RBakerPC

Magazine Article Archives Now Available Online

2009-08-27T00:21:00.002-04:00

I recently moved all my Commodore information, including my Commodore-64 Programmer's Library, the Commodore CDTV Burn-in #2 Test CD-ROM, Commodore Hong Kong Amiga Production Line Photos and my Computer Industry News Archive covering 1991-1997 to my new website at http://cbm.bobnj.com

Several months ago I scanned most of my magazine articles from the original magazines, along with the magazine cover, index pages and masthead information.

Now I've added all the scanned magazine articles to a newly added page on my website at http://cbm.bobnj.com/archives.htm. The articles are organized by magazine, including 73 Magazine for radio amateurs, Byte, Commodore Magazine, Commodore PowerPlay, Compute!, Kilobaud/Microcomputing, Midnite Software Gazette and RUN. All told, there are over 130 articles available -- including all of my PET-pourri columns from Kilobaud/Microcomputing and all of my Inside QuantumLink columns from Commodore Magazine. These articles were originally published between 1975 to 1989.

Enjoy!

Historical Computer News Press Release Archives

2008-12-26T11:14:00.004-05:00

Here's another find from my archives that I recently put on eBay .... copies of all the computer news articles that I published via my New Product News areas on America Online, Delphi and other online services. I've recompiled all the articles on a CD-ROM that I've been offering on eBay. The package includes over 35,000 original full text news releases from various companies and individuals throughout the computer industry that were distributed during 1991 through 1997. Also included are over 100 white papers, backgrounder reports and other general computer industry documents that were also distributed through the newswire along with the press releases.

The news articles are provided on CD-ROM in two formats -- standard text files as well as WinHelp files. The document files are mostly in plain text files with a few in Microsoft Word format.

Besides the normal, monthly press releases there are complete press kits from the PC Expo computer shows held in New York during those years plus the NetWorld 1992 show in Boston and the Developers Conference/Business Solutions Conference in 1994 held in San Jose, CA.

Other Commodore related things I occasionally have listed on eBay include my Commodore-64 Programmer's Library, a re-mastered CDTV Burn-In #2 Test CD-ROM, photos of the Amiga production line in Hong Kong and my original Commodore business cards from Hong Kong. Check out the link on my blog to my current eBay auctions or my Commodore related website pages for more info.

I've been cleaning out the attic so who knows what I'll find next in my archives!

Commodore Hong Kong Production Line Photos

2008-12-26T10:58:00.007-05:00

I was one of two Commodore test engineering employees sent to Commodore's Hong Kong manufacturing plant in December of 1992 for the pilot production run of the Amiga 600 computer system.

Recently I came across the original photos I had taken while I was there at the manufacturing facility. The 20 photos I found show the surface mount line, various assembly lines and test equipment as well as the manufacturing engineering office and lab areas.

The original photos were shot with a 35mm camera so I scanned the prints into digital files that are approximately 2900x2000 pixels at 600dpi resolution. I've made the files available on a CD-ROM I'm offering on eBay if anyone is interested, check my current auctions for more information and some small sample photos that I've included at 200x140 pixels.

By the way, when I was in Hong Kong on this trip they made a batch of custom business cards for me that were printed in English on one side and Chinese on the other. I just found a box of these cards when I found the photos and I've made a few available on eBay as well. Really something unique, especially for those looking for early Commodore collectibles!

There is a link on my blog that will take you to my current auctions that also include copies of the Commodore CDTV Burn-In CD #2, my Commodore-64 Programmer's Library, a historical computer news archive CD from my AOL New Product News newswire plus copies of the Commodore business card from Hong Kong!

CDTV Burn-In #2 Test CD-ROM Remastered

2008-04-15T01:12:00.008-04:00

I was one of the original authors and creators of the Commodore CDTV Burn-In #2 test CD-ROM (Orange Label) that was used for production testing in Japan while I was briefly working for Commodore. I recently found my original master CD and will be providing RE-MASTERED copies with a unique LightScribe label via my website and on eBay.

Only 2,000 original copies of this version test CD were ever produced and I had sold a small number of the original CDs on eBay several years ago. This CD-ROM was used to continuously cycle the machines through a predetermined set of tests while the machines were "burned in" after assembly. Additional tests, pictures, utilities, sound tracks, etc. are also included on the disc. Unfortunately I do not have any documentation for this disc.

If I remember correctly there were actually three different version Burn-In test CDs made for the CDTV. They were each color coded for easy identification with either red, orange or purple labels.

By the way, I'm still providing downloadable copies of my C64 Programmer's Library for anyone interested. It's also available from my website and on eBay.

Compute! Magazine Online Article Archives

2007-04-25T13:59:00.000-04:00

I just came across an archive site for past Compute! Magazine articles at: http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/ and was pleasantly surprised to find a number of my older articles included in their archives. Although geared for the Atari computers, there is some Commodore information included. The main website at http://www.atarimagazines.com/ has lots of classic computer magazine archives!

Here's a list of my articles they have available online with direct links:

THE_ATARI_825_PRINTER
review article from February 1981, Issue #9

ATARI_MEMORY_DUMP_AND_DISSASSEMBLER
from March 1981, Issue #10

ATARI_SUPER_BREAKOUT
review article from April 1981, Issue #11

ATARI_DISK_FILE_DUMP
from October 1981, Issue #17

Insurance_Inventory
from February 1982, Issue #21

Disk_Explorer_For_Commodore
from December 1983, Issue #43

Found a New Home and I've Been Busy!

2007-04-23T01:59:00.002-04:00

I haven't posted for awhile since I've found a new job working with Library Automation Technologies in Somerdale, NJ. I've been working with them for over a year but officially full time as of November 2006. I'm managing their Technical Support, doing installations and service/support for their line of library self checkout systems called FlashScan. I've been busy and doing a fair amount of travel, along with helping with new product development as well. It's been fun getting my hands back into things and working with a smaller company.

For more information on the company and their products you can visit their website at: http://www.latcorp.com/ plus they have an interesting blog covering the library industry at: http://latcorp.blogspot.com/ where I'll probably be posting articles from time to time.

