1994 3rd Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest (May 21-22, Chicago, Illinois) by Allen Huffman of Sub-Etha Software (With additions/corrections by Colin McKay) (5/29/94-6/12/94, REVISED 6/30/94) NOTE: Any discrepancies between what is contained in this report and what is real is merely coincidental. This includes, but is not limited to, names, locations, events, and inside jokes (like klystrons). It seems like only three years ago Dave Myers of CoCoPro! stepped in to hold the First Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest. At least we knew we had one more show after Rainbow ceased sponsoring RainbowFests. The "First Annual Last" comment was both a joke and something serious. While the Fest booklet stated that we might see a second such gathering, Dave Myers had concerns that, if all didn't go well, this would be it. Many of us felt that way as well. Fortunately, as all great stories go, there is a happy ending. While Dave Myers wasn't able to continue sponsoring Fests under the CoCoPro! name, the Glenside Color Computer Club did and, thanks to the efforts of many dedicated people, the THIRD Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest was a great success. The best part is, a fourth one is already scheduled for April 29 and 30th, 1995. THE DRIVE Those of you who have followed my previous reports will know that it is tradition for Terry Todd (or a suitable substitute) and myself to head off in an overstuffed Honda Civic with nothing more than some pocket change and a gas card. After the drive last year (and the infamous diesel incident) I was pretty much certain that I didn't really want to do that again. Thanks to good friend Tim Johns (who attended Des Moines and Atlanta in '93), this year would be different. Since we knew at least three of us who wanted to go, we checked in to the possibility of renting a van. Word went out over the Internet and soon we found ourselves with a vanful of passengers. Unfortunately, two of the original passengers weren't able to attend but others were recruited. The crew would consist of myself, Terry Todd, Tim Johns and his girlfriend Katy, and Danny Johns (his little brother). We would load up and depart from Lufkin, Texas at about 9am on Thursday morning. We drove into Dallas to pick up Scott Unziker, a friend of Tim's who didn't actually have a CoCo but was interested in acquiring OS-9000 for his PC. Tim did an excellent job of getting lost in Dallas, but that only set us back by an hour. Then the journey would take us a bit out of the way to Oklahoma City to pick up David Graham of Blackhawk Enterprises. We were honored to help get the MM/1s officially represented at the show. The rest of the trip was really uneventful except when we heard some reports on the C.B. of a car on fire. Tim played hero and stopped to help by using the fire extinguisher he had packed. You just never know what you might need to bring to a CoCoFest, I suppose! To me, the highlight of the trip was finding a very nice rest area in Funks Grove which features vending machines full of sunflower seeds, sodas, and even hot chocolate, coffee and chicken broth. Ah, the luxuries one finds on the road. THE ARRIVAL It was about 6am on Friday as we drove into Elgin. The Holiday Inn greeted us as it did the previous year, but the people inside were not as happy to see us. Rooms would not be available until noon "at the earliest" so we found our way to the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. After about an hour we returned to the hotel to wander around. Terry and I took it upon ourselves to explore, while Tim came in handy helping a couple change a flat tire in the parking lot. (Once again, another brownie point for Tim.) Nothing was open yet. No rooms, no video games, and no bar. Terry and I decided to lounge around in the whirlpool for awhile while the others slept it off in the van. The whirlpool was VERY relaxing. After a bit, I went to check on the room status and found Frank Swygert (FARNA Systems, 268'm) attempting to check in. He was also not able to do so, but was able to enjoy the whirlpool with us. Frank had arrived the previous night and stayed in a nearby motel that wasn't booked solid. (More boring early morning details omitted...) Eventually we were able to get into our rooms and settle down. THE PRE-SHOW Due to some seminars being held in the meeting area (involving many people carrying guns - hopefully of the law-enforcement type), we were unable to set up our booth until early