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| 19th March 2006 | ABOUT KEN |
Gavin Haines |
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My first acquaintance with Ken Ross was through the ICPUG newsletter. I had just bought an Amiga A500 from a shop in Bexhill and was wondering what I was going to do with it, so I answered an advert to join "ICPUG". Ken's name was in the back as the "Amiga Disk Librarian". The pad-a-bags with return postage went to-and-fro between Hastings and Tangley Grove. I amassed a large collection of Amiga disks, some of which could be described as "Seriously useful" or "Seriously Useless" software. Ken always provided an efficient copying service. He told me there were very few requests for disks and he was hardly rushed off his feet! Considering what a good service ICPUG volunteers provided, it is such a pity that so few people made use of it. When ICPUG stopped producing the printed newsletter, Ken continued to maintain the Amiga disk library and started a Macintosh disk library as well. I graduated from the Amiga A500 to a Mac IIci, bought for £50 from a chap in Bexhill. With the disks that Ken sent, the machine was worth far more than the fifty quid I paid for it! When we bought an iMac, we gave the IIci to Ken Ross. He only had a Mac LCIII, acquired from his brother in law in the USA. Ken Ross came to Hastings on the train to collect the IIci in person and that was the only time I ever met him. He said it would have to be a "flying visit", since his wife Maureen was upset since her sister had just died from breast cancer. Ken brought me his old LCIII in return. In the Ken Ross tradition, it hardly worked. It had bits of broken CD wedged into various places to make it work. The circuit board was flawed! I was sent a replacement circuit board by an enthusiast who had upgraded his LC to an LC475. The machine then worked. When that circuit board packed up, Ken sent me another one obtained from a skip. The machine is now working again, apart from the fact that the serial port does not function. Perhaps that's why it was in the skip? Ken grew up in London and spent all his life there. He worked for Halfords for a while, selling bikes. He had various jobs, which didn't seem to work out. So, with time on his hands, he got involved with the Commodore 64 and became associated with the ICPUG newsletter. He wrote many entertaining and informative articles. Ken was an avid Science Fiction enthusiast and used to "collect" all the old Dr Who and Star Trek videos, as well as computer software. He sent me home-made VCDs of various old things like Thunderbirds and the Mysterons. (Ed: Ken gave me I got the first four episodes of 'The Prisoner' as well as some presentations he made for the retro shows). We moved house at the end of 2005 and we had to put the computer desk in a room where there was no telephone point, so I could not access the Internet. In March 2006, as of this writing, I got an extra long modem cable from PC World and checked the email. No messages from Ken. I clicked on ICPUG's web site for news of him and very sadly found the "In Memoriam" web page. I have dedicated the Commodore ICPUG "Yahoo Group" to the memory of Ken, always a good friend, and I shall miss all the disks, emails, and broken computer equipment I used to receive from him! If you would like to communicate with other acquaintances and friends of Ken, here's the URL: |
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