By the way, I've been getting so many requests for information on my old articles that my C64 Programmer's Library now includes downloadable 1541 floppydisk images in D64 format that provides the compete working programs for all the articles included -plus- the full text of all the articles on the disks so you can print or copy as needed. I typically have a copy on eBay all the time as well as on my separate website at: http://cbm.bobnj.com/

Time to Move On...

2006-01-25T15:19:00.001-05:00

All the time I was involved with my newswire, managing my database, writing for the magazines and book publishers, consulting and a number of other activities -- I was also holding down a full time technical job as a programmer and later as a Network Administrator or Help Desk Analyst in the IT industry. I started out working on all sorts of computers from the smallest microcomputers to some of the largest mainframes, but mostly in the diagnostic or test engineering environment. The last eight years are when I switched to Information Technology, originally as a Network Administrator, then a Helpdesk Analyst and lately as the IT Site Manager for an electronics manufacturing facility that is now being closed.

The company I've been working with for the last 13 years has gone through quite a number of transitions over the years with multiple acquisitions and name changes. Just this past June we were acquired by one company and they quickly sold off the manufacturing operations a few weeks later to one of their contract manuacturers. The manufacturing operations is being moved to Texas so my position is now being eliminated along with everyone else here in manufacturing.

So, I'm now looking for something new to do and would certainly appreciate any leads or inquiries. Staying in IT or even going back to programming would be ideal, but I'd also be interested in trying something new as well. My only problem is current family obligations requiring me to stay here in the Southern New Jersey/Philadelphia area, but I would be able to handle some amount of travel if necessary.
Robert W. Baker
rbakerpc@gmail.com

Omnigraphics Deal

2005-11-27T18:32:00.000-05:00

When The Computer Phonebook was published it apparently caught the eye of a major reference book publisher, Omnigraphics, with offices in Detroit, MI and Fort Lauderdale, FL. After some correspondence and a few telephone calls in late 1996, My wife and I wound up getting invited down to their offices in Florida for a few days to meet with their people and discuss my database and newswire service. Omnigraphics had been publishing all sorts of reference books for libraries and schools but apparently they didn't have much information on the computer industry.

When we got to Florida I thought I was only meeting a few of their key people but actually wound up walking into a large meeting room filled with people and giving a spur of the moment presentation on everything I was doing. It seemed to go over pretty well though and it was great meeting Fred Ruffner, Jr. their company president along with the entire staff of Omnigraphics. Afterwards they offered to buy a one-time non-exclusive license for my current database with periodic updates on a quarterly basis.

My wife had accompanied me on the trip and Omnigraphics arranged for an incredible hotel in Fort Lauderdale. Plus Mr. Ruffner treated us to a tour of the area by boat and a lovely dinner at his home, complete with a local artist playing piano at his home while we ate. It was absolutely an amazing trip that I'll never forget.

There was even a job offer to work for Omnigraphics but it would have involved moving to Fort Lauderdale. My son had just been born and we just weren't interested in moving away from family just then. Sometimes I wonder where that might have led to though. Unfortunately Omnigraphics isn't around any more. It appears they were bought out some time ago by another publisher in Canada from what I could find out.

PC Industry Phonebook From No Starch Press

2005-11-20T21:00:00.000-05:00

Eventually my PC Products Database got noticed by a new book publisher who approached me with a book idea. He had been working for a major book publisher and had decided to start his own publishing company to be called No Starch Press. He had seen my database online and wanted to create a PC industry phonebook that would list companies and contact information from my data.

The book was to concentrate on US and Canadian PC-related companies so we stripped down some of the data and eliminated all of the other foreign entries. Then we spent several months working out the format and exact content of the book. Plus we did a lot of verification work on the phones to double check most of the data.

I also wrote some basic troubleshooting tips and introductory type information. There were hints on how to get the latest drivers and patches, how to use faxback services, working your way through voicemail systems, getting help through online services or on the internet or company bulletin boards, how to use email for direct assistance plus how to find free technical assistance. There was a whole chapter on maintaining and troubleshooting your PC with 15-20 pages of pretty helpful information.

The main company index was around 400 pages with three columns per page that listed over 14,000 companies. That was followed by about 200 pages of information that listed companies by product type. In total, over 600 pages in a small one inch think 5 by 8 inch paperback book that was super handy.

The book went to print in 1996 as The Computer Phonebook (ISBN# 1-886411-03-4) and sold a few thousand copies. Unfortunately the publisher decided there just wasn't enough interest to warrant doing another copy. So that was my one and only copy to be published in print. Still it was a pretty exciting project and it was really great to actually see my name as author for an entire book! In the past, a number of my magazine articles had been published in various books along with other articles in some sort of compilation but this was my first book all to myself.

The PC Products Database Moves to WinHelp

2005-11-04T11:28:00.000-05:00

With my PC Products Database on AOL and being distributed in dBase format on CD-ROM I was a little disappointed in that a lot of the information in the database couldn’t be accessed easily in the distributed copies of the data. My data in Superbase had a lot more capability but there just wasn’t any way to get it to others. I started experimenting with WinHelp and found a way to repackage the data in five WinHelp files that could be easily generated and distributed, plus it gave users a lot more access to the data.

I wrote a program in Superbase that allowed me to export the data and automatically create the source files for the WinHelp compiler and then the compiler could create the final WinHelp data files without any other work. It took quite a few hours to run originally but after a few system upgrades it was down to a few hours and the entire process was fully automated. I remember the very first full export and compile taking over 24 hours but eventually is was under 2 hours a year later!

The five files in the WinHelp package included an alphabetical company listing that displayed the addresses, phone numbers and other company contact info with a link to list all of that company’s products from the second file. Both of these files allowed searching by the company name using the standard WinHelp Search feature.

The product index file allowed searching for a specific product by name while the product and company category indexes allowing finding specific products or companies that offered a particular class of product or service. There was a link on each page that allowed quickly changing between displaying the products or companies within each product category. Everything was interlinked – clicking on a company name displayed the company contact info. Clicking on a product name displayed from a product list displayed the company info plus additional product info. The main page allowed selecting between modes/files and how the data was accessed.

Everything was working smoothly with Windows 3.1 and then Microsoft released Windows 95 and the WinHelp system was changed. It turned out that my WinHelp database was the largest set of files being compiled for WinHelp and it uncovered a problem in the compiler that it would get into an endless loop and the compile would never end. I eventually found a work around for the compiler issues and then discovered the search windows in the later WinHelp system were now limited to displaying the first 64k entries when I had over 75,000 entries in one search list. The older WinHelp handled this just fine but the newer WinHelp displayed a blank search window. But there was another work around for this – if you used the original Windows 3.1 winhelp.exe with later versions of Windows everything still worked just fine.

