User groups have come a long way since I first got started in them almost twenty years ago. It is kind of like back in the forties when people formed telephone user groups, and they all met down at the local school house to talk about the new phone systems and how to get around using those new dials, instead of asking Mabel or Ethel to connect them to the local general store. What do you mean, dial it directly? However, as time went on, many became fluent with the new telephone systems and stopped coming to the meetings. Eventually, the telephone user groups died off.
Personal computer user groups are a bit different, though. We will always offer people advice on how to use their new systems, and provide excellent service to help users learn their new computers. That is because computers are always changing. We will always survive, even if it is just 200 users or so. Our expenses may change accordingly; however, we may come back very strong someday and have three thousand members like we had in the early nineties. You never know.
I can remember using bulletin boards to download files when the Internet was not available. One incident in particular occurred when I was explaining to someone how computers work, and how I can search for articles and find results right from my own home. I happened to be working on a project to hook up more than the two floppy drives that came with my first IBM PC. It had a floppy controller adapter in it which allowed two floppy drives connected inside the case and two more floppy drives connected externally, outside the case. It was a DB37 pin connector and I wanted to know the pinouts to it.
So I explained that you could just dial up a bulletin board system and enter a few key words for the articles you were searching for and presto, you would have a bunch of files that you could download. So I entered "Floppy Connector" and pressed enter. After a few minutes, I saw on the screen a few filenames. One was called "floppys.arc."
Certain that I had found my match, I proceeded to download this file. It took a while because modems were only 1200 baud back then. After a small break, we went in to check and it had finished downloading. I explained to her that I had to un-archive the file, since it was archived in a special format that glued the files together so I could download them in one file, instead of as individual files. Zip had not been developed yet. After un-archiving them, I had five files. Four of them had a weird extension I had never seen before and there was one executable. I used the LIST program to look at the four files, thinking they were documentation for my search item, but they were not in readable format under DOS.
Back then, you did not have much to worry about viruses, so I just ran the executable and before my eyes was a picture of a topless women and her chest was flopping around. I was so embarrassed! After that experience, I never invited any more user group members over to show them anything unless I thoroughly checked it out before. I then realized that I have to purchase the Hardware Technical Reference Guide in order to get my answer.
APCUG
To return to the subject of User Group beginnings: In 1986 the Association of Personal Computer User Groups was started to help other user groups learn from the accomplishments of the more successful groups.
APCUG is still in existence and doing well. They have maintained a server and a website (APCUG.org) for quite some time. However, they are in the middle of trying to change the way they have been doing things to something more like what our user group does. We have an ISP that houses our Web site, as well as points our e-mail to an e-mail server that we can maintain and run as we please. It is CalWeb and they have been wonderful to us over the years.
APCUG would like to work in this same manner, using an ISP instead of trying to rely on volunteers to maintain their own server. So this time, our user group is helping them out. We run our list server from our ISP as well.
New Member List Server
As a matter of fact, our user group is changing our list server to a new service using our own domain name. It will be called "Members@SacPCUG.org". This list is simply a way of having our users communicate with each other in order to ask questions or make announcements. You have to be a member in good standing in order to participate. If you are and would like to be on this list, please send an e-mail to "Members@SacPCUG.org" and put Subscribe in the subject line and Members List Server in the body of the text. At that point, you will be on the list server and will receive messages for other members as well as be able to send messages yourself.
One last thing: please tell other people the success you have had within the Sacramento PC Users Group so we can try to become a larger user group. Members are invited to volunteer, as well. We never turn down a user who is willing to participate within the club. We will survive!
