zurich

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Vintage Computer Festival Switzerland This Weekend

November 18, 2016 by 5 Comments

This weekend marks the Vintage Computer Festival Europe – Switzerland, a two-day extravaganza of vintage hardware held in Zurich, Switzerland.

Of interest for this VCF will be an LGP-30 replica (a computer without RAM or ROM released in 1956), an IBM System/360 front panel, lots of blinkenlights, Swiss computers, and [Oscarv], creator of the very successful PiDP-8/I project on Hackaday.io, will be there with his minified PiDP-11/70. If you don’t have one of [Oscar]’s PiDP8 machines sitting on your desk yet, don’t worry — the 11/70 is the one you really want. It is beautiful.

As you would expect from a Vintage Computer Festival, all the standards will be there. The flea market is open, soldering stations are present, talks will be held, and very old and very rare hardware will be blinking. From our experience with Vintage Computer Festivals, Europe does it right. Last year’s festival in Munich was a blast, and this year’s celebration in Zurich looks like it will be as well.

Gathering The Hacking Community Of Zurich

September 29, 2015 by 3 Comments

When my Swiss cousin-in-law sent us her wedding invitation, I didn’t immediately think I’d get to see Hackaday.io user [antti.lukats‘] tiny FPGA projects as part of the deal. I’m really glad that I came to Switzerland for the wedding, and also got to be a part of an awesome meetup in Zurich’s Fablab. [Antti], who was at the meetup, is pictured above holding a small tube full of FPGAs, he’s a Hackaday Prize Best Product finalist with FPGA project DIPSY.

As is becoming the norm for Hackaday meetups, we ask people to bring projects. We then count all the people who want to present something and squeeze all the presentations into just about 90 minutes. Before and after the lightening talks, there’s always plenty of time to walk around and see individual projects, meet people and of course eat and drink.

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Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Zürich On Thursday

September 23, 2015 by 2 Comments

Join us for a Meetup Thursday the 24th of September in Zürich, Switzerland. We’re co-hosting a meetup with FabLab Zürich and we are excited to see you!

Doors open at 18:00 on Thursday, 24 September. We’ll have some food and drink, project show and tell, and time to hang out and get to know each other. This is a free event but please RSVP to let us know you’re coming.

Bring the project you are working on to show off, everyone loves to see projects regardless of what stage they’re in. Many times, showing your project and talking about it pushes your project forward; “oh hey, I have an extra RN42 BT module you can have” or “I already wrote a driver for that chip and it’s on github”. Showing your project to others can also inspire someone else to make their own project based on your awesome idea. I’ve been motivated many times to start a project because of what I saw someone else make.

Germany Too!

This Zurich meetup isn’t the only chance to connect with Hackaday in Europe. Next week, we’ll be in Berlin! We’re co-hosting a Berlin Meetup with Vintage Computer Festival organizers in the evening after Berlin Maker Faire and the Vintage Computing Festival. VCF have planned food and drink, a live band or two… chip tunes! It will be on October 3rd, and [Elliot], [Sophi] and [Bilke] will all be there.