So the WinHelp version of the PC Products Database was eventually included on the CD-ROM produced by EMS Professional Software and everyone had access to much of the capabilities of the full database. The only drawback was that the total package was about 75MB of data for the WinHelp version of the database compared to less than 20MB for the dBase version. By the way, as an added bonus we also started including my news archive files on the CD-ROM from EMS in both standard ASCII text and WinHelp hypertext files. So the CD-ROM and my WinHelp database were all helping to promote the newswire and everything else I was doing at the time.

The PC Industry Reference List

2005-10-23T20:41:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in one of my earlier articles, I used to have an automated process that scanned a large list of company websites looking for their new press releases. I was using the Netscape browser since it kept it's favorites in a single html file instead of multiple individual files like Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This made it really easy to write various utilities to manipulate the data from that list for other purposes. In particular, I could keep my current reference list of websites in my favorites file for Netscape and then using a utility program that I wrote automatically generate a reference website for everyone to access that listed all the links organized in various groupings.

One of the tools I used was a shareware program that would automatically scan all the links in my favorites file and check for two things: what press release pages were updated and what web links had moved since the last time I scanned the links. The utility recorded additional information in the favorites html file for the next scan (like the date of the last scan) and used certain website header information to find moved pages or sites. The scanning tool created a log file as it ran that made it really easy to find new press releases and manage the link list in my favorites file.

The other tool that actually created my PC industry weblink reference site I wrote myself in C. It used the Netscape favorites html file and created the fancy website pages organized into various categories. My listing of web resources included online publications, organizations, events, company/product indexs, distributors and more from throughout the PC industry. Plus it listed all the current press release pages for various companies from throughout the industry.

I originally made the weblink reference list available on AOL and then later to everyone via the web. I actually kept the reference list goning for quite some time after my area on AOL was canceled. The website was called the PC Industry URL Reference List and even thought it hasn't been online for many years, there are actually copies still available in the Wayback Machine at archive.org -- click here for a sample! Just keep in mind most of the links listed in the archive are no longer valid since this was back in 1999 and has not been maintained since.

The PC Products Database

2005-10-16T19:13:00.000-04:00

This database turned out to be one of my biggest undertakings ever! It started with trying to catalog the various Amiga products in the early days which led to publishing several product indexes for Commodore. Then I started adding some PC related products with the advent of the Amiga Bridgeboard that allowed running PC applications on the Amiga. Eventually I stopped adding Amiga information as the market died and finally concentrated on the PC products.

The original database used a program called Superbase that started on the Commodore C-64, then evolved to the Amiga where is was greatly enhanced and eventually was ported to the PC market. Superbase supported truly relational databases with extensive programmability. I wound up writing my own application that never seemed to stop expanding and growing. I developed a data structure that allowed cataloging all sorts of information about the PC industry and I could perform all sorts of queries with sometimes very interesting results. In the end there were over 250,000 records of data in the database with information on well over 50,000 products and tens of thousands of companies.

One of the programs I wrote in Superbase allowed generating a bulk mail distribution to newly added companies, printing envelopes in bulk mail sort order all set for bundling complete with my bulk mail permit. I hate to think how many envelopes were printed on my old LaserJet II printer! I used to send a letter to every new company when it was added in the database to introduce my newswire service, requesting press releases and information for my database.

My database actually consisted of 6 or 7 interlinked files with the main file containing the basic company information: the company name, mailing address, various phone numbers, plus a website URL and email addresses. There were a number of flag fields that indicated the company's basic products being hardware, software, accessories, peripherals, books/magazines and more. There was also a flag to indicate a shareware publisher. Every company entered in the database had a unique company ID number assigned when they were entered plus a date field to indicate the last time the company's information was updated.

There was also an alternate address file that allowed recording any number of additional addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, website URLs, etc. for a particular company. Each record in this file also had a comment field where the information could be labeled or identified. Each alternate address record in this file was linked back to the main company record in the main file by the company ID number.

A Comments file allowed added general text comments for a particular company and simply had one text field and a company ID field to link the comment back to the company information. This came in handy when there was some little tid-bit of information that just didn't fit in any of the regular data file records.

Now for the meat of the database - the Product records allowed entering the product name and brief description (60 characters maximum) with a link back to the company ID number plus a unique product ID number that was assigned to ever product record. There was another file that contained thousands of product categories with a 50 character text description and a unique product code. Then a Product Index file had two fields to link a given product using it's unique product ID number with a particular product category. This structure allowed associating a particular product with any number of product codes without any limits what-so-every!

The really fantastic part of the product indexing was the product categories that were divided into seven major groups: (0xx) special attributes, (1xx) hardware, (2xx) software, (5xx) publications & information services, (6xx) organizations, (7xx) services plus (8xx) accessories & supplies. I used five groups of numbers to identify each particular product category, for example: 110.22.33.44.55 where each grouping identified a more detailed subgroup as you moved right in the number. For example, all 130.xxx categories were Hardware Peripheral Devices, 130.60.xxx might be hard-copy output peripherals, 130.60.10.xxx might be printers, 130.60.10.20.xx might be dot matrix printers and 130.60.12.20.30 might be 24-pin dot matrix printers. Additional codes could be added at any level as needed to refine the data as needed.

The first group of product codes starting with a zero were reserved for special attributes where I could flag a discontinued or retired prdouct, shareware, freeware or public domain software, special media like CD-ROM or videodisc, age groups to identify educational material for specific groups or adult material, or flag products for specific operating systems like GEOS, PICK, UNIX, etc.

The way the product indexing developed it was extremely easy to expand and add additional information as it was needed. When searching on product codes, you just had to search on the highest product code in the tree and everything else that was categorized with a more refined product category code was also included. This made it really flexible and easy to use!

The database was published on AOL using their Rainman process but was very limited since I could only publish simple text articles with a very basic text index. So there was an article generated for each company in the database with all the information for that company listed in that article. The online search would let you search by company or product name but you couldn't do much with product categories. The date field in each company record allowed me to track what company information needed to be updated on AOL at any point in time so I didn't have to reload the entire database all the time, only the changes. Whenever I had to do a complete reload it would swamp AOL's Rainman process and no one else on the service could do anything until it completed. Needless to say that wasn't done very often!

