TPUG
The Toronto PET Users Group is one of the world's oldest extant computer user groups, and was among the very largest. The non-profit group is based in Toronto but has an international membership. It supports nearly all Commodore computers, including the PET, VIC-20, C64, C128, Plus/4, C16, C65, and Amiga, including the COMAL, CP/M and GEOS environments. TPUG is noted for its ties with Commodore Canada, its extensive and widely distributed software library, and its association with prominent computing pioneers such as Jim Butterfield, Brad Templeton, Karl Hildon, and Steve Punter. History TPUG was founded in 1978 or 1979 by Lyman Duggan, a Toronto-area resident who had recently bought a Commodore PET 2001 but could not find an existing user group with any PET owners. At the urging of local author and programmer Jim Butterfield, Duggan organized his own PET group—then known as CLUB 2001—and advertised it by word of mouth. The first meeting was held in the party r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jim Butterfield
Frank James "Jim" Butterfield (14 February 1936 – 29 June 2007), was a Toronto-based computer programmer, author, and television personality known for his work with early microcomputers. He is particularly noted for associations with Commodore Business Machines and the Toronto PET Users Group, for many books and articles on machine language programming, and for educational videos and TV programs. Early life and career Jim Butterfield was born on 14 February 1936 in Ponoka, Alberta, which is south of Edmonton. He was the third of four children to James and Nancy Butterfield, who had emigrated from England to farm. In 1953 he won a French scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts. He later attended the University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia but dropped out due to lack of interest. One of his first jobs was radio continuity writing in Alberta. In 1957, Butterfield began working for Canadian National/Canadian Pacific Telecommunications, at first as a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The TORPET
''The TORPET'' was a Toronto-based computer magazine directed at users of Commodore's 8-bit home computers. Publication history Though named for and associated with the Toronto PET Users Group (TPUG), the magazine was published independently of the club as a commercial enterprise with paid writers. Twenty-eight issues were produced for TPUG from November 1980 to August 1984. In 1984 ''TORPET'''s owner and editor, Bruce Beach, dissociated the publication from TPUG and relaunched it as an oceanography journal, backronymming its name to ''Today's Oceanographic Research Program for Education & Training''. TPUG launched its own computing journal, ''TPUG Magazine'', in February 1984. A 320-page anthology of ''The TORPET'''s most popular articles, ''The Best of The TORPET Plus More for the Commodore 64 and the VIC-20'', was published in 1984 by Copp Clark Pitman. It featured type-in listings for over a thousand freeware programs, articles and cartoon strips teaching BASIC and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Commodore 128
The Commodore 128, also known as the C128, C-128, C= 128,The "C=" represents the graphical part of the logo. is the last 8-bit home computer that was commercially released by Commodore Business Machines (CBM). Introduced in January 1985 at the CES in Las Vegas, it appeared three years after its predecessor, the bestselling computer in the 80s Commodore 64. The C128 is a significantly expanded successor to the C64, with nearly full compatibility. The newer machine has 128 KB of RAM in two 64 KB banks, and an 80-column color video output. It has a redesigned case and keyboard. Also included is a Zilog Z80 CPU which allows the C128 to run CP/M, as an alternative to the usual Commodore BASIC environment. The presence of the Z80 and the huge CP/M software library it brings, coupled with the C64's software library, gave the C128 one of the broadest ranges of available software among its competitors. The primary hardware designer of the C128 was Bil Herd, who had worked ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Transactor
''The Transactor'' was a computer magazine directed at users of Commodore home computers. In contrast to other Commodore-focused publications such as ''Commodore Magazine'' and ''COMPUTE!'s Gazette'', ''The Transactor'''s popularity was based on its coverage of deep technical issues and hardware hacking. ''INFO'' called ''The Transactor'' "the undeniable authority" on "Commodore programming and hardware information". Publication history The magazine was launched on 30 April 1978 as the official international bulletin of Commodore Canada to PET user groups. The early issues were low-tech mimeographed productions with no non-Commodore advertising and a roughly monthly release schedule. Despite its association with Commodore, the magazine earned a reputation for being honest and upfront about bugs and faults in Commodore's products. In September 1982 the magazine was relaunched as a fully independent, bimonthly, advertiser-supported publication. From this point the magazine became ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Commodore Plus/4
The Commodore Plus/4 is a home computer released by Commodore International in 1984. The "Plus/4" name refers to the four-application ROM resident office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, database, and graphing); it was billed as "the productivity computer with software built-in." Internally, the Plus/4 shared the same basic architecture as the lower-end Commodore 16 and 116 models, and was able to use software and peripherals designed for them. The Plus/4 was incompatible with the Commodore 64's software and some of its hardware. Although the Commodore 64 was more established, the Plus/4 was aimed at the more business oriented part of the personal computer market. History In the early 1980s, Commodore found itself engaged in a price war in the home computer market. Companies like Texas Instruments and Timex Corporation were releasing computers that undercut the price of Commodore's PET line. Commodore's MOS Technology division had designed a video chip but could not fin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Users' Group
