The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Pres Said Ron Lyth

Our membership continues to grow at what can only be described as a spectacular rate, and we now have 1600 financial members. Catering to the needs of such a large membership is becoming an increasingly onerous task for a volunteer group, and we are gradually contracting some of the more time-consuming tasks to paid helpers. 

In particular, we are fortunate to have acquired some helpers who are, for a small fee, copying the many disks of public domain software our members order. Another member is paid a nominal amount to attend to the data entry associated with the membership list. This help is additional to that we obtain from the Swale family who bag and label PC Update and then post them at the Spencer St mail exchange on a Sunday night. We know that the money we pay is much less than for commercial help, and we still get a first class job. 

The attendance at the last two general meetings has been in excess of 200, and we are working hard on ways of improving the quality of subjects and speakers and to ensure that all can derive full benefit from the meetings. It is also heartening to see that about 40 to 50 members now regularly go to the bar upstairs after the meeting for a chat and a feed. The programme for the rest of 1987 is:

• September - SIG Convenors & BBS demo
  
• October - Media (diskettes, hard disks etc)
  
• November - AGM & Public Domain demo
  
• December - Desert Island Diskettes

During October we will be running a special night on which Colin Macauley, our BBS co-Sysop, will give a detailed demonstration of the club's Bulletin Board. This will be at Clunies-Ross House and will be on a Wednesday night from 6pm to 8pm. We must extend our thanks to both Colin and Charles Sandercock for the splendid work they have done and are doing on the BBS. We now have by far the busiest board in Melbourne, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to access the board on either line.

The significant thing about Melb PC's BBS is that it has achieved this level of usage while being a closed board with access restricted to members. We have performed some analysis of users to try to sort out where they come from, but there does not seem to be any particular pattern; they come from everywhere. 

The Committee is very mindful of the value of the BBS to our members, and we are intending to upgrade our system substantially to improve its performance. The first priority is to increase the number of lines, but before that can occur we must upgrade the hardware so that additional lines can be supported with minimal additional effort. We have been fortunate in that Intelead, who provided the Tri-Gem XT clone on which our board has been running, have volunteered to replace that machine with the Tri-Gem 286, their AT clone, and have promised to replace this with a 386 based machine before the end of the year. 

As well, IBM have generously donated a PC AT to the club and this machine will be used by the editor, allowing the Olivetti M24 to be released for the Bulletin Board. The Bulletin Board will then comprise 2 machines which we will link via a LAN, and we will be installing a large and very fast hard disk drive which will be capable of supporting the network and several simultaneous users. I am confident that we will have the biggest and the best BBS in Australia by the end of this year. 

Training Courses are very much the go at the moment with DOS introduction and advanced courses running, and there is strong demand especially from our more recent members. At present I am concerned that the load is being shouldered by too few, and that our efforts in this field will have to be cut back if others do not volunteer to assist with this activity. Drop me a line if you would like to learn about Turbo Pascal. I am willing to repeat the introductory course I ran earlier this year, and would be happy to put together an advanced course if there was sufficient demand. I repeat, please put your request in writing to me so I can't lose it. 

The Committee was pleased to appoint 3 new committee members to fill vacancies arising from resignations and to increase the size of the committee in accordance with the new Rules. We welcome Ian Robinson, John Wilkins (Assistant Editor), and Colin Macauley and know that they will be excellent workers for the group. Unfortunately, our Treasurer has indicated that he will be resigning in the near future, so if you are able to serve the group in this capacity, please let me or David Owen know. If you are not sure, please come to a Committee meeting and see how we work. 

We now have a substantial bank balance and, as yet, no clear plan of what to do with it. We have had several suggestions, some serious, some of which I list briefly:

• Purchase a club-house which we can use for SIG meetings and training.
  
• Rent a shopfront and some paid help. This person(s) to maintain all club records and to sell PD software to members.
  
• Reduce membership fees and PD software prices to all members.

Following from the very successful PS/2 meeting in July, IBM have prepared a special presentation to be given on Monday, September 21 at Clunies-Ross House. We are happy to recommend this presentation to you. For full details please see the flier enclosed with this issue of PC Update. 

Finally, the ACS conference and exhibition will be held in Melbourne in the week commencing 7th September, and, in view of the assistance ACS provide in our use of Clunies-Ross House, might I please recommend that all members patronise this event to ensure that ACS has a successful show.

Reprinted from the September 1987 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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