Saturday morning so there wasn't much "business" we had to take care of. Slowly familiar faces started pouring in. We began to keep a list of vendors and their room numbers (which we posted in our room window for others to find) and tried to act as a check in point. This seemed to be a splendid idea as it let us all find each other outside of show time (a "Fest after the Fest", we called it). That evening, a group of us loaded up for dinner at Ponderosa, a local steak place (and the chain a certain MM/1 hacker works for in the real world). Some of the characters who were present were Scott Griepentrog, Paul Jerkatis, Carl Boll, Joel Hegberg, David Graham, Frank Swygert, and many others. Dinner was "okay" (I really wish we woulda gone for Chicago Pizza like some others did) and the hour long drive "lost" trying to find the hotel afterwards was a great time for me to take a much needed nap... Scott Griepentrog and Paul Jerkatis seemed to have brought the "biggest" computer with them as they hauled a very large SUN workstation into their room. Hmph. Show off. THE SHOW AREA The large convention area was setup as follows (more or less): Registration +-------------------: :---------: :------------------------+ | Northern X XGlenside X | | Xposure X X CoCo X XHawkSoft | | X XXXXXXXXX X Club X X Fat Cat | |DALTRUG X XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | | X X Frank | |Adv. X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X Hogg | |SurvivorX XStrong Sub- X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | | X X Ware Etha X X OS-9 Chicago | | X X X U.G. OS-9 Group | | X JoTa X X ! | Farna X X Prod.X XBlackhawk | | X X Digi- X X Budgetware | | CoNect X X Grade XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | | X X Color-X X | | X Barsoft Sys.X X | | X X Delmar X | | X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X JWT | | X X Ent. | | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | | S-BUG Crystal Neil Al Dages Klystronics | | Palace Brookins RC Smith | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ Or at least something like that. There were 27 vendors scheduled to appear, but a few were not able to make it. The vendors, in no particular order (except maybe alphabetical) were as follows: Al Dages & R.C. Smith - From Atlanta, these two seem to appear at all the 'Fests. A plethora of "previously owned" hardware and software was available. With each purchase you received a free ni-cad battery, too. Adventure Survivors - The "friendliest faces at the 'Fest" were here once again with their adventure oriented newsletter. They also offer a line of classic CoCo adventure games. Barsoft - The awesome Dave Barnes was offering Eddie Kuns' KB-COM for OS-9 as well as other goodies (with 20% off to Glenside members). At this booth I picked up two hardware terminals for an amazing price. Blackhawk Enterprises, Inc. - David Graham made his first "CoCoFest" and was offering SCSI hard drives and other MM/1 ad-ons (including an "anthology" disk of some of Joel Hegberg's MM/1 goodies). There was also a system software upgrade disk for the MM/1 with the latest editions of all the modules, including WindIO 52, for $15. Also at this booth we got to take a look at a Point of Sale (POS) system running on an MM/1 complete with "laser gun" barcode scanner and a magnetic strip credit card reader. The software, which is actually in use at a hardware store in Missouri (see THE RETURN, below), offered an extensive amount of power for inventory, ordering, and sales. It even kept detailed information on product history and could help estimate the quantity of a particular item you might need to have in stock. Software designer Stanley Scott should get a large round of applause for his achievement in bringing such powerful software to the OS-9 platform. Budgetware - A new group from Nebraska was offering some great prices on great software. Most notable was an update of the classic Star Trek computer game (the old text game from the days of "real" computers). This one was all flashy and glitzy with digitized sound effects! Available for the MM/1 and CoCo OS-9, it was a really slick game. A Shanghia-type Tiles game for the MM/1 was also available, and Brian Kitt was showing off his work on a 3D texture mapped "maze" engine similar to Wolfenstein 3D or Doom on the PCs. This was an amazing thing to see on the MM/1. While the frame rate of this initial version was slow, there is vast potential in the "roots" of the program itself. (I am told that the