gil@limbic.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) (08/02/89)
In article <9114@chinet.chi.il.us> kdb@chinet.chi.il.us (Karl Botts) writes: >Finally, exactly what is "ICUS"? It seems to be a semi-official user's >organization mostly specializing in hardware mods... Is this more-or-less >correct? Less than correct really on both counts I'm afraid. ICUS is a really small group based in Long Island, NY consisting of computer professionals who sit somewhere between a user group and a consulting service of sorts. Unfortunately, it doesn't make us money really...we have outside jobs which feed us. At this point, the entity "ICUS" is not exactly easy to explain, but suffice to say it "exists." When ICUS makes money (which is rarely and not very much) or obtains equipment, it generally uses that same money or equipment to develop software programs or hardware devices which are either used internally for the group, or released to the public domain for little or no fee with essentially a "you can copy it but can't sell it -- and you have to send us back any changes to it" license. The hard disk upgrade has a similar, but not exactly the same, license. Occasionally, we have provided services such as a mass distributon of the extended diagnostic disk. The fees which were charged for this covered the costs of the media, mailing expenses, and any other miscellaneous expenses incurred. Any remainer has gone toward obtaining equipment and software which we use in our development. Because of some internal moving-around, there are really no additional hardware developments being worked-on at the moment. At Usenix, I discussed the idea of an intelligent ports card for the 3B1, which may or may not be developed as an ICUS project. As soon as things settle down, I plan on continuing development on an interface which will allow those with Atari 800 8-bit computers to network with a 3B1 for mass storage and peripheral sharing of sorts. As soon as some interface circuitry has been cleaned-up, I plan on releasing a description of the eprom programmer that I currently am using in conjunction with the 3B1. There is also talk about an computerized model train controller based on the 3B1. Since these projects are more personal and "interesting" in nature than profitable, they are completed on a "when-able-to" basis. Several software projects have been released and posted to the net, which are fairly well known by the net as postings from myself or Lenny Tropiano (icus!lenny). These projects are developed as part of the same thought-sessions and discussions which provoked the hardware modificatons which have gained popularity over the past month or so. ICUS is not an "official" organization of any kind really. It has been around for approximately 8 years. Its size varies in number from year-to-year. As ICUS, we try to exit our proprietary programming jobs which keep us stifled during the day and produce interesting things that we can share with others in this unique community. At some point, ICUS may become a "real" commercial venture, at which time we would produce products and offer services for reasonable fees (ie. those which we can feed our families on :-) trying to keep our roots in mind. Hope this answers an inevitable question that I've been delaying the answer to. I've directed followups directly to me so that I may answer questions directly and post a summary of these questions/answers should the need arrise. ------ | Gil Kloepfer, Jr. | ICUS Software Systems/Bowne Management Systems (depending on where I am) | ...icus!limbic!gil or gil@icus.islp.ny.us