Vintage Computer Festival Turns 25! VCF West 2022

The Vintage Computer Festival started in on October 25, 1997 at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California. Founded by Sellam Abraham after posting to cctalk (Classic Computing) Discussion List. By 2006 it found it’s home at the Computer History Museum. Stopping in 2007 and rebooted in 2016.

VCF West 2022 is fast approaching!

Held again at The Computer History Museum in Mountain View California on August 6 & 7.

Exhibit registrations will be closing after the July 4th holiday and speaker slots are just about full!
If you’re planning on exhibiting please sign up ASAP here.
If you’d like to speak please email me at erik@vcfed.org with your ideas and availability.
Volunteers are always needed to help at our front desk, in consignment, with set-up and tear down and or with any number of other tasks that keep the show running smoothly.  Students are welcome to volunteer and we will sign or otherwise document this for volunteer hours.
And, finally, tickets are on sale at Eventbrite – tell your friends and forward this information far and wide!

Repair Workshop at System Source Following Swap Meet

There will be a repair workshop following the swap meet starting at 2PM until 7PM

Signup here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wHIQ-T8EnZdNkUWN_f-rG2hApgCEDqwwdjnAdoNmrWM/edit?usp=sharing

The Vintage Computer Federation and the System Source Computer Museum are hosting a vintage computer workshop on Saturday June 18th  from 2PM until 7:30PM (following the swap meet) and Sunday June 19th 2022 from 9AM to 5PM at:

System Source Computer Museum
338 Clubhouse Rd
Hunt Valley, MD 21031
GPS locationGoogle Maps
EMAIL: museum@syssrc.com
PHONE: 410-952-9140

Plenty of free parking, short walk from Baltimore’s light rail (Gilroy Road Stop)

ON SATURDAY, June 18 we will open at 2PM following the swap meet and will lock up by 7:30 PM.

ON SUNDAY, June 19: We will open at 9:00 AM and lock up at 5:00 PM

Accommodations:

Try https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g41196-Hunt_Valley_Maryland-Hotels.html

Feel free to talk with others about sharing a room.

Food:   There are plenty of restaurants within a short drive.   We will have a catered Indian buffet on Saturday at cost ($12.00?) and catered Barbecue ($12.00?) on Sunday for those who are interested.

We will feature tours of the museum throughout both days and several mini-workshops:

  • Retrobright workshop(bring your yellowed plastics)
  • Lots of New vintage computers from the DigiBarn Collection
  • Hot Metal Typesetting (3500 lb word processor)
How the Repair Workshops work:

Repair workshops are events which are open to the general public where members of all levels technical abilities and experience get together to help each other repair vintage computer hardware. Usually, we will have a signup Google Sheet where we let others know what we are working on and which items we are bringing for repair. This helps others know if they want to work together or just bring tool or software to help with your project. The signup sheet also helps the organizers to plan on how many are coming.

We have been doing the repair workshops for several years at InfoAge and try to do them once per month. We have done them at System Source for a few years and do them once or twice per year. The repair workshop at InfoAge has a fee to rent the rooms while the repair workshop at System Source is no charge. Each location has a different time schedule. Check on the individual pages for more information.