Memphis Amiga Group (MAG) and
Memphis Commodore Users Club (MCUC) History

Selected MAGazine
Selected
MCU Magazine
Interesting Images

Welcome

This is a collection of scanned and transcribed newsletters and disk magazines from the Memphis Amiga Group, as well as newsletters from its predecessor, the Memphis Commodore Users Club.

The Memphis Commodore Users Club (or Users Group, MCUG) started in the early 80s and lasted until the early to mid 90s. It spawned the Memphis Amiga Group (MAG) as a SIG in the late 80s. MAG operated from the late 80s to the late 90s. Commodore's demise in 1994 took the wind out of the group, and after a few more years it faded out of existence.

Meetings were held monthly, and most were preceeded by a board meeting the week before. MCUC presidents over the years included Ken Akins, Dwight Campbell, Jim Fox, Bob Nunn (of Operator Headgap BBS), and Pete Norton. MAG presidents included Alan Schwartz, Broadus Weatherall, Todd Rooks, Brian Akey, Bob Nunn, and Scott Pitts (who ran Amiga Pitts, MAG's official BBS). The only surviving near-relative of the group is AppleCore of Memphis, a Memphis-area Apple computer users group.

If you have newsletters, diskmags, or anything else at all pertaining to the Memphis Amiga Group, the Memphis Commodore Users Club, or even the Memphis PC Users Group, please contact me. I would like to add what you have to this site.

Contents

These newsletters and diskmags hold bits and pieces of history pertaining not just to MCUC and MAG, but to personal computing (particularly with regard to Commodore computers) in general. Some parts, such as these hardware prices from 1989, are particularly amusing. There are several chat transcripts (some from pre-Internet online services such as People Link and Genie) that indicate the state of Mac emulation in 1989, multimedia in 1991, and computer graphics in 1992. There are also old hardware hack instructions, such as upgrading the Amiga 1000 to the 68010 processor (1986.)

Some of the highlights of Commodore's rise and fall can also be traced:

Interesting Texts

The following is a random selection of a few of the "interesting" texts found throughout the disks in the DiskMAGs section.

Name Description
Ed Commands Description for using the basic command-line AmigaDOS text editor "ed" written in 1985.
ScreenPhotos Instructions for taking high-quality 35mm color slides from the Amiga's screen.
CpuBlit.doc Documentation for CpuBlit 1.0 from April 1991. CpuBlit was a popular utility that offloaded blitter functions to the 68030 (or other CPU), which was much faster. This significantly sped up text scrolling and eliminated the "color flicker" normally seen.
Boardstuff "64 good reasons why the Commodore 64 surpasses the IBM 486."
5min5-24 The StarShip 5-MINUTE Weekend Newscast from May 21st, 1993. Includes the announcement of Commodore's Amiga 200 Power Up Program that allowed Amiga 2000 owners to trade up to the Amiga 4000.
5min8-23 The StarShip 5-MINUTE Weekend Newscast from August 20th, 1993. Includes details about the upcoming 1993 World of Commodore Amiga Show where the CD32 was premiered and the announcement of Digital Creations' Brilliance paint and animation package.
AR208.guide Amiga Report Magazine 2.08 from March 4th, 1994.
CommodoreNews A chat transcript from a June 1994 GEnie conference about the liquidation of Commodore's assets and the bidding process involved.
AR222.guide Amiga Report Magazine 2.22 from July 15th, 1994.
ar405.guide Amiga Report Magazine 4.05 from March 31st, 1996.