program was actually quite fast considering it was running on a 15mhz machine, which is probably quite true when considering how slow similar programs run on "faster" IBMs.) Chicago Area OS-9 Users Group - The local Chicago OS-9 group was out in full force making their presence known. ColorSystems - Zack Sessions had his graphical front end to Gnu-Chess for the MM/1 and his X-10 ("plug n' power") controller software. The OS-9 game pack featuring Battleship and Mine Field caught my eye. The classic CoCo related bumper stickers were also available. Anyone out there have an "I My CoCo" sticker on their car? CoNect - Rick Uland was there, but without his Xpander prototype (which seems to have a few more rough spots remaining). He did have his CoCo in a special-built case which he hopes to offer for sale soon. This case was rugged and designed specifically for the CoCo's motherboard and accessories. When in production, it will be the easiest CoCo re-pack available. His well designed mini-232 paks were also available. Of interest was the news that a new FastIO 232 pack capable of 14.4kbaud would soon be available, and the CoCoIO project is back in the works after Rick found a replacement for the never produced chips he used in the prototype. Special thanks should go to Rick for doing the "interrupt" modification on my multipak, as well as making me a new hard drive cable. Where would the world be without hackers? Crystal Palace BBS - The new support team of ACBBS was there showing off their OS-9 BBS software which offers PC RIP graphics. (I didn't get a chance to see this, but it is a VERY interesting thing to have! Does anyone have a RIP-Terminal for OS-9 yet?) DALTRUG - The Dallas Tandy Users Group was once again represented by Lee Veal and David Wordell. Planet Engine, the CoCo OS-9 planetarium package, was being offered along with galactic jewelry. David's instructional video tapes were not available this time around, though. Delmar - Ed Gresick was unable to attend, but there where a few Delmar G-Windows computers around and literature was available. Tim Johns was acting as representative at this show. Digigrade Productions - First time vendor Dave Pellerito whom we have seen at many of these shows was there with a new video newsletter full of reviews and other things. A great way to "see" software before buying it. Also available was a compilation video of last year's massive Chicago CoCoFest including much footage from the "legendary" worldwide meeting of OS-9 enthusiasts. Dirt Cheap Computer Stuff Company - While listed in the 'Fest booklet, Mark Griffith was unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict. His great prices were missed. Disto - Tony Distefano was held up at customs and was not allowed to bring his hardware over the border this time. This kept him from attending. I am sure his 2-meg CoCo memory boards were missed as well. (This was the first time in ten years he was refused entrance. So much for NAFTA...) Farna Systems - Frank Swygert was onhand with his version of the PVC Nightmare backdrop, but with a classy "world of 68' micros" logo on it. The Patch OS9 disk was there (I bought one) which features all the common OS-9 patches on one disk (easy to install, too, thanks to Rick Uland's install routine). C. Dekker was also hanging out showing off his graphics tools and point-n-click desktop file/program manager. Ken-Ton SCSI hard drive systems were also represented since, unfortunately, Joe Scinta was unable to attend. Fat Cat Publications - Alan Sheltra had a booth, but wasn't able to attend. Rumor has it that two representatives were onhand taking pictures for inclusion in an upcoming issue of the International OS-9 Underground magazine. Frank Hogg Laboratories - I would have loved to have seen a Kix/30 with the G-Windows graphics card, but Frank wasn't able to attend. Still, his support at this show is greatly appreciated. Glenside Color Computer Club - The host club took memberships to their group (giving members discounts at most of these vendors) and sold commemorative mugs and buttons. This year's 'Fest shirt, designed by Nancy Myers, was very nice. Yellow, grey and blue shirts were available with a slick multi-color front print. A CoCo based OS-9 point of sale system kept things running smoothly...most of the time. HawkSoft - The towering Chris Hawks (with wife, Nancy) showed off their warez along with Kalasoft's Ultimuse which had new LOWER prices. An interesting MM/1 clock program was available that had the interesting