough to have been around when there were real Atari club meetings at the local library, etc.)? I would like to know if your experiences were positive, or negative like mine. Do you still maintain contact with its past members.

 

Thank goodness for Atariage. A virtual Atari community is better than my one and only real interaction with 8-bitters.

 

 

Like you I only went once, what a mistake that was, thankfully no one knew me (so I could not be asked why I didn't come back), so there I was just keen to see how these places worked , remember I'm selling Atari's for a living, hacking and coding to my pretty poor levels, pretty clued up on the Atari and its hardware and had contacts that would make you blush in the 'Dark Side'. So I said hell, made the usual effort to be kind, well spoken and polite and it was clear from that second there was a clique of people who 'ran' the club and anyone had to make sure anything mention ed was semi cleared with them to rubber stamp it as 'true'...

 

That was the death of it there and then and there were other users running back and forth to a certain table to get approval and comments on what they had done. I remember the two guys to this day, one was the spitting image of Jack Hargreaves (famous back in the 60's and 70's on Brit TV, search his name and HOW (a TV programmer he was in) complete with fishing hat and the other a balding man of around 50 who was his right hand lackey. I was summoned to the table and was too busy helping someone who was stuck on DOS so popped over later which went down like mud in your tea. The old guy started a mini rant and I stopped him dead, asked how many members there were (I forget exactly but it was small) and said its hardly a surprise with you two lording it over people. The other guy chimed in that he's personal friends with Mike Wilding (Atari UK Slough) which was childishly supposed to be a super name drop, I said, good ask him to say hello to Paul and Kev next time as we also knew Mike for 'other reasons' and I buggered off.

 

Seen the same sort of behaviour at other places to do with the C64 and Amiga, utterly pointless and dead annoying...Many of the users were ok but really needed help but were a little 'scared' to ask because of the clique mentality...

 

To this day I never can stand people who presume to knock you down a peg with their work, acquaintances or make a thing of how bright they are which I find often hard to understand their claim based on how they conduct themselves..

 

Knowing someone should be a nice story that might lead to finding someone else who knew them and you can have a laugh and a chat about them or even reconnect with them...Nothing else...

[DavidMil]

Sadly many of the larger user groups were exactly the same. Very, very cliquish to say the least. I guess I

was accepted by most because I had good products to sell. The write protect bypass and blank floppy disks

for really cheap prices.

The real fun was with the small user groups where everyone was a newbie. I remember one group that was

amazed when I showed them a small basic program to write circles in graphics mode. I remember another

group that watched in horror when I deliberately pushed my 800 off the edge of the table then powered it up

to show them how tuff Atari's were built (I only did that on carpeted floors and not too often). But when Atari

abandoned the 8 bit machines the user groups seemed to disappear too.

 

David

[Alfred]

Doesn’t sound like an uncommon experience. I mean, we were all pretty much teens (or younger) at that point, and user groups weren’t really nice for youngsters. Nobody at TAF was really supportive except the section leader, so there was little point in attending.

You should attend a meeting now, though. Those weird kids have matured into...really weird adults.

 

TAF eh? Yeah, I only went once or twice, didn't see the point. The guy who ran the 8-bit library near the end, whose name escapes me atm was a pretty decent fellow as I recall.

[cx2k]

I was the Vice-Presiden of the Alamo Area Atari Users Association (A.A..A.U.A.) in San Antonio back in the mid-late 80's. We had a great community and always welcomed new members. We were fortunate to have a great support network of local dealers and at one point even held meetings in Federated Electronics stores after Atari bought them. When i moved back to NY in 1990 I was contacted by the Ol' hackers User Group who saw a goodbye message in the AAAUS newsletter. They drafted me right in.

 

I have heard from other s though in the past about groups being unwelcoming. Thanksfully, we had a great group of people.

[cx2k]

David,

 

Did you sell the write protect bypass as a "commercial" product? Just curious.

 

Thanks,

John

 

Sadly many of the larger user groups were exactly the same. Very, very cliquish to say the least. I guess I

was accepted by most because I had good products to sell. The write protect bypass and blank floppy disks

for really cheap prices.

The real fun was with the small user groups where everyone was a newbie. I remember one group that was

amazed when I showed them a small basic program to write circles in graphics mode. I remember another

group that watched in horror when I deliberately pushed my 800 off the edge of the table then powered it up

to show them how tuff Atari's were built (I only did that on carpeted floors and not too often). But when Atari

abandoned the 8 bit machines the user groups seemed to disappear too.

