Some History
of the Bundaberg PC USers Group
By Morry Coppock
My first encounter with the BPCUG was
in 1992, shortly after moving to Bundaberg from Sydney. At the time the
club was presided over by Merv Hersom, who sadly is no longer in our midst.
The club met at the time on a Thursday night, twice a month as now, but
in the Education Centre in Woongarra St. As can be imagined computers were
a mite simpler and less powerful than we are used to today. At the
time the predominent operating system was DOS 3.11 and Windows
was just beginning to make it's impact on the scene with version 3.1 the
norm. Most of the machines in use at the time were 286, 386 and for
the rich amongst us the veritable 486. Soon followed by to
DOS 4.0 with a few extra bells & whistles,
and upwards to DOS 5.0,and
even DOS 6.0 and it's upgrades. The majority of operations done at that
time were carried out in DOS, so most us us got very proficient in typing
at the keyboard with one finger. The beauty is we didn't experience any
GPF's etc, the most we would get would be a "bad command or file name"
and we learned the basics which reinforced our knowledge as we progressed
to Windows. Things change, and as the Council wanted to a Library on the
site we had to vacate the premisies. Thanks to the old premise of "it's
not what you know, it's who you know" we were able, through the intervention
of Merv's brother, to get a new venue at the Rowers Club, and
free of charge. We also changed to Wednesday night mettings, but retained
the same format of a workshop night on the first meeting of the month,
with demo's and instruction on the second meeting evening of the month.
It was at this time that we began holding EXPO's, with the assistance of
the very knowledgable people from the Brisbane PC Users Group (Brisbug)
Two Expo's were held with their input, and they were very
well supported by local suppliers.
Unfortunately Brisbug became a little short of the folding stuff and had
to pull out of our next venture at the last moment, so we had to organise
everything in two weeks flat as we
had already booked the room.
We were a great success and have
gone on to better things since. Of course the Club would not be the
success it is today if it wasn't for the input and dedication of all those
people who over the years have made the effort to further the aims of the
Club. Since our early days where it was necessary for the members to bring
their own computers for demo's and instruction, to where we are today with
the equipment the Club owns, shows what can be acheived by ordinary people
with a will to succeed. We have learned a lot of lessons along the
way, and not only computer related, but also in management of a small group
such as ours. Let us hope that the future holds a further improvement,
only the members can acheive this.
~~~ BPCUG 1989 - 1998~~~
Morry Coppock is
our Honourary Life Member and resident expert on computer basics.
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