Category: Vintage Computer Festival

Hello everyone,

VCF East 2022 was a great success! Initial reports indicate that financially we recouped our large expenses this year. Everyone that I ran into seemed very pleased with all aspects of the show and thanked me for all my hardwork and dedication for making this show great. The talks were diverse and top notch, the consignment was very profitable and great treasures to be found, the food on site was appreciated, the exhibits were incredibly exciting, lots of cool VCF Swag to be bought and the comradery was fun.

I want to thank everyone who volunteered and helped me with the planning, setup and breakdown of the show. I spent countless hours planning for this show over the weeks and months before the show. Despite the huge amount of time and dedication that I put into this show by myself, I would not be able to make this show happen without the volunteers. The quality of the show has been improved due to the volunteers such as the Sea Cadets and all the individuals who made my job easier and improved the quality of the show overall. For me, this is a part time job in the months leading up to this show and a full time job the week before the show. I want to thank Bill and Rick who helped me plan for hours every week ahead of the show. Bill is my right hand man who helps set up the signs, docenting at the museum and with anything that I need, before, during and after the show. Rick helped with the planning and the survey as well as setup, docent duty and breakdown after the show. The Sea Cadets were incredibly helpful with crowd management and helping in all areas of the show. I want to thank Alex for organizing the volunteers and running the consignment. They brought consignment up to a new level with a Point of Sale System, setting up storage carts for a less crowded room, labeling for items, spreadsheet inventory and many other tweaks. Thanks to Corey for running the front desk, helping with setup and breakdown of it. I felt relaxed to know that he would have everything running there smoothly. Jason was great in setting up the tables, managing the exhibitors and for making the campus map as well as Lawson for making the exhibitor map. Ethan O and crew for bringing the A/V to an even higher level of professionalism. They were so good last year, but were even better this year! Thanks to Adam and Tony for setup and teaching and all the instructors for doing the Apple 2 classroom. It was very successful. Glitch had another incredible workshop and adjusted nicely due to lack of kits by making it an S-100 repair workshop. Chris L for helping where I needed at the front gate, breakdown, etc. Chris F for being the speaker coordinator and all the other people who helped with the day before, during and after the show. I was very glad to be able to go home “early” on Sunday by 10PM due to help with breakdown. I’m usually there until 2AM and come back Monday for several hours to clean up.

Thanks to all the great speakers for such diverse, interesting and enjoyable talks. Thanks especially to Bil Herd for wrangling 12 Commodore speakers together in one spot. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see so many of them in one spot. Thanks to all the Commodorians who came. You will never see this happen again. Thanks to Burger Becky for such incredible talks. Thanks to Kathy Kleiman for a fun interactive talk. Thanks to Stephen Edwards for moderating the technical talks with the Commodore folks. Thanks to all the in-person and virtual speakers who had diverse and fun talks.

All the steamed talks were made private so that we have a chance to clean up the videos and release them as separate talks. We need some time to edit and process them before releasing them.

Our next year’s show will be April 14, 15 and 16, 2023 back at InfoAge. There will be two themes for this show. The first is: Computing in Education. The second theme will be announced shortly.

For those that attended the show, please fill out this survey so that we may improve the show: https://bit.ly/vcfe2022post.

I hope to see everyone again next year for an incredibly fantastic show!

Jeff Brace

Showrunner for Vintage Computer Festival East

VCF East is April 22, 23, 24 from 8AM to 5PM. Look for information here: https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

We are doing Discord channels again this year for VCF East 2022. We created three sections this year for anyone to discuss the talks and the exhibits. The three sections are:

1. VCF East 2022 Talks
2. VCF East 2022 Exhibits
3. VCF East 2022 Vendors

Channels were created for each individual talk and each exhibit. We setup a channel q-and-a-for-speakers channel available for questions for the speakers, however we cannot guarantee the questions will be asked due to lack of available volunteers to monitor the channel. For those interested in joining our Discord, here is our server invitation: https://discord.gg/32maJ6gddU

We ask that you consider donating to the Vintage Computer Federation. These funds will help us continue our work of preserving and sharing computer history. It will also enable us to continue to offer high quality shows and events, as well as improvements and upgrades to our facilities. You can send donations to paypal@vcfed.org or a check to our mailing address: P.O. Box 417, Eatontown, NJ 07724.

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that there is one last minute addition to the speaker schedule: Valerie See. She will give her talk on Sunday at 9AM (virtually). It didn’t make the program book, but it is scheduled on the website.

The title of her talk: “Tales from the Silicon Prairie: Working at Tandy / Radio Shack 1984-1994”

Description of her talk: Valerie See worked at Tandy / Radio Shack on their computer line from 1984 – 1994, starting as a field service representative in upstate New York, and ending up as the manager of Computer Support (Tech Support) at Tandy headquarters in Fort Worth. In this talk, she’ll share memories of her time at Tandy / Radio Shack, running the gamut from sharing details of the publications, software, and hardware that Tech Support produced, to stories from the trenches working on Tandy line computers in the field and at Tech Support. In this 10 year period, Tandy computers moved from the Z80A-based Model I and Model II to 80386 based systems like the Model 4000, and even the first licensed non-IBM microchannel system, the Model 5000.

