Sometime, soon after the introduction of the Commodore PET Computer and the Commodore VIC 20 computer, SPUG was born. It started as a small informal group which met a couple of times at a computer store called Computer Country, which was located in the strip mall across from TeleVisual. A fellow named Jim Strasma, who later become somewhat of a celebrity in Commodore circles, and a few others worked together to start the club in early 1983. After a few months Computer Country closed, so the meetings moved to Computer Tutor, which was then located on South MacArthur.

Commodore introduced the Commodore 64 computer in the fall of '83. After a couple of months the size of the club made it hard to meet in the back room of Computer Tutor, so the meetings were moved to the Lutheran church off of West Monroe. Don and I joined the club in early 1984, and I became Vice President. By the end of 1985 Commodore had introduced the C128 and the Amiga 1000, and SPUG's membership had grown to over 300 members. As Vice President, I coordinated the special interest groups (SIGs). At one point we had 12 SIGs covering topics such as business computing, programming, robotics, gaming, and telecommunications.

SPUG was one of the first clubs in the area to have it's own BBS. Our first BBS was put online in 1985 using a Commodore 64, and MSD dual drive at 300 baud. We soon added a second MSD. After the MSD drives bit the dust we purchased two SFD 1001 (1 meg) drives. At that time, 1 meg was huge and having a 2 meg BBS made ours the largest BBS (running on a mini computer) in the area. Later, we added a third SFD drive, and upgraded to 1200 baud. We operated on the C64 and SFDs until changing to a MS-DOS system in 1990. Our BBS has been upgraded since, but still runs on a MS-DOS system at 28.8 and features several message bases, E-mail capabilities, and On-line games.

SPUG has had program libraries since it's beginning. We started with a tape library, since most people did not yet have a disk drive. It was so popular, that after about a year it was stolen. We had already started a small disk library. By 1986 we had well over 150 disks in the C64 library. By the end of 1990 we had over 400 disks. We now have libraries to support the Amiga, MS-DOS, Windows, and Windows 95 formats as well.

Our newsletter is the oldest continuous newsletter in downstate Illinois. Although we have changed editors many times, it has always ranked amoung the best of computer club newsletters available!

There have been many changes in format and personnel over the years, but both Don and I feel that the club is still one of the most worthwhile activities in our lives. We enjoy the club meetings, BBS,libraries, and newsletter very much. But probably the most important thing to us is the help and experience that the Club members can share with one another.

1998 UPDATE BY CAROL GORTAT

By mid 1997 member usage of the libraries and the Club BBS was dropping due to increased access to and interest in the Internet as well as larger and more complex programs which were often provided on CD instead of disks. In response to these changes, SPUG phased out its shareware libraries, closed its BBS and developed this web site. 

2000 UPDATE BY MARTY DULING

The club members decided to transition from a printed monthly GAZETTE newsletter to an online version on the club web page. This will save money and provide members with current information, that can be modified as necessary.