A users' group (also user's group or user group) is a type of club focused on the use of a particular technology, usually (but not always) computer-related. Overview Users' groups started in the early days of mainframe computers, as a way to share sometimes hard-won knowledge and useful software, usually written by end users independently of the vendor-supplied programming efforts. SHARE, a user group originated by aerospace industry corporate users of IBM mainframe computers, was founded in 1955 and is the oldest computer user group still active. DECUS, the DEC User's Society, was founded in 1961 and its descendant organization, Connect Worldwide, still operates. The Computer Measurement Group (CMG) was founded in 1974 by systems professionals with a common interest in (mainframe) capacity management, and continues today with a much broader mission. The first UNIX users' group organized in 1978. Users' groups began to proliferate with the microcomputer revolution of the la ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models. History The term ''freeware'' was coined in 1982 by Andrew Fluegelman, who wanted to sell PC-Talk, the communications application he had created, outside of commercial distribution channels. Fluegelman distributed the program via a process now termed '' shareware''. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Commodore Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. This includes the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Amiga 600 in March 1992. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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VIC-20
The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units. It was described as "one of the first anti-spectatorial, non-esoteric computers by design...no longer relegated to hobbyist/enthusiasts or those with money, the computer Commodore developed was the computer of the future." The VIC-20 was called ''VC-20'' in Germany because the pronunciation of ''VIC'' with a German accent sounds like the German expletives "fick" or "wichsen". The term ''VC'' was marketed as though it were an abbreviation of ''VolksComputer'' ("people's computer," similar to Volkswagen and Volksempfänger). History Origin and marketing The VIC-20 was intended to be more economical than the PET computer. It was equipped with 5 KB of st ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida and Cuba; it is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Spanning , Florida ranks 22nd in area among the 50 states, and with a population of over 21 million, it is the third-most populous. The state capital is Tallahassee, and the most populous city is Jacksonville. The Miami metropolitan area, with a population of almost 6.2 million, is the most populous urban area in Florida and the ninth-most populous in the United States; other urban conurbations with over one million people are Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Various Native American groups have inhabited Florida for at least 14,000 years. In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León became the first k ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sheridan College
Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning (formerly Sheridan College of Applied Arts and Technology) is a public polytechnic institute of technology located in the west-Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1967, the college is known for programs in creative writing and publishing, animation and illustration, film and design, business, applied computing, engineering technology, among others. With approximately 23,000 full-time students and 17,000 continuing education students, there are campuses in Oakville, Brampton, and Mississauga. History Founding Sheridan College was established in 1967. The School of Graphic Design was located in Brampton, Ontario until 1970, when it moved to the new campus in Oakville, Ontario. The Brampton campus was a converted public high school that had previously been in condemned status until re-fitted for use by Sheridan College. The school and area were subsequently replaced by residential homes. The new Oakv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ontario Science Centre
The Ontario Science Centre, formally the Centennial Museum of Science and Technology, is a science museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located near the Don Valley Parkway about northeast of downtown on Don Mills Road just south of Eglinton Avenue East in the former city of North York. It is built down the side of a wooded ravine formed by one branch of the Don River located in Flemingdon Park. History Planning for the Science Centre started in 1961 during Toronto's massive expansion of the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1964, Toronto architect Raymond Moriyama was hired to design the site. Construction started in 1966 with plans to open the "Centennial Centre of Science and Technology" as part of the Canadian Centennial celebrations in 1967. However construction was not completed in 1967, and the Science Centre did not open to the public until two years later, on September 26, 1969. The buildings and design were part of a broader change in Canadian architecture, and remain an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |