The February meeting of the TI-Chips was opened, and the minutes from the January meeting were read and accepted. Lin Shaw then gave the Treasurer's report.
I presented follow up reports on inquiries made at the January meeting. The first dealt with Lin Shaw's problem with a disk copy of DM1000. I had taken Lin's disk home, and found that the disk had a defective sector. I made a new copy for Lin, and he said it worked just fine. I also said I set my TI-99/4A up to be easily started with a master on/off switch. My TI's now fully operational at a moment's notice.
The second item from the January meeting was to get a copy of Paolo Bagnaresi's BASIC BUILDER for Les Kee. This routine will convert a TI Basic/Extended Basic program code listings into D/V 80 text files and then back again to the original program file. (I was able to make a copy for Les.)
Les Kee said he was considering trying Jaques Groslouis' suggested method for archiving our library. Les reported that he had visited the WHT site, and downloaded 178 pages of the Text Listing of the WHT site directory. Les said he couldn't determine any correlation between what we had and what was uploaded onto WHT. On closer inspection of Les' print out, it was found that the number of uploaded TI programs was very small compared to the volumes of TI-99/4A and Myarc"Geneve"9640 documentation files.
It appeared that archiving the files in our library would be a four-step process. (e.g., Convert the "listed" program file into a D/V 80 text file with a routine like BASIC BUILDER, creating a PC text document from the converted file with a PC Transfer-type routine, uploading the converted PC text file into a PC and finally burning the text file onto a CD. Then reversing the process to get the file off the CD and back into the TI as a running program.) The basic problem with this project is that this endeavor will be a very labor and time intensive, file-by-file, process. As Les commented, "This project will out-live me."
The discussion then shifted to the relative need and/or value of archiving our entire library onto a more robust/durable electronic media such as a CD. Les' investigation into the WHT site demonstrated that much TI documentation has already been uploaded to that site. Therefore, archiving the docs in our library would be redundant. Also, it was agreed that historic documentation has a tendency to out-live old programs' usefulness and value. This is because there will be more PDF formatted text reading computer systems remaining than TI-99/4A and "Geneve" 9640 computers needed to run old TI-99/4A and "Geneve" 9640 programs.
It was the consensus that the TI-Chips' library archiving project was not needed on our level, and therefore the archiving project will be discontinued. However, we recognize, and are grateful for, the time and investigative effort Les Kee put forth in this project on our behalf. (Thanks, Les.) It was noted that Les would continue providing library catalogs and disk copies for TI-Chips members when requested.
It was officially announced that CCAG 2003 (The Classic Computer And Game show.) has been cancelled.
Timothy Hewston once again did the honors of drawing the winning, 50:50 raffle ticket, and Harry Hoffman was the winner.
Congratulations, Harry.The meeting was adjourned with an announcement that the March meeting will return to the THIRD Saturday of the month, March 15th, from 10:00 AM 'til noon, in the Story Time Room of the North Royalton branch of the Cuyahoga County Library System.