September 11, 1985
Dear Richard,

I haven't written to you for quite a long time - too  long, judg-
ing from the amount of material I have accumulated.

First news from Finnish user community.  The name of our club has
been changed from PPC Finland to  STaK  (an  acronym  from  words
meaning  Finnish  Pocket  Computer Club - but the similarity with
"stack" isn't exactly accidental).   At the moment there are some
40  members,  and we are publishing a small journal (second issue
forthcoming; I am acting as the editor for the time being).    We
would like to be considered an "Affiliated Club" of CHHU - please
send any mail for STaK to my address.

Looking at that "WHAT CAN YOU DO?" -list in your August 13th let-
ter: Financially I can't help you much; my budget has been rather
low after I bought a HP71+some modules+ThinkJet+Disc Drive.  (For
those who sigh "wish I were rich too": I'm not. I'm just crazy: I
live with less than $250 a month, including rent etc., but exclu-
ding HP stuff - I literally don't spread butter on my bread. It's
just a matter of priorities.) I'll enclose  a $90.- cheque,  how-
ever, for renewal and two (2) sets of the 71 FORTH IDS.

As  for  getting new members, I can at least ensure all STaK mem-
bers know about CHHU.  Advertising should be much easier if - no,
WHEN the Chronicle begins catching up with schedule.

One  thing  I can do is submitting articles and programs.   Going
through my files looking  for  suitable  material  I  realized  I
hadn't  submitted  anything to PPC or CHHU for more than a year -
probably because of some subconscious reluctance  resulting  from
the "PPC Affair".   Consequently I found quite a few programs and
ideas worth writing up - the  enclosed  didn't  exhaust  my  list
(which keeps growing all the time anyway).   Next I'll try to get
our local journal out, then I may  write  something  up  for  you
again.

The enclosed disc contains not only the programs but write-ups as
well,  even this letter (file LETTER) as 71 TEXT (LIF1) files, so
you can reprint any of them if  necessary  (there  are  non-ASCII
characters in my address, only).

A brief description of what's in there:

BTIMI is a 71 BASIC instruction timing program, more amusing than
useful, but it demonstrates some rather exotic techniques nicely.
There is no separate writeup, but it's rather heavily commented.
COMBILEX  and  HMSLEX are my first 71 LEX files that do something
useful.   COMBILXT and HMSLEXT are their respective source codes.
Nothing very fancy there, and I'm quite sure they could be impro-
ved; but at least they seem to work.
EED  is  the only 41 program there; EEDDOCU is its documentation.
It is my effort to add to ED features I found necessary.
FACTORS is a 71 BASIC  factorization  program,  FACTORDOCU  asso-
ciated article.
CAT  is  an  effort  to improve 71's CAT ALL (mainly by providing
purging and saving files with single keys).   Again, there is  no
separate writeup but hopefully enough comments.
DIMS  provides  SUBs for determining array and string dimensions.
It would need more comments, there are barely  enough  for  using
them.
FLIB and VCAT contain some FORTH utilities.   Note that VCAT uses
some words in FLIB so these should be published together.
FINDIDBUG, DELAYBUG and FORTHBUG contain descriptions of and sug-
gested fixes for some bugs, for the OOPS column.
TIDBITS should be suggestive enough of a name.  They're all about
the  71,  so  maybe  the  TITAN file would be the right place for
them. (Incidentally, feel free to cut off anything that won't fit
or duplicates another contribution.)

Nothing more on that disc.

One more thing.   I don't have enough time to take on  any  major
project, but one in which I'd very much like to participate in is
the 71 ROM.  You mentioned that ROM programmers are using Telenet
"Bulletin Board" with modems.  Now I don't have a modem (not even
a  phone, in fact), and I couldn't afford the phone bills anyway,
so I must find another way to participate.   Perhaps someone  out
there could act as my contact with the ROM team (like, exchanging
discs)?  I  have lots of ideas for the ROM, and some LEX files in
the works.   I'll try to put some ideas on paper as soon as  pos-
sible.

                          Tapani Tarvainen [337]
                          Kiljanderinkatu 2 A 7
                          SF-40600 JyvÌskylÌ
                          Finland