ability to "cuckoo" at the top of the hour. Chris has too much time on his hands, I think. The Fest booklet also sounded like it was hinting at a CoCo 3 software package for the Tandy plug-n-power controllers, but I didn't get to see it if it existed. JoTA Productions - Tim and Danny Johns made a splash showing off some upcoming G-Windows products, like JoTA Magnamaterm. Tim spent much time showing off the capabilities of the Delmar System V. JWT Enterprises - Jordan Tsvetkoff (pronounced "zvet-koff") was at his first post-RainbowFest. He had back issues of UpTime and the Nine-Times OS-9 disk newsletter. His great Optimize Utility Set was also available. Jordan, for those of you who don't remember, was the one who brought us the Pyramix CoCo 3 game (like Q-Bert). He was in 8th grade when he programmed it, and it was also one of the first 3rd party CoCo 3 games available. Ken-Ton Electronics - See Farna Systems. Klystronics - Another new vendor. This group was offering a large supply of "gently used" klystrons, complete with manuals. The minimal water damage their inventory had didn't seem to effect operation, though the yellow discoloration made them no longer match the CoCo's case. Neil G. Brookins & Co. - Neil and Dave Halko offered various goodies from a number of versions of a high-speed Bible concordance (for OS-9, OSK, etc.) to cheap full size industrial hard drives and even tape backup drives. Northern XPosure - How's it goin', eh? Once again, Colin McKay rounded up a variety of Canadian software producers, and brought their warez to the Fest (along with a total of FIVE computers). Bill Nobel and Curtis Boyle were onhand to offer support and sales for NitrOS9 (which I picked up). Also, the Shanghai ROM-pak port to OS-9 was shown running quite well (including new tiles for the game). Older ports such as Thexder were also available, as was Alan DeKok's SMASH breakout game for OS-9. Bob van der Poel's line of software was also represented. All in all, some of the slickest CoCo OS-9 software was at this booth. OS-9 Users Group, Inc. - $25 signs you up for a year of great OS-9 support, including the MOTD newsletter (special 'Fest issue was available at the show which included an article on the history of Microware). S-BUG of Los Angeles - Andre Lavelle had, once again, tons of CoCo items and other non-specific ad-ons such as hard drives, disks, etc. StrongWare - John Strong and his crew were sporting new airbrushed "Team OS9" shirts that looked fantastic. His new Copy Cat program (previously available for CoCo RS-DOS) was now running on the MM/1. It's much like the old Simon game. RS-DOS classics like Soviet Bloc and GEMS which play in stereo through an Orch-90 pak, were also available. Sub-Etha Software - While the PVC Nightmare backdrop was accidentally left in Texas, we still attempted to have a normal show (even though I also forgot my bathrobe and my towel was being used to protect a hard drive). The new Towel! point-n-click disk utility (which runs under the EthaWin interface) was available as well as MultiBoot, which allows you to have up to 16 different bootfiles on one disk. Joel Hegberg's MM/1 software such as Write-Right and Etha-GUI were also available. It was a great setup and seemed just as full as last year (due to the organization of the tables). We also had the BEST CoCoFest vendor signs I have ever seen. Glenside had vinyl signs made up which were hung from the ceiling above each vendor. This made it easy to locate vendors across the room and will also cut down on future costs since they are re-usable, unlike the cardboard signs of past events. Whoever had this idea needs a great pat on the back. Ditto for whoever thought to put the sign out on the highway that pointed the way to the COCOFEST location. THE SEMINARS The amount of free information available at the 'Fests is always impressive, and this time was no exception. Topics were discussed as follows: Saturday: 09:15 - "Future Support of the CoCo" Basically, this was a pep-talk given by myself to a small group of early risers. The two main topics of discussion centered on getting authors to release old (or even new) source code to routines in efforts to help programmers create new items, and also the possibility of having a P.R. department for the CoCo clubs. This would consist of someone organizing free classified ads about meetings, as well as attempts to contact other smaller clubs and exchange information. 