Eric Englemann of EMS Professional Software in Maryland wrote a dBase interface for my data and published my entire database on CD-ROM for many years that closely resembled my Superbase capabilities. I would generate a copy of the database and ship it on floppy disks (lots of disks!) every month if you can believe it and he would convert everything to dBase and publish it on his next CD-ROM release. At one point we won a Software Star Search award from Computer Reseller News in March of 1992. I think Eric still has some copies of the last PC Products Database that we did 8 or 10 years ago that he still distributes, but he really concentrates on buying and selling old development software now. If interested, you can find his current website at: http://www.emsps.com/

No Starch Press saw the database and had me do a stripped down version that we published in book form in 1996 as the Computer Phonebook. I think we sold a few thousand copies but it never really took off and was only published that one year. The only good thing was that another reference book publisher, Omnigraphics saw the No Starch Press book and flew my wife and I down to Florida to talk with them. They wound up licensing a copy of my entire database to merge into their databases to create reference books for libraries and universities. If anyone is really interested I may still have a few copies of the original Computer Phonebook still around!

Eventually the PC Products Database was put to rest. It was really hard to stop after all those years but I eventually moved on to other things and wound up concentrating on my full time job for the next few years after all the writing and online work came to an end.

The New Product News

2005-10-02T15:22:00.003-04:00

The newswire on AOL was ultimately called the New Product News, as mentioned in an earlier posting. Being a programmer, I was writing all sorts of programs to make the work easier to handle the news flow. Early on I developed a standard text file format that could easily be converted to whatever format was needed for each news distribution platform.

Basically there was a standard three line header at the start of every file that identified the major news category and the actual article title. My programs would then convert all the articles I was ready to publish for each of the online services - AOL, Delphi, BBS Press Service, etc. Some services wanted free flowing text that would be formatted online so there couldn't be any imbedded carriage returns or line feeds within each paragraph. Others wanted fixed formatted text within a certain line length with the associated carriage returns and line feeds. So my tools had to do some reformatting of the text besides creating the article header info for the upload control files. Sure beat typing things online like in the past.

For all my news distributions the articles were typically categorized within 16 news groups:

Software News

Business & Productivity Software
Professional & Engineering Software
Personal & Educational Software
Games & Entertainment Software
System Software & Utilities
Miscellaneous Software

Hardware News

PC Systems
Hardware Expansion Products
Peripherals
LAN/WAN Networking Hardware
Macintosh Specific Hardware
Miscellaneous Hardware

General Interest News

Books & Publications
Online & Internet Related News
Miscellaneous News

Besides making it easier to find specific news articles of interest this arrangement also helped keep more news online for a longer period of time. Each news group had a maximun number of articles that could be present, with older articles scrolling off the newswire. So by breaking them up this way, more of the articles stayed online longer.

Besides the main newswires, I also saved all the news articles distributed each month and put together a news archive at the end of each month that was distributed on the internet. Again I wrote a program that combined all the articles into an easy to access news archive with an index. I started with standard text files, with a simple text index in a standard zip archive file. Later I added an html index that could be used with any web browser. Plus I even created a WinHelp version of the news archive as well. For the WinHelp version I wrote another program that created the input code for the WinHelp compiler and then ran the standard compiler to create the final standard WinHelp file.

Both news archive files were uploaded to various download libraries (like SIMTEL and others) each month as sort of a way to help publicize my newswire and also attract more news input. I just recently found copies of all my old news archive files and have one of the later ones available for anyone interested in seeing what they looked like. You can click on the following links for a copy of the June 1997 news archive in text format or the WinHelp format (which you'll need to download and view on a Windows system). The text format news archive is a standard zip archive file with separate text files for each article. Just open one of the index files to start, either the text file (index.txt) or the html file (index.htm) with your web browser. The WinHelp file should be directly useable on any Windows operating system. These files are about 4MB in size!

By the way, the original name of the WinHelp news archive was WinNews but Microsoft objected and I wound up having to change the name a few months after I started distributing those files. It just wasn't worth fighting Microsoft's legal team even though I knew I was the first to use that name. Anyway, you still might find a few of those early files floating around the internet somewhere, I think there are still a few files on SIMTEL and other archive sites.

And Then Along Came AOL

2005-09-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

With all my successful work on QuantumLink, and my involvement with PC-Link, I was asked to provide my newswire service on America Online when it first started. I started in the later part of 1990 helping to test the new service and get my area off the ground. Everything went live around January 1991 and the fun began! My AOL New Product News area covered just the PC industry while the QuantumLink area still covered the Commodore market. PC-Link continued for awhile with a mirror of what I started posting on AOL, so at least I didn't have to post everything multiple times.

In the beginning the AOL area was built on a message board model with me being the only one allowed to post messages to get news articles and press releases online for users to read. Later on there was an automated process implemented when my area was updated and I was then able to use their Rainman process for posting press releases without having to type them live online any more. Around that time is when I started putting my PC Industry database online as well, but more about that later in another article.

In the earlier Commodore days it was pretty easy to get press releases and news articles since almost everyone knew who I was from the magazine articles. As I moved to the PC market I had to work harder to get information since there were many more companies involved and lots of other competing news services. So I started cataloging company names and basic product information, scanning hundreds of publications every month looking for new companies. I used that database to generate mailings with letters requesting companies to add my name to their press release mailing list and offering to distribute their information for free. I was mailing hundreds of letters every month and then answering tons of inquiring phone calls from companies wanting more information about what I was doing. Since my service was free to the companies I was getting a lot of interest!

In the beginning, the press releases were hand typed online, then they were done offline but still hand typed. Eventually I made a deal with the kind folks at Canon who provided a very good quality scanner with an auto document feeder and I managed to get a copy of OmniPage OCR software from the publisher. With the new scanner and OCR software I was then able to scan paper press releases, convert them to text files and clean them up, add my special header information and upload them to AOL for automatic processing. What used to take hours was now done in minutes and the volume of press releases grew to over 300 per week at one point.

