What's ICUS? (was Re: AT&T's "The STORE")

[Gil Kloepfer Jr.]

In article <9114 at chinet.chi.il.us> kdb at 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 at icus.islp.ny.us