10:15 - "Networking, BBSing and telecommunications" Scott Griepentrog and Paul Jerkatis gave a talk on telecom including LANs and WANs. 11:15 - "OSK V3 and Ultra C" Boisy Pitre and James Jones discussed the new updates with Microware's OS-9/68K V3 and the new Ultra C compiler. 12:45 - "NitrOS-9" Bill Nobel and Curtis Boyle demonstrated how to install Nitros-09 along with a Q&A period in which they received a lot of valuable feedback from NitrOS-9 users. 02:15 - "ACBBS" Nelson Howard discusses and demonstrates the ACBBS software. 03:15 - "OS-9 Forum" John Strong offers his insight into the OS-9 operating system in an open forum. Sunday: 08:00 - "CoCo Community Sunday Service" Brother Jeremy leads the now-traditional non-denominational prayer service. 10:15 - "GCCC General Meeting" The Glenside CoCo Club has a meeting for all those who normally can't attend. Even non-members are invited to attend. 12:00 - "Introduction to Games Programming" John Strong, as author of Soviet Bloc and GEMS for the CoCo, describes techniques to create games from the title screen on up. 01:00 - "NitrOS-9" Another Q&A session on NitrOS-9. 02:00 - "Allen Huffman Uncensored" This time slot was given up to allow the minimum bid auction on Sunday to be held at an earlier time. THE EVENINGS This year a bit more organization went into the evening gatherings which the 'Fests have become so famous for. The massive list of vendors and "important people" we compiled allowed us to phone up others and share our plans. The Friday night steak dinner was only topped by a rather unusual event which I still do not clearly remember. At midnight, I went to sleep. I was very tired and wanted to get up early enough Saturday to set our booth up. For some reason, at 1:30am or so Terry insisted I wake up, taunting me for going to sleep so early. He's famous for doing things like this, and after the first few times he attempted to wake me up with things like "come here, let me show you something really cool", I gave in. In a very aggravated and sleepy state I wandered over to the bathroom where he was only to find lights come on and a rather large number of people yelling at me, who then proceeded to pile out of the room. This was followed by Dave Halko having a brief discussion with me about hard drives. It's really not all that clear, but I do remember the faces of Carl Boll, Scott Griepentrog, and, apparently, Dave being there. To the rest of you ... I will find out who all was there. Trust me. Paybacks always come. Saturday was highlighted by a sudden urge to go to Planet Hollywood in downtown Chicago. Originally I just wanted to pick up a t-shirt at the Hard Rock Cafe for my collection, but a call to Jordan Tsvetkoff and his friends gave us a better objective. So, the crew of Farna Systems, Sub-Etha (less Terry, who chose to go to a honky tonk and learn to two-step), JoTA and JWT all headed out in two vehicles for an evening of fine food, drinks, and movie paraphernalia. It was a great evening and a very interesting place. Unfortunately, it took about an hour to get there, and even longer to get a seat and eat. By the time we got back things had pretty much settled down. Many of the less adventurous souls stayed at the hotel Saturday night to attend the general meeting of the OS-9 Users Group. Carl Boll (President) gave a great presentation on the state of the group and elections were held. The main thrust of the meeting was that the Executive needs feedback from it's members. One thing of interest we did see on Saturday night was Brother Jeremy with a rather large binder of CoCo assembly source code. It turns out he acquired the source to Max-10. Interested parties were given copies of it for a potential (hopeful!) port to OS-9. I spoke with Alan DeKok, and if the code is straight forward, it seems like we may actually see the classic David Stampe word processor alive and well under OS-9. If this happens, it will end up being one of the most significant accomplishments for OS9 Level 2. Good luck to all those involved, and I encourage anyone interested in an OS-9 version of Max-10 to make your desires known. (Of course, as much faith as I have in Alan's abilities, we all know such a task is impossible. Ah, nothing like a good challenge!) I have no idea when things calmed down this night, but I do know many people didn't get much sleep (as seen by the tired looks and late awakenings the next morning). I have been told by a reliable source that some people were still wandering the halls of the hotel at 3:30am! SUMMARY A great show indeed. One of the "gripes" last