At some point in time we added various download libraries to my area and I started collecting demo files for various products and making them available to users. Then shareware authors started sending me their releases, so I wound up posting their press release and then uploading their software to the download libraries. At one point I had two computers doing uploads to AOL day and night. At first all the uploads were going into my libraries and then AOL had me pass on the files to the regular file libraries where the sysops in those areas processed the files and made them available to users. Eventually I got away from doing a lot of the uploads and went back to concentrating on the news articles and database.

When PC Expo started in New York City I would go to the show with a friend and get copies of every press release published at the show. I had press credentials and would hit the press booth first to collect the packets made available there to the press. Then we'd walk through the show to introduce my news service to each company present and look for anything we might have missed in the press booth. It was absolutely amazing the amount of information we'd collect at one of these shows! If you've seen the plastic trays used by the post office, the ones that are the size of a laundry basket, we would typically fill three or more of those trays with paper. Once home everything would be cataloged in my database and all the press releases would be scanned and posted online within a week after the show. I hate to think how many hundreds of press releases were handled! The only problem was that AOL never realized what we had and never really publicized what was available.

Besides the mailings asking for press releases I also had an automated process that scanned a large list of company websites looking for their new press releases as well. Those press releases were gathered and included with the releases received in the mail, via email or by fax and everything was posted online. I later expanded my listing of web resources to monitor online publications, organizations, events, company/product indexs, press release libraries, distributors and more from throughout the PC industry. I wrote a program that built a website index to list all my resources and made that available on AOL and then later to everyone via the web. The website was called the PC Industry URL Reference List and there are copies still available in the Wayback Machine at archive.org -- click here for a sample! Just keep in mind most of the links listed are no longer valid since this was back in 1999.

My New Product News area on AOL continued to flourish and grow over the years, with lots of off shoots along the way. I had a similar news area on Delphi from September 1993 to March 1997, plus I did a news distribution for local BBS systems via BBS Press from October 1994 to December 1995, but more about them later. AOL finally pulled the plug on my news service in November 1997 when they decided not to renew my contract. It was an amazing run, I just wish I had the time to make it a full time effort. I was working a full time engineering job all the time I was running the newswire if you can imagine that! Work all day, come home and eat a quick dinner, then handle the database and newswire until about 2 AM. Next day, repeat the above! I probably would have killed myself if AOL hadn't cancelled the contract, so they probably did me a favor in the long run. In any event, I had a lot of fun along the way and hopefully people found the information useful.

Q-Link's Online Experts

2005-09-10T00:47:00.000-04:00

Here's the complete text from the original article published in the 1980's covering Jim Butterfield and myself, our involvement with the Commodore market and our work on Q-Link.....

Q-Link's Online Experts Lend Their Time & Talent

Q-Link has attracted a group of the nation's most respected Commodore computer experts, providing members with current and reliable information on the technical and fun aspects of computing.

The experts host forums, lead topical discussions, and answer questions on message boards. Two of these people, Jim Butterfield and Bob Baker, share a devotion to computers and to Q-Link.

Q-Link's Long-time Guru, Jim Butterfield

Jim is one of the most famous computer masters on Q-Link. He has written numerous public domain software programs, and in particular, utility programs for the Commodore.

Jim's career brought him to the early stages of computer development. In the late 1950's, he specialized in data transmission, computers, and electronics. This interest led to his involvement with the first single-board microcomputer.

In 1976, Jim co-authored "The First Book of KIM," a companion volume to an early small computer. Another of Jim's popular books, "Machine Language for the Commodore 64, 128, and Other Commodore Computers," is a straightforward manual on the inner workings of the Commodore.

A prolific writer, Jim has authored numerous articles on computing which appear in Compute!'s Gazette, Compute!, where he is associate editor, and other technical publications.

In his hometown of Ontario, Canada, Jim is a well-known television celebrity, having produced his own TV show on computers. He is also the principal computer consultant for the "Bits and Bytes" television series aired on public television.

Jim was one of the first experts to host forums on Q-Link, and he continues to hold monthly "open topic" sessions in People Connection's Auditorium. Here, he'll answer any and all questions about computing. Look for his meetings scheduled in the Update calendar.

Bob Baker's Inside Connections

Bob Baker has been involved in the evolution of the Commodore since it's inception. He has also been a key player in the development and enhancement of Q-Link.

After earning his degree in engineering, Bob became immersed in computer programming. He was on the ground floor of research and development of super micros for multi-users.

In the Commodore Realm, Bob has been around since the very early days of the 2001 Series Commodore PET. Bob became a syndicated columnist and followed the development of Commodore machines by writing stories for Byte Magazine, Compute! and Commodore Magazine.

Hot News on New Products

Bob's connections as a reporter give him access to press releases and to information from software manufacturers before the public sees it. Bob brings this information straight from the manufacturers to Q-Link. "I put this information on Q-Link message boards in CIN even before computer magazines publish it," he said. This information can be found in the "New Product Information" area of the Commodore Information Network.

The New Product Information area is a collection of special message boards for the C64, C128, Amiga and now the PC10/IBM clones. Bob scans hundreds of publications before they reach the market and posts the news on these boards.

Bob is now concentrating on building a database of new product information. When he's finished, Q-Linkers will have access to one of the largest databases on new product information available. "The database will contain a listing of nearly 5,000 products with a short description, the price of the product, and what computer it runs on," Bob said.

Bob also holds monthly gatherings in People connection's Auditorium. Find out about new products, bring questions, and learn what's in the works for your computer.

The Move to Online with QuantumLink

2005-09-03T23:50:00.000-04:00

In late 1985 I was contacted by QuantumLink and asked to be involved with their new online service they were developing for Commodore C-64 users. The service was going to be launched around January 1986 and they wanted my help. Apparently the folks at Commodore had given QuantumLink my name and contact info along with their recommendation. I was asked to participate in a Meet the Press area, answering questions for Commodore users. I quickly agreed and helped test out features of the new system before it went live while building up some initial areas, helping with uploads to the file libraries and more. So I was there online when Q-Link initially went live in January of 1986 and stayed there almost to the end.

Once the service was live, my area quickly evolved into more of a news service and was eventually renamed the New Product Information area that was managed and run entirely by myself. I was posting industry news, press releases and technical information besides answering questions of all sorts. With my connections at Commodore, and many other companies throughout the Commodore market, I became a funnel for information between users and many of these companies. The only problem was that all the articles and postings had to be hand typed online over a dialup connection at very slow speeds. It was so time consuming it wasn't funny!