 

David

[gilsaluki]

I was the Vice-Presiden of the Alamo Area Atari Users Association (A.A..A.U.A.) in San Antonio back in the mid-late 80's. We had a great community and always welcomed new members. We were fortunate to have a great support network of local dealers and at one point even held meetings in Federated Electronics stores after Atari bought them. When i moved back to NY in 1990 I was contacted by the Ol' hackers User Group who saw a goodbye message in the AAAUS newsletter. They drafted me right in.

 

I have heard from other s though in the past about groups being unwelcoming. Thanksfully, we had a great group of people.

I was a subscribing member of AAAUA from about '89 to about '93 or '94. AAAUA was THE BEST. Thelma was the BEST, she aided me immensely and was always welcoming. I wrote several articles for the FRANTIC newsletter, which was a great newsletter. I still have every copy I received. I still read them every few years. Thanks your support of the Atari back in the day. I probably would have abandoned the Atari had it not been for AAAUA's support then.

[DavidMil]

David,

 

Did you sell the write protect bypass as a "commercial" product? Just curious.

 

Thanks,

John

 

 

I can't say that I offered them commercially, I'd make a dozen or so and take them to the different user group

meetings around Houston. They always sold quickly.

 

David

[Rybags]

We had a local group called ACTARI (name based on Australian Capital Territory) that I went to from around mid 1983 to around 1986/7.

 

Numbers weren't huge, probably under 40 members and about 15 at each monthly meeting. I went to a Commodore group once and it was probably 2-3 times the size.

We generally had a monthly presentation/theme by someone and usually a machine or 3 was brought along. I wrote a couple of articles and programs for the monthly newsletter.

I threw out all but about one of the newsletters which is now regretful but supposedly our National Library cataloged them so maybe they're still available to view somewhere.

 

By about mid '85 the ST started to take over procedings which I wasn't real keen on even though I bought one in '88.

Not sure how long the group lasted but I doubt it went much beyond 1990.

 

Most of the state capitals here also had groups and some of them were fairly big though you are talking of places with 1-3.5 million people.

[+David_P]

I need to scan and upload the newsletters I have from the Montreal Atari Club Atari Montreal (MACAM) back in the day. It started out on The Atari Connection (a local 8-bit BBS) where a group decided to try meeting in person as well as online. The first meeting came up with a temporary name, The Reunion of Atari Montreal People (or TRAMP).

 

I enjoyed it, but as life got busy and my Ataris moved to the side of the desk to make 'way for PCs, I attended less.

[+Allan]

I need to scan and upload the newsletters I have from the Montreal Atari Club Atari Montreal (MACAM) back in the day. It started out on The Atari Connection (a local 8-bit BBS) where a group decided to try meeting in person as well as online. The first meeting came up with a temporary name, The Reunion of Atari Montreal People (or TRAMP).

 

I enjoyed it, but as life got busy and my Ataris moved to the side of the desk to make 'way for PCs, I attended less.

Please do. You can upload them to Archive.org. There are a lot of Atari Newsletters there already but most are still un-archived.

 

Allan

[Keatah]

I found (and still find) most user's groups cliquish and haughty - with most members having the same personality as those fat HAM Radio operators or even academia. You dare not intrude on their domain.

 

So I made my own group. We'd discuss Apple II and Atari 400/800 about equally. And since we were younger and sensible we accomplished a great deal. Eventually we disbanded about midway through college as members moved into the PC ecosphere and found their niche online in the 1990's. There was less and less need to physically get together.

[Rybags]

It was a mixed bag in my group. I was aged 16 at the start and probably only 4-5 of us under 25 at the time. But myself and my 2 schoolmates were the cool crowd and 2 of us at least were relative gurus insofar as knowledge of the machines.

 

There was one bloke, I think he was from the US - he inadvertantly trashed his 1050 by using Ajax powder applied to a floppy as head-cleaner.

[Mclaneinc]

WOW...Bet the head was wickedly clean tho....

 

Seriously, that's a heart breaker back then, drives were never cheap and to kill it in an insane way, all he needed was a Brillo Pad as well must have hurt...I presume it was someones awful JOKE or just a genuine mistake?

 

The nearest I ever got to a wind up was a multiboot of Flight Sim (big, one part boot, the rest padded data to make it HUGE) put out that actually was a disk formatter (it said it needed the write protect off to boot properly), needless to say there wasn't a flight sim release at that point so it was grabbed and hated by too many

 

Killing a drive...NO...Bad enough we had 'drive music' on the C64 making the head do awful things...

Edited December 24, 2018 by Mclaneinc