Hey, I just realized I composed a huge post that was actually a private reply to someone. Oops. Following on from the COMAL thread, I was asked about TPUG, so here goes:
I’m a fairly recent member of TPUG, only joining in the last five years or so. I don’t know much about the history of the club, but there are people involved who have been there since the start. We’re still called Toronto PET Users Group, despite frequent calls to include Commodore in the title. We’re one of the older home computer user groups still active.
Until recently, TPUG was a company. Back in the day, there was an office with paid staff to handle memberships and magazine/book shipments. The group had a close relationship with Commodore Canada, and several current members had worked there. Commodore’s offices were in a neighbourhood of (a then suburb outside) Toronto that had lots of electronics component companies.
TPUG published its own magazine for many years (see Archives). The late Jim Butterfield was a very active member, and TPUG members are always on the lookout for more Butterfield-related content. As for the disk archive CD, that’s something we used to sell as a fundraiser, and we weren’t initially too happy to see that someone uploaded it to the Internet Archive. But getting CDROMs made and mailing them and getting PayPal to work was a pain, so it’s probably better that the ISO is there than not. Please drop TPUG some cash if you feel remotely bad about downloading something that represents hundreds of hours of work for the project volunteers.
TPUG also runs World of Commodore, our annual Commodore-themed computer show. This used to be run by Commodore itself, and in the early 1980s was a giant affair, taking up all the halls of an entire exhibition centre near Toronto airport. It’s a much more modest affair now, and the best we can hope for this year is a small, safe gathering near Toronto.
TPUG still has monthly meetings, to which all are welcome. In fact, we’ve got one this Thursday: Thursday, July 15th at 7PM EDT via Zoom. If you can make it, we’ve got someone talking about the Minimig.
cheers,
Stewart
(incidentally, I refer to “we” quite a lot in this message. While I nominally help out on the TPUG management committee, I don’t speak for or represent the group in any way. I’m just glad to be here.)