Besides the news service, I was also participating in monthly gatherings in Q-Link's People Connection Auditorium, many with the help of Jim Oldfield of the Midnite Software Gazette or me helping him with his auditorium events. We actually got so proficient with running these group discussions that we didn't even need a sysop to assist us most of the time. We handled the question queue ourselves and kept the meetings running smoothly from month to month.

Originally the Q-Link area started with mostly C64 related information and expanded over time to include the C128, Amiga and even the PC10/IBM clones eventually. Somewhere along the way I started cataloging product and company information from the news service into a massive database covering the entire Commodore market. That information eventually concentrated on just the Amiga system and Commodore used a lot of that information in their Amiga Resources for Educators that was published twice in 1989. Commodore Canada also published a similar reference book using my data about the same time.

With all the work on Q-Link, Commodore asked me to write an Inside QuantumLink column for their magazine covering tips, tricks, news of new features, etc. The column started in January of 1987 and appeared in 34 issues before it stopped publication in October of 1989.

With the success of the news area on Q-Link, and since I was already starting to cover the IBM clone market, QuantumLink asked me to provide a similar service on PC-Link when it started in January of 1989. For a short while the same news was being posted on both services and then America Online was born and my news service was moved there as well in January of 1991.... but more about that later!

The Q-Link days were probably the most fun of everything I've done throughout the years. I met a lot of interesting people and had a lot of fun doing what I was doing. At one point I was told that my area on Q-Link accounted for more than 1% of the total monthly usage for all of Q-Link! That was supposedly a pretty remarkable feat in those days. In many cases I was posting news and press releases months before they appeared in the magazines so my area did become pretty popular. There was even an article published in one of the Commodore publications about myself and Jim Butterfield that covered my background and early involvement in the Commodore market. If there's any interest I still have a copy of that early article and would be more than happy to include a copy of it here.

Last But Not Least .info Magazine

2005-08-27T14:43:00.000-04:00

I can't forget one of the last magazine that I wrote for, .info magazine that started with the C64 as INFO=64 and then later concentrated on the Amiga. When Jim Oldfield stopped publishing his Midnite Software Gazette, .info magazine fulfilled the subscriptions and I did some writing for them as well. There were only a few product review type articles that they published, but I was pretty close with their publisher and editor.

Mark Brown, one of the original editors of .info magazine now has a website at www.atomicairship.com with lots of their magazine history, links to various Commodore resources and more. Pretty interesting stuff if you want to check it out.

From late 1987 through 1988 there were a total of 6 of my product review articles that were published in .info magazine:

Review: Microtroll (Sep/Oct-87, p.47)
Review: CCSZ Clock/Calendar (Nov/Dec-87, p.46)
Review: Assembler & Shell (Mar/Apr-88, p.76)
Reviews: Promenade C1 & Capture (May/Jun-88, p.59)
Review: Micro Detective (Jul/Aug-88, p.54)
Review: C128 Developers Kit (Sep/Oct-88, p.56)

In Between There Were Other Articles Too

2005-08-26T11:19:00.000-04:00

Between all the writing for some of the major magazines of the time there were a few other minor articles published in a few other publications that I should mention:

VIC-20 Operating System Bugs (Torpet, Sep-82, p.10)
Award Winning Program (73 Magazine, Nov-82, p.94)
New Product Information (Money Machine, Issue 3.2.2, p.7)
New Product Information (Money Machine, Issue 4.2.3, p.4)

Plus there were trade shows like the World of Commodore in Toronto, the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago and others. I also participated in a few discussion groups and made a few presentations from time to time as well. Then the online world really started taking off and I wound up getting more and more involved with QuantumLink, PC-Link, America Online, Delphi and others.

Remember the Midnite Software Gazette ?

2005-08-25T11:19:00.000-04:00

After the writing with Kilobaud Microcomputing and RUN wound down, and I was getting involved with the Commodore magazines plus QuantumLink, my good friend Jim Oldfield asked me to help him with some articles for his Midnite Software Gazette. This was a monthly newsletter that covered everything Commodore related. We had known each other for years so I was more than glad to help. He actually listed me as an associate editor on his newsletter from October 1985 to June 1986. There were 24 of my articles published, including a bunch of new utilities and technical notes/hints, plus a number of reviews Jim asked me to cover for him.

It was really fun writing for Jim since there were no real constraints and I got to write a few very interesting programs. The BASIC Variable cross reference utility actually turned out to be a very handy tool! So was the BASIC program line number crossreference utility. Plus we redid my BASIC program compactor and uncompactor tools for the C128 system. And there were a lot of notes and programming information on the floppy disk drives, plus machine language programming.

If you pay attention, you'll notice that we published a number of QuantumLink Hints in the Midnite Software Gazette before the Inside QuantumLink column started in Commodore Magazine. This is sorta where that column idea was born!

I do have to give Jim Oldfield a special word of thanks for his support and encouragement throughout the years. I had met Jim at one of the early trade shows after talking on the phone numerous times. Once we met in person, we instantly became really good friends and managed to get together several times a year somehow. We wound up participating at a number of shows over the years and we've stayed in touch throughout the years. Thanks for everything Jim!

Here's a list of my articles that were published in the Midnite Software Gazette:

Hexadecimal File Dump Utility (Oct-85, p.17)
BASIC Variable Cross Reference (Oct-85, p.19)
C128 Notes (Nov/Dec-85, p.33)
C128/1571 Hints (Nov/Dec-85, p.34)
1571 Notes (Nov/Dec-85, p.35)
1571 Double Sided Format (Nov/Dec-85, p.36)
Program Load Address Fix (Jan-Feb-86, p.29)
QuantumLink Hints (Mar-86, p.44)
8023P Printer Device Number Selection (Apr-86, p.28)
BASIC Program Line Number Crossreference (Apr-86, p.29)
Review: 35 Amazing Games for C128 (#33, p.06)
CBM MPS1000 Printer Review (#33, p.12)
QuantumLink Hints (#33, p.25)
Sequential Data File Spliter (#33, p.33)
Simple Copy (#33, p.35)
Compactor 128 (#34, p.30)
Uncompactor 128 (#34, p.32)
Getting Started in Machine Language Programming (#36, p.26)
Review: Drag Race Eliminator (#38, p.18)
Review: Time DOS (#38, p.20)
Review: Super Disk Librarian (#38, p.20)
Review: Disk Librarian v2.2 (#38, p.22)
Review: 1541/1571 Drive Alignment (#38, p.23)
Comments on 1541 Directory Expansions (#38, p.38)

