User:Farna

My name is Francis Swygert. I usually go by "Frank". I've been researching American Motors Corporation history and cars since around 1983. I also used to mess around with the Tandy Color Computer from around 1987-97. So now you know who's been editing a lot of the AMC entries in Wikipedia, and occasionally one of the CoCo entries. If anyone has comments either add here (under "Discussion"), send me an e-mail (farna@att.net), or you will find me on Facebook or on The AMC Forum (https://theamcforum.com), user name "farna". I use that name on a few other forums as well (try Googling "farna Rambler" or farna AMC"...). There is also a CoCo mailing list, instructions for joining are at ftp://maltedmedia.com/coco/how-to-join-coco-mailing-list.txt.

AMC/Rambler

I have an interest in all aspects of the AMC hobby -- from the first Rambler prototype in the 1890s to the current crop of Jeeps; daily drivers, survivors, modified for show and/or racing, and restorations (not much into heavy four-wheeling though). In 1987 I self-published a book on the history of the Rambler (I can't recall the title now, and have my only remaining copy packed away) that only covered vehicles under that brand name from 1950-1969. Classic Motorbooks International showed some interest, but decided that the title wouldn't sell well enough to meet their printing demands (300,000 copies over three years). They concluded that the work was good enough, but would only sell ~100,000 copies over a three year period and recommended a smaller publisher. Rather than immediately go that route, I decided to expand the work to include all of AMC. I decided to try self publishing since I'd been telling people in AMC clubs that I was writing a book, and many had helped with research. Although the finished product as crude (there was no readily available, inexpensive desk top publishing software at the time), over 200 copies were sold. This was not just a history, but also a basic restoration guide.

The expanded book was titled "The Compact Chronicles - American Motors Corporation, 1954-1988", and presented to Classic Motorbooks again in late 1990. They showed some initial interest, but had recently released an AMC title and didn't want another at the time. A smaller publisher offered to publish, but the recession in the early 80s forced them to back out of the deal. Instead of pursuing another publisher, I self published with the help of a local printer and desktop publishing software (Aldus PageMaker, on the printer's Macs). The excellent DTP software made the resulting book much better than the previous work, but the printing quality of photographs left much to be desired. Just under 500 copies were sold, mainly through AMC clubs.

As a side note, I am currently using "PageStream 5" DTP software (https://pagestream.org/). It is much better than Adobe InDesign for page layout work, more like QuarkXpress or Aldus PageMaker (before Adobe bought it and ruined it... PageMaker 6.0 or earlier), and it is also much cheaper than anything else with the exception of the open-source Scribus. I tried Scribus long ago, but there were development issues -- it wasn't really stable at the time. PageStream is stable and works great, I can't be happier! It will run under Windows (I'm running under Windows 10 now) Linux, and Mac OSX. I had some issues getting it to run under Linux Mint, but with a little help from the Linux Mint forum and PageStream Forums got it up and going.

By 1996 I decided that the book could use a major re-write. But I also wanted to gather more information, and have some discussion on that information. I decided that the best way to accomplish this was to start an AMC magazine, thus American Independent Magazine (AIM) was born (name later changed to "American Motors Cars"), with the first issue printed in October 1997. This was a small "trade journal" style, black and white, quarterly magazine (http:www.amc-mag.com). The magazine allowed me to work on articles and gather feedback before printing in a book. A few glaring errors had crept into the first book, and I didn't want that to happen again. The magazine helped to solve a few mysteries and gather information from a wider range of resources over the AMC community that I initially didn't have access to. AIM/AMC was published from October 1987 to March 2015 -- 37 issues as AIM (1987-2006) and 33 issues as AMC (2006-2015). I still sell back issues at the website, which has a full list of back issues.

So what happened to the book? Well, I've been contemplating self-publishing a second edition, but ironically the magazine took so much time it was hard to find the opportunity to work on the book! I don't want to just compile magazine articles into a book, but I don't want to publish a simple update of the former book either. I printed a restoration/numbers guide in 2007 (the Red, White & Blue Book), it's available now from The Olde Milford Press (http://www.oldemilfordpress.com/american-car-books.shtml)

Patrick Foster has written two good histories of AMC since my book came out (American Motors: The Last Independent, published in 1993; and AMC Cars: 1954-1987 An Illustrated History, published in 2004). "The Last Independent" is currently out of print, though a few are still found on occasion (check Amazon.com). As of February 2022 A few copies of "AMC Cars: 1954-1987 An Illustrated History" was still available from the author at http://www.oldemilfordpress.com/american-car-books.shtml. There are several more AMC related books on The Olde Milford Press website as well.

Tandy Color Computer

I started working with the Tandy Color Computer in 1987. By 1992 I was writing and selling some software. I published a small magazine ("the world of 68' micros") from 1993-1997, and wrote a book on the CoCo published in 1993 (a combination history/user/survival guide). The book was revised for 2006 and made publicly available as a PDF file at ftp://maltedmedia.com/coco/MAGAZINES/Tandy's%20Little%20Wonder/. It is still under copyright, but permission is given to download and print for personal use only -- as is all the other FARNA Systems CoCo software and booklets on the site. The other books are mainly OS guides, but I did get permission to edit and reprint "Mastering OS-9 on the Color Computer 3". That book is also available (look in the "NEWLY RECEIVED... NOT READY" section... the CoCo Archives are a bit of a mess!), as well as 93-96 issues of "two68'm"(ftp://maltedmedia.com/coco/MAGAZINES/The%20World%20of%2068'%20micros%20%5BFARNA%20systems%5D/).