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In March, P*PCompAS officially existed 25 years as an incorporated entity. I
thought it might be a good idea to give you all a brief history of our club
through my eyes. Sometime in the early 80’s, Brad and I were shopping at a Radio
Shack. We were intrigued by one of their items, a Model I computer. It seemed
like that could be a real handy item in our house. We proceeded to buy it and
our world opened up to a great association of people and activities.
Meanwhile, a friend, Warren Hickey, invited us to a meeting of microcomputer owners. They met on a Saturday morning at Vilachi’s, which was on the corner of Bijou and Union. There was a big screen TV where we watched some demonstrations of computer stuff. Most of it was over our heads. The discussions were mostly about machine language. Dave Wood came up with the name for the club and that was FRASBUG, which stood for Front Range Small Business Users Group. We enjoyed the social aspects of the group and we were hooked. The founder of FRASBUG, Dave Wood, eventually left town and the group reformed as PPCOMPAS, and then in 1982 the club incorporated, so we celebrated the 25th anniversary of that event this March. Computers have come a long way since the inception of PPCOMPAS and I don’t think anyone realized at the time how much we would depend on the home computer and what we could do with one.
Dave Hughes gave an interesting program at Blair College in 1994. This was really the first foray into the Internet. He presented a program about the Internet, demonstrated its use, and a look at the NAPLPS (North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax). It was the standard for the coding and transmission of color graphics in computers. He talked about a new system designed to provide interconnectibility between the hundreds of different networks around the nation and around the world. Voila! The Internet was born.
Dave is well known to long-time PPCOMPAS members, having been one of the original members of the organization back in 1979. Dave, a native of Colorado Springs, has been in the personal computer business for many years. In fact, he established and ran the first BBS in Colorado Springs in 1980. Until recently, Dave also provided the physical space for the WebBoard server hardware (case, monitor, keyboard, and mouse). He also provided a high-speed connection to the Internet.
Mid Kolstad got us all interested in genealogy. She would help those of us who knew nothing about the subject. There have been so many people involved with PPCOMPAS over the past 25 years. There is no way to mention all of them. Some of the past Presidents have been: Ralph Redinger, Byron Smith, Dick Knoeckel, Norm Miller, Mid Kolstad, Byron Smith, Dick Stienmier, Billy Robinson, Dick Immig, Toni Logan, Chuck Blaney, Greg Lenihan, Dave Guevara, Harry Birkner, Joe Nuvolini, and Paul Godfrey.