year was that we didn't have name badges. (Pre-made buttons were used instead). Well, this year we did indeed have badges but, for some reason, there was not a place to write in a name/city on them. They simply had all the date and price information on them. I'm not quite sure what happened here, but at least it is a move in the right direction. The 'Fest booklet was setup very well and every vendor description contained contact information (phone # and/or address) which will make it very easy to find people after the event. This is a great thing and must be recognized. Knowing that the 'Fest guide was *42* pages long just made my day. It was also great to see so many first time attendees such as JWT, JoTA, Budgetware, and Digigrade. Hopefully these vendors saw enough response to justify their presence at future shows. Everything else went quite smoothly. The lack of a Friday evening setup didn't seem to be much of a problem, surprisingly, and the overall interest in products was very strong. Some great ideas were tossed around for making next year's show even better. Yes, that's right. A FOURTH "last" 'Fest was informally "voted" on during the final hour of the show. Glenside sure keeps busy! RUMORS Dave Halko did his best to get tape drive units in the hands of potential programmers in hopes that we might see tape backup for OS-9 (finally). The units he had plugged up like a normal floppy drive, so he feels certain such a task is achievable. Brother Jeremy is leading the way to get Max-10 in the hands of coders in efforts to have it brought to life under OS-9 (and maybe OSK considering some MM/1 owners expressed interest in the code as well). THE RETURN If there is one thing that Scott Griepentrog knows how to do, it's build traditions. One such tradition is the "meal" held after the closing of Sunday's show. In Atlanta, it's a small quaint Chinese restaurant across from the 'Fest area... In Chicago, it's the Ghengis Kahn Mongolian Barbeque which last year fed a table of us. This year it would beat all previous attendance records, just as the Lucky Key did in Atlanta in '93. Unfortunately, my vanload decided to head out on it's own instead of following the other cars which got us lost for a half hour... Arriving late wasn't that bad, although we did have to sit by ourselves in booths. Twenty seven of us crowded in to experience the meal. Those present included Carl Boll, Sheryl Edwards, Neil Brookins, Dave Barnes, Dave Halko, Terry Todd, Joel Hegberg, Keith Kounsky, Dave Pellerito, Brother Jeremy, Rick Uland, Colin McKay, Curtis Boyle, Bill Nobel, Alan DeKok, Frank Swygert, Paul Jerkatis (happy now, Paul?), Scott Griepentrog, Brian Shubring, Ken Scales, Tim Johns and Katy, Scott Unzicker, Danny Johns, David Graham, Allen Huffman and Brian Goers. The food was good and the $447 total made us hope we'd gotten enough to eat (we had!). After this, the normal parking lot goodbyes were said and we all headed our own ways with "see you in Atlanta" being heard. Our crew headed South and stopped overnight to get rested. (A new concept to us - usually used to driving straight home after virtually no sleep for two days.) We made a quick detour in St. James, Missouri to find Scott's True Value & V&S Variety Store. We piled out of the van and went inside to find the OS-9 POS we had seen demonstrated at the show. We found terminals up front with cash drawers, and one down the isle where it was being used for inventory. We were given a complete demonstration of it's many features. The staff there backs up the claim that it is really easy to use and learn, which is always a good thing. My only gripe was that the output on the terminals was in all uppercase with virtually no text formatting used. Well, it may not look pretty but it sure does work great! From there we went on our way, dropping David Graham off in Oklahoma, Scott in Dallas, and the rest of us in Nacogdoches and Lufkin. I suppose it was nearly 5am when I got everything unpacked and was able to get some sleep. It felt good to be home... DISCLAIMER I didn't do it. THANKS My, the list of people to thank has really gotten out of hand so let's just do it this way: Thanks, Glenside, for making this possible! Thanks, vendors, for showing up. Thanks, loyal CoCo/OS9 hobbyists for supporting us and making it all worthwhile. Personal thanks goes to Rick Uland (for hardware hacking), Jordan Tsvetkoff (for the excellent Planet Hollywood idea), Carl Boll (for just about everything), Frank Swygert (for providing in-town