A biography of Valerie See

Valerie See has spent nearly 40 years working in high tech, starting at Tandy / Radio Shack in the 1980s and continuing to the present day, where she’s worked at Microsoft for over 25 years. Her first job at Radio Shack was a short stint in a retail outlet, but she quickly moved to working as a shipping clerk, then field service engineer, in a Radio Shack computer repair center in Albany NY. While attending a training course at Tandy HQ in Fort Worth, she was hired as a Technical Support Representative and moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1984, and spent the next 10 years working in Computer Support (Tech Support). She became the Diagnostics Coordinator in 1989, and the Manager of Computer Support overall in 1993, where she remained until she left Tandy in 1994. While at Tandy, Valerie was responsible for support of field personnel across the entire computer product line, but specialized in the business focused systems, including the multi-user Xenix and Unix systems. After Tandy, Valerie worked at Adaptec as a Field Application Engineer and Senior System Engineer on high end storage and networking products until 1996. She joined Microsoft in 1996, where she still works as a Director of Open Source Engineering; during her time at Microsoft, she worked on many releases of Windows (from Windows NT 4.0 Server, Enterprise Edition through the Windows 7 family releases), and also on Windows Phone 7.0 – 8.1. Valerie has a B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and is a registered patent agent.

#FujiNet for the Commodore 64 premieres at VCF East 2022!

Jeff Piepmeier will be exhibiting several versions of #FujiNet. His exhibit features hardware and software in active development targeting Apple II (using SmartPort/Protocol Converter) and a first time reveal of work on the Commodore 64 (using IEC).

FujiNet began as a network adapter for Atari 8-bit personal computers and has grown into a multiuse all-purpose peripheral targeting multiple vintage computers. The current hardware is based on the ESP32-WROVER module with a microSD card for holding disk images, configuration files, and pdf printer output. Firmware provides wireless access to disk images stored in the cloud using the TNFS protocol. Other “protocol adapters” provide a streamlined interface to telnet, http, ftp, etc. Units for Atari 8-bit (using SIO) and Coleco Adam (using AdamNet) computers have been released with open source hardware and software.

The VCF Museum already has working versions of the #FujiNet for the Coleco Adam and the Atari 1200XL. Come check them out!

Do you recognize this guy?

That’s Bil Herd co-inventor of the Commodore 128 microcomputer.

How about this one?

That’s Dave Haynie co-inventor of several Commodore Amiga microcomputers.

How about this one?

That’s Andy Finkel. Software engineer on several Commodore Amiga microcomputers.

All of these people list above worked for a company called Commodore which made some of the best selling, innovative microcomputers of all time!

Would you like to meet these people?

Well you are in luck! We are excited to announce the biggest Commodore employee reunion in years!

Where can you find them? At VCF East 2022!

Everyone loved our Virtual VCF 2020 gabfest between Bil Herd and Dave Haynie. Well this year’s gabfest will be many times bigger!

On Friday, April 22 will be the technical talks:

12:30 to 2PM: Bil Herd and Albert Charpentier will be discussing the technical aspects of the Commodore VIC and VIC-II chip.

2:30PM to 4PM: Dave Haynie and Andy Finkel will be discussing the technical aspects of the Amiga microchips.

On Saturday, April 23 will be the COMMODORE EMPLOYEE FIRESIDE CHAT from 12:30PM to 2:30PM!!!

• Bil Herd – Co-creator of the Commodore 128, Plus/4
• Dave Haynie – Co-creator of the Amiga 4000
• Andy Finkel – member of the VIC Commandos, was C64 developer software manager, head of the games group, software manager, Amiga software manager, then director of Amiga software, then CDTV consultant.
• Neil Harris – One of the Vic-20 Commandos that successfully brought bring the Vic-20 to market
• Bob Russell – Instrumental in the development of the C64 and Vic-20
  • Pet Computer: 2nd Generation (4000 & 8000 series)
    Original CBM dual floppy disk drive
    VIC-20: Convinced Management to make this a ‘real computer’
    P and B Series: Oversaw the Kernel development.
    C-64 and MAX
    1541 Disk Drive: Software to work with the C-64 timing.
    Z8000 Business Machines
• Benny Pruden – Numerous Commodore hardware and software projects including:
  • Commodore Cash Register firmware (including printer mechanism driver)
  • Pet Business BASIC extensions
  • CP/M, CP/M-86, & Concurrent CP/M  BIOS(s) for Super Pet
  • 1541 C64 floppy firmware release
  • C64 Cheap / Fast floppy disk
  • Super Pet Kernel bank switching routines
  • 1541 C64 floppy disk cost reduction
  • Z8 based Universal Format floppy driver
  • Another Fast Floppy disk prototype (With H/W shift register acceleration)
  • Universal Format floppy custom chip architecture & firmware driver 
  • Amiga evaluation & floppy tweak
• Joe Myshko -VAX system administrator
• Cary Sagedy Amiga Genloc, Emmy winning Broadcast camera for RCA
• Hedley Davis – LCD, 1351 Mouse, A3000, The Hedley Davis Memorial Disk Drive, SX52, A2024 Hires Monitor, CDTV-CR., XBOX, 3DO, WebTV. Spinning globe demo, debugged TED cassette code, Hedley Hires display.
• Dave Esposito – Calma IC Layout at MOS

Following the fireside chat will a birthday party for the Commodore 64. Celebrating its 40th birthday!

Don’t miss your chance to see this once in a lifetime opportunity!