Another large meeting opened by Gloria, with apologies from
Geoff Mierish and Dieter Amelung.  A number of new members were
introduced. Peter Hodge had family Tree Maker for sale, and George
Brunner a couple more books on the Internet.

	The magazine, PC User has a sniffing, guess the smell,
competition, which can lead to all sorts of prizes. Darrell Burkey has
wasted hours on the net trying to track down some of the clues and was
seeking compatriots in arms to help with his sleuthing. So if you are
interested, send Darrell an e-mail, dburkey@pcug.org.au

	Phillip Bell on behalf of Al Kabaila, wondered why Al was
getting no feedback on his Win95 kits. It would seem that Win95
installations are peculiar to themselves and perhaps a kit is not the
way to go.

Censorship and all that stuff.
	A once disinterested, but now evangelistic Darrell Burkey,
described the horrors of the NSW anti internet legislation. He urged
all to sign the petition to be forwarded to various people to prevent
an absurd situation developing. Some comments were;
	Write a personal letter, petitions are passe, politicians
react better to a 1000 letters than a 1000 signatures.
	Invite the Attorney General to C&C to explain why politicians
are not interested. Get Harold Hird, he's into computers isn't he?
	Political grand standing, that's all it is. Politicians don't
care who they tread on as long as they get a nice warm feeling out of
it.
	It was quite a cold day, but everyone was starting to get a
bit hot under the collar, then Valerie Stursteps said: Let us cancel
the lunch and march on parliament house.

	Gloria calmed things down, and led us onto the next subject,
how did you become interested in computers?

	First up was Derrick Boyd, now in his 83rd year recalled that
in 1918, he was able to press the buttons on his father's vest (there
were only five of them), and for each button, he would get a response,
like, For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. 
	Ten years later he found these fundamental statements to be
true, and has been engaged in button pushing ever since. But
seriously, it was the late 70s when he was instructed to do something
different that he bought a Microbee kit, and has never looked back.

	Jim Hume became interested in computers from the war years and
his association with Bletchy park. Later in the early days of
government computers he attended Senate meetings on what the Guvment
should do has been amazed ever since that the politicians can't still,
get it right.

	John Saxon, I think it was, brought along the first laptop he
ever had, A 1980 model Tandy, stripped down and expanded into a
beautifully crafted wooden box with hinges and latches and a handle as
well. A classic, didn't ask him, but I guess it still worked.

	Keith Owen described how he became involved with an ALTAIR,
and later moved onto an Apple 2, the first in Canberra. He founded the
Apple users Group, and played around with Amigas before going into
normal PCs.

	Emil Joseph told how in the late 70s, he attended a course on
how to build your own computer, and later acquired a Dick Smith clone
of a Tandy machine. Then the upgrades, $500 for a floppy drive that
took 8inch disks, 40kb capacity and $60 for a pack of 10.

	And then came all the advertisements from the 70s, 32K of
memory for $1000. 1K of ferrite memory for $2000. Byte magazine Nr 1
had an article on how to make your own assembler. Thems was the days !

	Sorry if I left any one off, fell free to post your
experiences here, it's almost a stone age away now.

	The meeting adjourned, not for a march on parliament house,
but to the Yacht Club for more chatting and a very nice lunch. Thanks
Wolf, that was well done.

	Next meeting 9 Jul 96, Alf McMicken will be running the show
while Gloria is away. Did some one get the address for Gloria, please
post as she indicated she would like some snail mail.


Owen
  
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