Next weekend is the Vintage Computer Festival East in Wall, New Jersey. We’re going, and you should be there too.
The VCF East is the largest gathering of retrocomputing aficionados on the east coast. It’s three days of talks, exhibits, a flea market, and a pow-wow of the greatest minds buried under obsolete technology. No VCF is complete without a few talks, and this year is shaping up to be great. Keynotes will include [Bjarne Stroustrup], designer / implementor / inventor of C++. Computer historian [Bill Degnan] will give a review of 40 years of ‘appliance computers’, and [Tom Perera], Ph.D. will be giving a talk on the Enigma machine.
The exhibits at VCF are always the star of the show, and this year is no different. Highlights include mechanical computers, the finest from Silicon Graphics, and a version of Unix published by Microsoft. The individual exhibits are always great; last year the world’s first digital camera made an appearance. If you’re in the area, this isn’t an event to miss. VCF is going down at InfoAge, a science center at the former Camp Evans — a military installation that is best described as, ‘DARPA before World War II’.
Hackaday is proud to once again sponsor VCF East. This has been going on for a couple of years now and our Art Director, [Joe Kim] has created some incredible art as part of the sponsorship. Click on the thumbnail of this year’s art to embiggen. The VCF West art from last year is a stunning take on the Macintosh and last year’s VCF East art reflected the retro hackathon we sponsored.
You forgot the plug the retro-folk singing at dinner goodness… The Italian deli on the corner that has never heard of focaccia or ciabatta… The eagles nests… and many other bonus perks! But that is ok. Give me some HaD swag when I see you and I’ll let it slide!
They also seem to forget the VCF SE every year too! That’s too bad; the HaD team would have a fun time down there for sure.
How does one find out about these conferences beforehand? I am not a “con” guy but that one sounded right up my alley.
No more folk singer, but we booked a MUCH better restaurant!!!
Sadly, I cannot attend this year.
This is an excellent event, and it should be noted that the InfoAge Science Center, 2201 Marconi Rd., Wall, NJ, has 2 other very nice museums there in different rooms. The War Museum and the Radio/TV museums. Go early, because there’s just not enough time to see it all!
All my best regards to friends there!
Josh Bensadon
And speaking of open hardware, I’ll be bringing XT-IDE rev 3 parts kits for an event-long workshop, as well as Apple II protoboards and some of the contents of my parts bins for those who want to learn to interface with the Apple II line. We’ll be over in the IXR hackerspace!
I will be speaking Friday morning on SMT rework as I found that many of the retro-restores send their SMT off rather that do it themselves. I will be demonstrating the equipment shown in the Hackaday post http://hackaday.com/2014/08/21/smt-and-thru-hole-desoldering/
If you are in the area and have something you need reworked you might think about bringing it, I will have some common components with me.
I’ll have a very few Slot 8 Support board kits on hand too, which are SMT. And of course a Stickvise!
What about a Vintage Computing themed contest?
My inherited Advanced Micro Computers R T E 8 Emulator has always been safe and dry. Shouldn’t it work? A chance to go back in time testing it. Please send me any info about it.
Could it be the LAST ONE EXISTING from this early Santa Clara, California computer company?.. Wouldn’t it make a fine addition in a MUSEUM?
I can supply pictures as asked… Oh, its entire case is heavy gauge aluminum painted a tan color.. Its not yellowed plastic.
Thank you
There will be a Doctor in the house.
In time for the biggest meetup of KIM-1 / KIM-Uno owners, the Enigma Machine Z30 v2.0 6502 program has been released.
It now supports lever and gear stepping and the menu system changes all the settings. It has been optimized to fit in 714 bytes vs. 703 bytes for the previous version without dual stepping.
http://tinyurl.com/EnigmaZ30v2
I have an ancient Apple computer autographed by Woz in my basement. Afraid to plug it in!