4 May 1981 Dear Amethyst Owner; You have by now heard of the Amethyst Users Group, of which I am head. It is the nature of things that everyone eventually gets what he wants, and for my sins I was rewarded with charge of the users group. At the present I haven't collected anything, either programs or items for a newsletter. Your ideas are by all means welcome, as this is just as much your users group. EMACS has benifitted greatly from a healthy interaction of its users, and it is hoped that MINCE will be able to follow this tradition. I will put out a written newsletter. I suppose that I will have to have something to say first, or else you will be subjected to my incessant ramblings (unpleasant at best). The solution is for you to contribute things to the cause. If you are working on some project in particular, like a C mode, I can publish a note in the news letter about it (as verbose as you wish). Between news letters, if more than one person or group appears to be working on the same thing, I will try to put them in touch with each other, to speed the process. I cannot eat the cost of publishing and mailing newsletters and disks, so I will be forced to charge a bit for membership, primarily to subsidize mailing you newsletters & such. For the nonce, I will charge $6.00 for membership (an annual fee). Disks, when and as they become available, will also run $6.00 each. These are North American prices, Botswana costs more. If i start to lose money, i will raise the cost of diskettes, but i don't expect to start losing any soon. There is an ARPANET mailing list, which is is free, and is called AMETHYST-USERS at AI. You can send net mail to me, BADOB at AI, and i will put you on. If you have access to the net, i urge you to get on this mailing list, as there will no doubt be much more action here that i can account for in the monthly letter. I can distribute in Single Side Single Density IBM 8" format, Tarbell 8" 51 Sector Double Density, Ohio Scientific CP/M 8", and pending the return of my 4FDC from the factory (next week, I'm told) I should be able to distribute in Cromemco CDOS 5 1/4" Single Density . I will also offer a transfer service from one of the above formats to another at about $2.00 per disk, plus diskette and shipping, (i.e. provide your own diskettes for me to copy to and save). I should be able to distribute in RT-11 format also, that is, I have an RT to CPM transfer utility that seems to function properly, but I don't have an 11 to run the resultant copies on, so caveat emptor for RT. Please pack any disks you send me properly (i.e. in one of those nice boxes from INMAC). This point was brought home a few weeks ago when some disks that had been improperly packed (but were sent special delivery) were FOLDED into my mailbox (special huh?). I should have a post office box now, which may or may not help matters. Any disk you send me I will send back, hopefully with something neat on it (your choice, once there is something to choose from). As of right now, there is nothing in the library, and while a few people are interested in geting something, i haven't heard of any projects to write anything. Also, there is no archive (per se) for the AMETHYST-USERS, so if you have an account on an ITS amchine, and have some space to spare, perhaps you could let us archive there. Amethyst Users Group Barry A. Dobyns P.O. Box 8173 University Station Austin, Texas 78741 (512) 441-9466