Closure

As you may know, we suspended the publication of AMPLINEX after the September 1992 issue (AMPLINEX 028) because Roy Follett had, shortly afterwards, been diagnosed as suffering from Chronic Lymphatic Leukaemia. This required an urgent operation to remove his spleen and a course of chemo-therapy to try to arrest the spread of the disease. Roy was very ill throughout the last months of 1992 and, although the initial operation was successful, the chemo-therapy was not able to stop the progress of the disease. I last spoke to him just before Christmas when he seemed to be in better spirits, less affected by the pain of the illness, and to be looking forward to spending some time with his family. Sadly, those days over the Christmas break were to be his last and he died on January 2nd 1993. He was 60. His funeral was held on January 11th at a crematorium near his home - a moving occasion with his many friends as well as family in attendance. The service, a humanist one as was his wish, celebrated his life, and noted his long-standing leisure interest in electronics of all kinds, and more recently in the area of computers.

Although he was always modest about his efforts for AMPLINEX, it was his original conception to operate an information exchange run by and for users of AMPLE software. Throughout the five years that we ran AMPLINEX together, Roy dealt with all the day-to-day work of running the magazine as he dealt with all manner of queries and problems. As the editor, I was kept blissfully ignorant of the myriad correspondence that went on 'behind the scenes' - missing cheques, discs which wouldn't run, money that didn't add up, etc. In our frequent discussions (usually over the phone - we only met face-to-face a handful of times) I was always glad of his common-sense approach to the problems which we encountered, and encouraged by his enthusiasm for the magazine. Throughout, he held fast to the contributory principle which he had decided from the outset was the way the magazine should operate, and this came through in his encouragement of contributions at every opportunity.

Looking at the vast quantities of papers and discs which were passed on to me from Roy's home study, I doubt whether anyone could hope to pick up the work which Roy put in over the past five years and continue it with the same level of skill and dedication. In addition, as you may be aware, a gradual decline in interest in AMPLINEX over the past two years had already led us to wonder whether the magazine could remain viable for much longer. After much consideration over the past months, I feel that, in the circumstances, it would be best if Roy's death were allowed to mark the natural end of AMPLINEX itself.

In the spirit of our original plan for AMPLINEX, I want to make sure that all remaining active members have the opportunity to benefit from all the information published by AMPLINEX over its five year life. To do this I intend to provide, until the end of this year, a disc copying service for any member who wishes to have copies of any of the back issues of AMPLINEX. If you want to use this service, please send blank, formatted discs in the usual manner to AMPLINEX, 26 Arbor Lane, Winnersh, Berks, RG11 5JD.

Kevin Doyle