Commodore Magazine & Inside QuantumLink

2005-08-24T13:05:00.000-04:00

While writing for Kilobaud Microcomputing and RUN, Commodore had asked me to write a few articles and reviews for their magazines - Power/Play and later Commodore Magazine. While writing sparadically for Commodore I was also writing for Midnite Gazette as well. Then in 1987 Commodore asked me to write a monthly column called Inside QuantumLink that covered everything and anything relating to the QuantumLink online service. At the time, I was heavily involved with QuantumLink and managing my online news service, so needless to say it was a busy time.

The Inside QuantumLink column ran from January 1987 to October 1989 with 34 columns published. Before the column there were 5 articles published in each of Commodore's magazines.

Here's a list of my articles that were published in Commodore Power/Play magazine:

Solitaire for the C64 and PET/CBM (Vol II #3, Fall-83, p.106)
Review: Pharoah's Curse (Mar-85, p.32)
Review: Puzzle Mania (Mar-85, p.36)
Review: Gyruss (Sep-85, p.24)
Disk Master'86 (aug/sep-86, p.130)

And here's a list of my individual articles that were published in Commodore Magazine besides the Inside QuantumLink columns:

House Inventory for the C64 (Vol 4 #4 Issue 25, p.113)
House Inventory Printer (Vol #5 Issue 28, p.94)
The CHRGET Routine (Apr-85, p.120)
BASIC 7.0 Tokens (Apr-86, p.60)
Inside the 1571 Disk Drive (May/Jun-86, p.156)

Associate Editor For RUN Magazine Too

2005-08-23T11:09:00.000-04:00

As Kilobaud Microcomputing magazine started to wind down I started writing for RUN magazine from the same publisher. RUN was more VIC-20 and C64 oriented and many in that market hadn't seen some of my earlier work. So the magazine wound up republishing a few of my earlier articles along with a number of new articles and reviews (mostly on assignment). In particlar, the popular BASIC program compactor and uncompactor utilities were redone for the C64 and republished in Nov 1984.

I was listed on the magazine masthead as an associated editor from January 1984 through February 1986. During that time there were a total of 14 articles published.

Here's a list of my articles that were published in RUN magazine:

C-64 Word processing Demystified (Jan-84, p.58)
Machine Language for Beginners (Jan-84, p.142) - book review
Be a VIC Memory Miser (Feb-84, p.84)
Disk Master Revisited (Feb-84, p.100)
Review: C-64 Link (Mar-84, p.145)
Review: Tricks for VICs (Mar-84, p.142)
FORTRAN Overview (Oct-84, p.66)
Review: Zaxxon (Oct-84, p.25)
Line Squeezer - Compactor II (Nov-84, p.54)
Line Expander - Uncompactor II (Nov-84, p.62)
Money Manager (Mar-85, p.26)
Review: Simon's BASIC (Apr-85, p.94)
Anatomy of the 1541 Disk Drive (Apr-85, p.135) - book review
Review: Mach 5 (Oct-85, p.20)

Next Was Compute Magazine

2005-08-22T16:21:00.000-04:00

While writing the PETpourri column for Kilobaud I wound up meeting Robert Locke, the publisher of Compute! magazine, and he asked me to write a few articles for his magazine. He was after programs, reviews and technical articles for the Commodore systems. He had acquired a number of Commodore-related newsletters and combined them into a bimonthly glossy magazine. Well I wound up writing 17 articles for Compute! and Compute! PC/PCjr magazines that were published between 1980 and 1984. Plus a few of those articles were reprinted in five books that were published by Compute! Publications between 1981 and 1985.

With the Compute! articles I got to write a lot of utilities, including the highly popular BASIC program compactor and uncompactor utilities for the Commodore systems. And when some of my Commodore contacts went over to Atari I wound up writing a few articles about the Atari 400 and 800 home computer systems also.

While writing for Compute! Publications I even got invited down to their offices in North Carolina and met with the publisher, Robert Locke and some of his co-workers. He actually offered me a full time job with their book division but my wife wasn't up to relocating or having me commuting to NC, so we passed on the opportunity. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had taken him up on the offer!

Here's a list of my articles that were published in Compute! magazine:

An Easier Method of Saving Data Plus Home Accounting (Jan/Feb-80, p.23)
D&R Cassette System (May/Jun-80, p.86) - review
Word Pro Converter (Sep/Oct-80, p.89)
Compactor (Sep/Oct-80, p.104)
Disk Lister (Nov/Dec-80, p.110)
The Atari 825 Printer (Feb-81, p.24) - review
Atari Memory Dump & Disassembler (Mar-81, p.80)
Atari Super Breakout & Others (Apr-81, p.105)
Stud Poker (May-81, p.89) - review
Un-compactor (May-81, p.124)
PET/CBM Disk Formats (Jun-81, p.106)
Atari Data (Jul-81, p.128)
Atari Disk File Dump (Oct-81, p.110)
Insurance Inventory (Feb-82, p.28)
Word Hunt (Mar-82, p.68)
Disk Explorer for Commodore (Dec-83, p.298)

There was also one of my articles that appeared in Compute's PC & PCjr magazine:

Word Hunt (Mar-84, p.82)

And here's a list of the Compute! books with some of my articles:

Compute!'s First Book of PET/CBM (1981) - Home Budget (p.166), Disk Lister (p.183) and Compactor (p.190)
Compute!'s First Book of Atari Games (1983) - Word Hunt (p.109)
Compute!'s Easy BASIC Programs for the IBM PC & PCjr (1984) - Word Hunt (p.33)
Easy BASIC Programs for the Apple (1985) - Word Hunt (p.39)
Compute!'s First Book of IBM (1985) - Word Hung (p.169)

Kilobaud Microcomputing & the PETpourri Column

2005-08-21T19:30:00.000-04:00

Wayne Green eventually got out of Byte magazine and started another microcomputing magazine called Kilobaud Microcomputing. For a while I was writing for both computer magazines and then concentrated primarily on Kilobaud, all the while still writing for the 73 amateur radio magazine. I wound up writing a monthly column in Kilobaud called the PETpourri that focused on the Commodore line of computer systems. The column was actually started by another author who only wrote one or two columns before it disappeared. I talked to the magazine and they let me take over the column starting in January of 1980. Each month I covered new products, programming tips, ticks and techniques, plus anything else related to Commodore systems. That column lasted for about four and a half years (54 months) before Kilobaud faded and RUN magazine was started. My last column appeared in the June 1984 issue.

