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- 4 May 1981
-
- Dear Amethyst Owner;
-
- You have by now heard of the Amethyst Users Group, of which I am
- head. It is the nature of things that everyone eventually gets what he
- wants, and for my sins I was rewarded with charge of the users group.
- At the present I haven't collected anything, either programs or items
- for a newsletter. Your ideas are by all means welcome, as this is just
- as much your users group. EMACS has benifitted greatly from a healthy
- interaction of its users, and it is hoped that MINCE will be able to
- follow this tradition.
- I will put out a written newsletter. I suppose that I will have
- to have something to say first, or else you will be subjected to my
- incessant ramblings (unpleasant at best). The solution is for you to
- contribute things to the cause. If you are working on some project in
- particular, like a C mode, I can publish a note in the news letter
- about it (as verbose as you wish). Between news letters, if more than
- one person or group appears to be working on the same thing, I will
- try to put them in touch with each other, to speed the process.
- I cannot eat the cost of publishing and mailing newsletters and
- disks, so I will be forced to charge a bit for membership, primarily
- to subsidize mailing you newsletters & such. For the nonce, I will
- charge $6.00 for membership (an annual fee). Disks, when and as they
- become available, will also run $6.00 each. These are North American
- prices, Botswana costs more. If i start to lose money, i will raise
- the cost of diskettes, but i don't expect to start losing any soon.
- There is an ARPANET mailing list, which is is free, and is called
- AMETHYST-USERS at AI. You can send net mail to me, BADOB at AI, and i
- will put you on. If you have access to the net, i urge you to get on
- this mailing list, as there will no doubt be much more action here
- that i can account for in the monthly letter.
- I can distribute in Single Side Single Density IBM 8" format,
- Tarbell 8" 51 Sector Double Density, Ohio Scientific CP/M 8", and
- pending the return of my 4FDC from the factory (next week, I'm told) I
- should be able to distribute in Cromemco CDOS 5 1/4" Single Density .
- I will also offer a transfer service from one of the above formats to
- another at about $2.00 per disk, plus diskette and shipping, (i.e.
- provide your own diskettes for me to copy to and save). I should be
- able to distribute in RT-11 format also, that is, I have an RT to CPM
- transfer utility that seems to function properly, but I don't have an
- 11 to run the resultant copies on, so caveat emptor for RT.
- Please pack any disks you send me properly (i.e. in one of those
- nice boxes from INMAC). This point was brought home a few weeks ago
- when some disks that had been improperly packed (but were sent special
- delivery) were FOLDED into my mailbox (special huh?). I should have a
- post office box now, which may or may not help matters. Any disk you
- send me I will send back, hopefully with something neat on it (your
- choice, once there is something to choose from).
- As of right now, there is nothing in the library, and while a
- few people are interested in geting something, i haven't heard of any
- projects to write anything. Also, there is no archive (per se) for the
- AMETHYST-USERS, so if you have an account on an ITS amchine, and have
- some space to spare, perhaps you could let us archive there.
-
- Amethyst Users Group
-
- Barry A. Dobyns
- P.O. Box 8173
- University Station
- Austin, Texas 78741
- (512) 441-9466
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