Coming soon! VCF Southeast, VCF East

Vintage Computer Festival Southeast and Vintage Computer Festival East are both just a few weeks away.

Southeast (April 2-3, Roswell, Georgia) has 23 exhibits and three keynotes, including early Apple industrial designer Jerry Manock, microprocessor pioneer Ray Holt (a VCF West veteran), and Commodore engineer Bil Herd (a VCF East veteran). Get all the details.

East (April 15-17, Wall, New Jersey) has 29 exhibits, several technical classes, and three keynotes, including Kenbak-1 inventor John Blankenbaker, Computer Chronicles host Stewart Chiefet, and Computer Lib / Dream Machines author Ted Nelson. Get all the details.

Exhibit registration is still open for both shows.

Setting up the expanded museum in NJ

We closed our NJ museum last month and we’re re-opening with twice the exhibit space in time for VCF East next month. This past weekend we brought in some big iron: half of our UNIVAC 1219B mainframe, circa 1965; a Cray YMP-EL supercomputer, from 1992; and a StorageTek 9710 Library Storage Module, hailing from 1995.

943964_1225519930799441_7668163154575092564_nThe UNIVAC is the same model used aboard Navy ships for weapons control. Left to right: UNIVAC 1219B computer, a.k.a. Mk.-152 Digital Fire Control Computer, a.k.a. CP-848; UNIVAC 1540 Magnetic Tape, a.k.a. Mk.-19 Digital Data Recorder, a.k.a. RD-294; Ocean Tech Mk.-75 Signal Data Converter; a custom digital switching unit built Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (which donated the whole system); and UNIVAC 1532 I/O console, a.k.a. MK-77 I/O console, a.k.a. OA-7984.

12814301_1225519967466104_6444040024590820906_nThe supercomputer and tape library will be part of an exhibit of “modern history”. The wall behind them will be painted circuit board green and will have pictures of several dozen other recently-obsoleted products, such fax machines, Rolodex, paper maps, handheld game consoles, and so on. A sign across the top will state: “Everything on this wall now fits in your pocket.” We’ll have trace-like lines going from each item along the edges to a modern smartphone in the center.

Not pictured but also recently moved in: a 1956 Bendix G-15 vacuum tube computer, a custom 1958 George Philbrick analog computer originally built for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s mechanical engineering department, and a 1965 IBM 1130.

Coming soon: lots of minicomputers and dozens of microcomputers!