Besides the monthly column, I also wrote a number of articles for Kilobuad over the years including a few major utility programs. The one I remember the most was a utility program called Diskmaster that was an automatic disk cataloging program that would read the directory blocks on floppy disks and build a database listing all your programs and what disk they were on. I also wrote a 6502 assembler, disassembler and simulator package for developers that was written entirely in BASIC. There were a total of 12 of my articles that appeared in Kilobaud Microcomputing besides the 54 regular columns. Plus my name was on the masthead as an associated editor of Kilobaud Microcomputing from September 1980 to May 1984.

Here's a list of my individual articles that were published in Kilobaud Microcomputing besides the PETpourri columns:

Writing Diagnostic Routines (May-78, p.42)
PET's Keyboard Grows Up (Oct-79, p.82)
New Additions to the Commodore Line (Jul-80, p.36)
Write Self-Modifying PET Programs (Sep-80, p.30)
Real-Time Spectrum Analyzer (Jan-81, p.48)
Find That Program (May-81, p.200)
Atari's Assembler Editor (Jul-81, p.74)
A BASIC Assembler for the PET (Nov-81, p.114)
Disk Master (Jun-82, p.56)
Black Friday (Sep-82, p.88)
Commodore Launches A Winner (Mar-83, p.98)
Atari Sound & Graphics (May-83, p.124) - book review

Writing for Byte Magazine

2005-08-19T16:16:00.000-04:00

I was writing for 73 Magazine when the publisher, Wayne Green, decided to start Byte. He selected Carl Helmers as the editor and Carl and I met at my home while I was living in New England to discuss the magazine content, layout and the first issue. I was going to write some articles for the magazine to help get things started. Since I was working for Digital Equipment at the time, I wrote an article on their new LSI-11 microcomputer system that was supposed to be in the first issue of Byte. Unfortunately the legal department at DEC couldn't get that article approved until after the publishing deadline for the first issue passed. So my major article appeared in the SECOND issue of Byte instead of the premier issue, but I did manage to get a smaller article and a word puzzle in the premier issue!

My name was actually included in the magazine masthead from June 1976 to May 1977, being listed as an associated editor. I wound up writing a number of articles for the magazine, many on assignment covering topics related to the theme in certain issues. I wrote a number of articles covering new microprocessors, new technology and more. Plus I generated a number of word puzzles for the magazine as well. Over the course of two and a half years I had a total of 23 articles publishing in Byte magazine before moving on to other publications.

Here's a list of my articles that were published in Byte:

Powerless IC Test Clip (Dec-75, p.26)
Word Hunt (Dec-75, p.18) - word puzzle
New Mini-Microcomputer System (Jan-76, p.12) - DEC LSI-11 article!
An 8080 Microprocessor OP Code Table (Feb-76, p.84)
Numbers (Feb-76, p.69) - word puzzle
Microprocessor Update: CP1600 (Mar-76, p.46)
Space Ace (Mar-76, p.77) - word puzzle
Microprocessor Update: TI TMS9900 (Apr-76, p.64)
Space Ace Revisited (Apr-76, p.12) - word puzzle
Puzzle Time (May-76, p.84) - word puzzle
Components & Parts (Jun-76, p.64)
Put the "Do Everything" Chip In Your Next Design (Jul-76, p.40)
Tool Box (Jul-76, p.39) - word puzzle
Microprocessor Update: SC/MP Fills A Gap (Sep-76, p.76)
Keep Pace With The Times (Oct-76, p.82)
Don't Waste Memory Space (Dec-76, p.58)
Product Description: OSI (Jan-77, p.94)
Black Friday (Jan-77, p.56)
Microprocessor Update: F8 System (Feb-77, p.88)
Baker Street Irregular (Feb-77, p.86) - word puzzle
Microprocessor Update: 8008 (Apr-77, p.110)
BASICally BASIC (Jul-77, p.96)
KIMER: A KIM-I Timer (Jul-78, p.12)

Before RBakerPC

2005-08-17T13:56:00.000-04:00

Before the online username RBakerPC was ever created I was very active in amateur radio. After graduating college with a BSEE degree from Drexel and getting married, we moved to Massachusetts where I worked for Digital Equipment Corp. for three years. While there I met Wayne Green who published an amateur radio magazine called 73. I was very active in ham radio contests and during one of our conversations I asked him why he didn't have a contest calendar column like the other amateur radio magazines. His response was that no one had ever volunteered to do it and would I be interested. To make a long story short, I took on the task and the column ran for 10 years.

During the time I was writing for 73, Wayne started up BYTE magazine for the early computer hobbyists. Somehow I managed to be involved in the early issues and even had my name on the masthead of the magazine for some time. I was writing various articles on and off for BYTE and then Kilobaud Microcomputing, Midnite Gazette, Compute and eventually Commodore Magazine among others. There were even a few regular columns like the PETpourri column for the Commodore PET, VIC-20, C64 and Amiga computers, plus an Inside Quantumlink column in Commodore's magazine. All told, there were over 200 published articles and columns, plus a few books, spanning over 20 years. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

With all my writing in the Commodore computing world, QuantumLink approached me to run a section on their new online service QuantumLink just before it went live to the public. I started with a technical Question and Answer section that quickly evolved into an industry news section. When they started up PC-Link to cover the RadioShack and IBM PC markets, I was asked to expand my news section to cover PCs on that service. Then when AOL was born, I was right there with an expanded version of my news service on that system too. And that's where the RBakerPC name was born! You see, in the early days on AOL, any username with the 'PC' suffix was a reserved system account with special meaning and privileges. For whatever reason, I've stuck with that username on every system since and it's followed me to this day.

Robert Baker