transportation and navigation), John & Charles Strong (for all the abuse), Paul for nitpicking about what I thought would be a joke , and to Tim Johns for taking care of getting us all there (and not bringing a map). Special editorial thanks goes to Colin McKay for helping me realize that I've been mis-typing "where" and "were" for who knows how long and for providing additional information and corrections to this report. By the way ... if you didn't see your name up in ASCII and feel like it should have been, you are probably right. See DISCLAIMER, above. Allen C. Huffman, Co-Owner - Sub-Etha Software COCO-SYSOP on GEnie coco-sysop@genie.geis.com on the Internet (815) 748-6638 (Joel's voice number) GENIE PLUG NOTE: I am *NOT* a representative of GEnie. This information is provided for informational purposes only... Call 1-800-638-9636 (voice) for information on signup numbers, or call 1-800-638-8369 (modem) and type "HHH" when you CONNECT. Be sure you are in H DUPLEX/SELF-ECHO mode on your terminal program. At the "U#=" prompt, type "XTX99188,TANDY" and follow the instructions for signing up with a checking account or credit card. Current GEnie rates are $8.95 a month which includes four hours of online time (6pm-8am local time). Additional hours are $3 each. Special surcharges apply when using the 1-800 access number, 9600 baud, or some remote-access phone lines. Call the customer service number for more details. FUTURE FESTS Two more Fests are scheduled for this year, and the 1995 Chicago show has also been announced: June, 1994 - Pacific Northwest CoCoFest October 1-2, 1994 - Fifth Annual Atlanta CoCoFest April 29-30, 1995 - Fourth Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest Tim's idea of renting the van worked out great for us this year - allowing several people who had never been to such a gathering to actually attend. I encourage others to work on carpools like this for future shows. The more, the merrier, right? Even though we seem to be in control of our community's future, we still need all the support we can get. Please make efforts to attend upcoming 'Fests. Every little bit helps. And now ... some things we'd like to see in Atlanta (and Chicago, next year). Name badges that contain the following: NAME: Allen C. Huffman COMPANY: Sub-Etha Software FROM: Lufkin, Texas I.D.: coco-sysop@genie.geis.com (or a HAM callsign) What better way to place faces with "handles"? Having separate colored badges for vendors and attendees is also a good idea. David Graham and I discussed some other things we'd like to see, such as a "colored dot" system for identifying interests. For instance, when you buy your ticket, you get a name badge and on that you put a red sticker dot instance into CoCo OS-9, blue for RS-DOS, green for MM/1, etc. These could be overlapped down the side and it would let everyone find others with similar backgrounds. (This way, if a vendor has a new RS-DOS program and sees someone with an RS-DOS dot, they could make sure to mention it...) Also, it might be nice to have a way to distinguish members of various clubs so we know who to offer discounts to. Any thoughts? Also, the 'Fest booklet should continue to have address/phone # for the vendors, and should also list the primary people working each booth. This information, along with a brief description about the vendor, could be collected with the contract vendors send in when registering for the show. Once again, any thoughts? At any rate, I know the shows will continue to be great experiences for all of us who make the effort to attend. THE END Thank you for your time. I hope to see you in Atlanta! ABOUT THE AUTHOR Allen Huffman has been a loyal CoCoist since about 1982. He started with a grey-case CoCo 1 (E board, upgraded to 64K and lowercase) and has progressed through the years from there. In 1990 he co-founded Sub-Etha Software with Terry Todd and has brought several programs to the market including Rulaford Research's K1 Midi Librarian, and Sub-Etha's own MiniBanners and Towel disk utility. He has attended the last eight CoCoFests and written reports on all but the initial 1990 Atlanta show. Allen has contributed to UpTime, OS-9 Underground, the world of '68 micros, and various newsletters around the country and has had several letters published in The Rainbow (including one which prompted them to reprint their first 2-page issue). He also serves as Color Computer SysOp in the Tandy RoundTable on GEnie and has been mentioned in The Computer Shopper for this position.