 Number 200 - January 2000 |
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Zero Point Two Kay
What the heck is that? 0.2K means two tenths of one thousand or 200. Look at the issue number. TOGGLE's bicentenial! 200 issues! Wow! Since your editor took over his duties, in June of 1983, we've published continuously every month under the TOGGLE banner. We started using the CP/M operating system and Worstar 3.3, which allowed printing in columns--a big deal in those days--and a C Itoh 1510 9-pin dot matrix printer. In those early years, user groups were brand-oriented. There were user groups for Radio Shack TRS80s, Apple IIs, Commodore 64s and others. Members of our group each owned an Osborne 1, and after ten months with the tongue-twisting name of Pierce County/South Puget Sound Osborne Users Club (PC/SPSOUC) we settled on Tacoma Osborne Group (TOG). Some may remember the "Flying O" logo which appeared on the screen of the Osborne 1 when you started it. With the TOG acronym the newsletter name was a natural. But the TOGGLE banner/logo was entirely fortuitous. Using our CItoh printer's limited graphic capabilities of triangles and rectangles it resulted in the letters streaked with horizontal lines not unlike the Osborne "Flying O"--a happy accident! We liked it, adopted it, kept it for 16 years! Longevity of the group and newsletter has depended on finding quality articles, inquisitiveness about computers and the willingness to share and help each other. |
Publisher's Oddball Arithmetic Speaks Volumes
In the most common volume/issue numbering scheme the first issue is usually Volume 1, Number 1. Well, rightly or wrongly, the first eight issues of Pierce County/South Puget Sound Osborne Users Club Newsletter carried neither a Volume nor an Issue number. Then the February 1983 through May 1983 issues were titled Tacoma Osborne Group Newsletter again without Volume or Number designation. With the first issue of the newsletter in the group's second year of life, now called the Tacoma Osborne Group with the acronym TOG, the name of the newsletter was changed to the TOGGLE, as mentioned above. Even though, during its first year, the newsletters were not given Volume and Issue numbers, the first issue of the second year newsletter was issued as Volume 2, Number 1. As a result, this is issue #200 with the TOGGLE banner and TOG underlined. Including the first year's issues, this is really the 212th issue of the user group's newsletter since the inception of the group in June 1982. The Osborne Corporation went belly-up in the mid-80s and it was clear that MS-DOS was supplanting CP/M as the dominant PC operating system. So the Group name was changed to Tacoma Open Group for Microcomputers, retaining the TOG acronym, the group focus was broadened--moving away from brand-orientation and to accommodate whatever changes would come. They came alright--we qualified with the IRS as a nonprofit 503c corporation in the mid-1980s, the computer operating system used by our members changed from CP/M to MS-DOS 3.3 through 6.2 to 7.?, Windows 3.x through 9.x & NT, OS/2 and now LINUX. Are we ready for the next 200 issues? You bet! |
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Number 200 - January 2000
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