VCF East 2023: Alan Wolke On His Passion For Tech

May 8, 2023 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

If you’re one of the more than 180,000 subscribers to [Alan Wolke]’s YouTube channel W2AEW, you’ll know he’s a lover of old test gear and ham radio hardware. You may have followed one of his tutorials, or referenced his work while repairing or upgrading your own equipment. But when we got a chance to talk to him one-on-one during Vintage Computer Festival East 2023, we were treated to a more personal look at the man himself.

Like many of us, [Alan] says he got his start with electronics at a young age simply by taking things apart and trying to put them back together again. From there he got a job in a TV repair shop during high school, where he was able to hone his natural curiosity into a marketable skill. His career took him through several of tech companies, but he ultimately ended up in an engineering role at Tektronix, a position he’s held for nearly 20 years.

Despite continuing to stay on the cutting edge, it’s no surprise that he still has a certain attraction to the technology from his youth. But it’s more than simple nostalgia — he points out that vintage hardware is generally easier to service than modern gear. As many of his own videos show, there was something of a technological “sweet spot” around the mid-20th century to the 1980s or so; where you could expect to not only have schematics available, but the design and construction of hardware was such that you could still reason your way through it using basic troubleshooting principles.

As for being a ham, [Alan] thinks it’s a great way for get an even deeper understanding of technology. He says that if you’re interested in learning how electronics work, repairing and upgrading old radio hardware is a great way to flex your mental muscles. But at the same time, being a ham isn’t limited to dusting off war-surplus radios that were built before you were born. There’s plenty of ways to mix in modern technology, from digital modes to receiving signals from satellites using a software-defined radio.

[Alan] was just one of the fascinating people we got a chance to speak with during our visit to the 2023 Vintage Computer Festival East. We’ve still got more interviews to come, but in the meantime, you can check out our previous coverage of this incredible retrocomputing event.

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VCF East 2023: Adrian Black On Keeping Retro Alive

April 26, 2023 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

While roaming the halls of Vintage Computer Festival East 2023, we ran into [Adrian Black], who was eager to talk about the importance of classic computing in his own life and how his experience hosting the YouTube channel Adrian’s Digital Basement has impacted him these last few years.

On his channel, [Adrian] spends most of his time repairing vintage systems or exploring little-known aspects of hardware from the early days of desktop computing. His exploits have brought him to the pages of Hackaday in the past, most recently just last month, when we covered his work to add an RGB interface to a mid-1990s Sony Trinitron CRT display. But in talking to him, you quickly realize he’d be working on the very same projects whether the camera was rolling or not. He’s not out to game the YouTube algorithm; he’s just having a good time in the basement poking around with the sort of old gear that at one time would have been completely out of reach.

In fact, it’s this sense of nostalgia that [Adrian] believes is responsible not just for the growing popularity of his channel but for the retrocomputing community as a whole. For many who grew up with these machines, they were far too expensive or complex to ever crack open (literally and figuratively) when they were new. Now, decades later, people like himself finally find themselves able to buy and enjoy these once-coveted objects.

Critically, they now also have the skills to do them justice, not to mention access to a worldwide community of like-minded folks who are still producing hardware and software that can be used with these classic machines. For those of a certain age, it’s literally a dream come true.

[Adrian] was just one of the retro aficionados we got a chance to talk to during VCF East 2023. We already brought you the chat we had with [Andy Geppert] about magnetic core memory and his Core64 device, but there’s plenty more to come. Stay tuned.

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VCF East 2023: Andy Geppert Talks Core Memory

April 20, 2023 by Elliot Williams 18 Comments

Do you know core memory? Our prehistoric predecessors would store data in the magnetic fields of ferrite rings, reading out the ones and zeroes by setting the magnetic field and detecting if a small current is induced in a sense wire, indicating that the bit flipped, or not detecting the current, in which case it didn’t. Core memory is non-volatile, rad hard, and involved a tremendous amount of wire weaving to fabricate. And it’s pretty cool.

[Andy Geppert] wants to get you hands-on with this anachronistic memory, and builds kits to demo how it works. [Tom Nardi] and [Bil Herd] caught up with him at the Vintage Computer Festival East last weekend, and got him to demo his Core64 project for them. (Video, embedded below.)

The design of Core64 displays its state in lights at all times. And this means that you can write to it using either the onboard Pi Pico, for a blinky light show, or with a magnetic stylus, setting each bit’s magnetic state by hand. This turns it into a magnetic memory tablet and is a sweet demonstration of the principles that make it all work. Or, if you pulse the lines at just the right frequency, you can make the cores spin!

Watch [Andy] explaining it in our interview here, and stay tuned for more coming from VCF East 2023 soon.

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Vintage Computer Festival East Was A Retro Madhouse

April 19, 2023 by Tom Nardi 36 Comments

The Vintage Computer Festival East took place last weekend at the InfoAge Science and History Museum in New Jersey, and by any metric you care to use, it was a phenomenal success. Everyone you spoke with, from the the exhibitors and attendees, to the veteran volunteers who put this incredible show together, all said the same thing: they’d never seen a turnout like this before.

Of course, such success is not without cost. The exhibit rooms were so packed that moving through them was a challenge, the line to get food or browse the consignment area occasionally stretched outside the building, and at one point the event’s electronic payment system buckled under the pressure.

Yet even the folks who waited the better part of an hour to rummage through boxes of dusty treasures, only to find themselves left standing with armfuls of heavy gear they couldn’t pay for until the technical issues were resolved couldn’t really complain. I should know, I was one of them. It would be like going to a concert and getting upset that the music was too loud — the event was advertised as a festival, and that’s exactly what it was.

No matter where you went, you’d find throngs of excited people who were eager to chat about the golden age of computing. So even if you were stuck in a long line, or had to step outside of the exhibit area to get some fresh air, you were always in excellent company. Seeing such a large and diverse number of people come out for what’s ultimately a niche event was exceptionally gratifying. At the end of the day, if the price we have to pay for this kind of community response is a few long lines and tight squeezes, it’s well worth it.

Each time I cover an event like this for Hackaday, I do so with the caveat that there’s really no substitute for being there in person. No matter how many articles you read and YouTube recaps you watch, you’ll never be able to see all the things you would have had you been able to walk the show floor yourself. It’s a bit like exploring the Moon or Mars: remotely controlled robots are capable of capturing terabytes of data and beaming it back to Earth, but even still, there’s the potential to learn so much more by putting boots on the ground.

The same is true of VCF East 2023 — what I bring you here is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what was on display at this year’s event. On the other hand, you have the advantage of being able to peruse these images without having to stand in line. Is it worth the trade? Only you can be the judge of that. But for my money, I’ll gladly get back in line when VCF East 2024 rolls around.

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