The August meeting of the TI-Chips was called to order, and the minutes from the July meeting were read and discussed. Lin Shaw gave the Treasurer's report. There was no membership report this month.
Our Webmaster, Craig Getty, gave our software Librarian, Les Kee, the monthly update of our Web site Zip Disk back up. Les said he hadn't the chance to evaluate last month's installment.
Les reported he received E-mail communications from Brian Horner of New Jersey regarding the status of the TI-Chips and the availability of selections from our library. Harry Hoffman said he had also been in contact with Brian, and that he offered Bran membership in the TI-Chips for an initial $10 membership fee. Harry also said he told Brian that disk copies could be had at a price of $1 per disk. (It must be noted that the $10, one time membership fee and the $1 charge per disk copy is standard for all members of the TI-Chips. Also, membership in the TI-Chips is open to all TI'ers in the TI community.)
Harry Hoffman reported that he did some extensive testing of Alan Hewston's 5¼" disk drive. Harry said the drive light would not turn off regardless of which drive number was assigned. Harry also said that Alan's disk controller card edge connectors appeared to be in very poor condition. Jack Koryta suggested that a short might have developed between the drive's locking screws and the aluminum, mounting box. Jack explained that such a short would cause the drive's LED to stay lit. Harry said he would look into this possibility.
I took the opportunity to take a new picture of Matt Andel to be posted in the TI-Chips' membership gallery. However since the membership of the TI-Chips has been growing, I suggested that Craig might consider setting up a 5 X 5 or 4 X 6 thumbnail page of the membership gallery on our web site. This way the person logging on our site would have the membership picture gallery load much faster, and would be able to click on any selected thumbnail to see the full size image. Craig said he would consider the idea of a thumbnail page.
I announced that nominations were now open for the 2003, Jim Peterson Achievement Awards in the TI-99/4A Community Service, TI-99/4A Software, TI-99/4A Hardware and the Myarc "Geneve" 9640 categories. Calls for nominations will be posted on Yahoo's TI-99/4A On Line User Group (OLUG) and comp.sys.ti twice each month until the close of nominations at the end of November.
I also mentioned an inquiry I recently received regarding the TI-99/5 pictures I had posted in the Files Section of the OLUG.
Bob Kaspar mentioned that he was having a difficult time running programs from a batch of disks he had recently received for his TI-99/4A. Bob said when he attempted to load some of the routines, a text display flashed across the screen then an error message was displayed, "Program not available." Bob said this only happened to some of the routines on the disks. It was suggested that these routines might be "grom cartridge dependent", or they might have been formatted with "GramCracker". Bob said he would look into this as possible solution(s) to his problems.
Yours truly won the monthly 50:50 raffle. (Look out Les, I just might order a few copy disks from our disk library with my winnings.) VBG
The September meeting will be held on Saturday, September 21st, from 10:00 AM 'till noon in the Story Time Room in the North Royalton branch library.