Category: Vintage Computer Festival

Commodore Employee Fireside Chat at VCF East 2022!

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Events, Vintage Computer Festival

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!

Women in Vintage Computers at VCF East 2022

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Vintage Computer Festival


One of the themes for Vintage Computer Festival East is “Women in Computing”. My Idea for this theme started with one woman: Margaret Morabito. She wrote a book titled “Vintage Commodore 128 Personal Computer Handbook” published in 2019. More recently she collaborated on a book with one of the creators of the Commodore 128 computer, Bil Herd. After they both talked about their book during VCF West in 2021 I was curious to know more about her. Through my research I discovered that she was a technical editor for RUN magazine for many years. RUN Magazine was published from January 1984 until December 1992. The magazine contained articles about Commodore 8-bit home computers and peripherals as well as reviews on available software packages. In addition, every issue featured several type-in programs written in BASIC and/or machine language. The magazine’s name came from the BASIC command “RUN”, which started execution of the computer’s program, presumably typed in from the magazine.

Even though I had subscribed to that magazine years ago, I had never heard of her. My original thought was to create a theme around authors of magazines, books and other publications from the vintage computer era. I called to ask her to be a speaker for our show and find out more about her. I learned that she designed and ran the Tutoring Center, the Q-Link Community College and Parent-Teacher Information Exchange. Q-Link was an online service for the Commodore 64 back in the 1980’s when most people connected to each other and to online services through telephone modems. She later ran the school on other services such as GEnie, Delphi, CompuServe, AppleLink, AOL, and PCLink. These were early online services back in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Most are defunct, but some like AOL continue to this day. Amazed at her experience, I thought that maybe there were other women in vintage computing besides the “big names” from history that I had read about like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and the ENIAC programmers.

Continue reading “Women in Vintage Computers at VCF East 2022”

VCF East 2022 Exhibitor Deadline is April 1

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Events, Vintage Computer Festival

To all those wishing to do an exhibit for VCF East 2022, the exhibitor deadline is fast approaching. The deadline is April 1, so if you want to do an exhibit, then please register for it quickly! We still have room for exhibitors, but it’s going to start filling up quickly.

Exhibitor registration is found through this link: Exhibitor Registration

Check here for a list of currently registered exhibits: Currently Registered Exhibits

Dates are April 22, 23, 24, 2022

Location: InfoAge Science and History Museums, Wall, NJ

For more information on our show: VCF East Info

 

VCF East 2022

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Vintage Computer Festival

The Vintage Computer Federation is proud to announce our Vintage Computer Festival East 2022! Last year’s show was great and this year’s show is looking to be just as big and exciting. Great talks, exhibits, classes and exhibits. We’ve already lined up some great speakers including well known Commodore engineers such as Bil Herd, Dave Haynie, Andy Finkel and many others. Keep up to date with main page here: https://vcfed.org/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/

We have two themes this year:

Women in Computing

Computers for the masses.

If you are interested in exhibiting? Click Here

If you are interested in doing a class Click Here

If you are being a vendor Click Here

 

Workshops and demos and moon bounce, oh my! at VCF East 2021

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Events, Vintage Computer Federation Museum, Vintage Computer Festival

There will be more than just the exhibits, classes, talks and consignment during VCF East 2021. There will also be the following:

GLITCHWORKS

Glitch will be selling and helping people to build various kits at his workshop in the CDL building Friday (10/8), Saturday (10/9) and Sunday (10/10) from 1PM to 5PM during VCF East.

Here is what he will be offering:

* XT-IDE rev 4A kits
* R6501Q SBC kits
* RAM expansion for R6501Q kits
* 8085 SBC rev 3 kits
* CF adapter boards (works with both R6501Q and 8085 SBC rev 3, but really for the 8085 SBC)
* 8255 parallel I/O and prototyping interfaces
* Blank prototyping cards

UNIVAC 1219B
We will demo this machine from 1 to 3PM Saturday and  and Sunday  in the VCF museum.

LEARN TO SOLDER

We will have someone teaching beginners how to solder in the CDL workshop area Saturday and Sunday from 8AM to 5PM

BOUNCE YOUR VOICE OFF THE MOON

Saturday and Sunday from 1PM to 5PM at the Diana site 2 tenths of a mile walk down the road from the InfoAge main building. ISEC has many exhibits to see and learn about:

VCF East 2021 Consignment

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Events, Vintage Computer Federation Museum, Vintage Computer Festival

Hello everyone,

We are *not* doing a swap meet at our event. There just aren’t enough volunteers and the show would be spread out too much. We are however doing consignment for anyone wishing to buy or sell items.

I’ve had some people who were having trouble finding the information about consignment on the website. So I added links to the website, but for convenience here is the main website for VCF East consignment. It’s helpful for us if everyone to filled out the Consignment Sale Sheet before they arrive.

Here are the instructions for filling it out. Here is an example sheet to understand how to fill it out.

Any questions? E-mail vcfeast AT vcfed.org

 

 

VCF East 2021 Covid Protocols and Policies

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Vintage Computer Federation Museum, Vintage Computer Festival

Hello Everyone,

We’ve been asked about the Covid-19 protocols at VCF East 2021. Please forgive the delay. We waited to see how things would be as we got closer to the show. We have decided that the following policies and protocols will be followed:

InfoAge policy is that vaccinated people are not required to wear a mask, but unvaccinated people *must* wear a mask while indoors and maintain social distancing outdoors. 
However as per CDC guidelines we strongly recommend that everyone wear a mask indoors and socially distance outdoors.
New Jersey does not have a requirement for proof of vaccination for indoor events. 
We expect to keep open where practical every available door and window to provide increased ventilation in indoor spaces. 
The State of New Jersey does not have occupancy limitations at this time.

For those that don’t feel comfortable coming in person, we are working on a streaming option as well as Discord channels for those wanting to participate from a distance. Please check on our virtual show page (https://vcfed.org/vcf-east-virtual-show/) for updates as they are created.

If you have any other questions or comments, then please e-mail: vcfeast AT vcfed.org

There will be more announcements over the next week about VCF East 2021. Lots of exciting developments. Or you can look at our show page to see as they are updated: https://vcfed.org/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/

Thank you and hope to see you at the show!

VCF East 2021 will be the biggest show yet!

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: east, Events, Vintage Computer Festival

Ever wonder about the roots of today’s technological society?

Did you spend the Covid-19 lockdown nostalgically playing old video games from the past on an emulator?

Do you want to get hands-on with computers ranging from the 1960’s thru the late 1980’s?

Come to the Vintage Computer Festival East in Wall NJ on October 8th thru 10th, 2021!

On Friday, October 8th, there are classes in everything from CRT display repair to hands-on building your own Intel 8085 board set computer.

On Saturday and Sunday, join us for hands-on exhibits of vintage and classic computers along with talks from the people who were at the beginning of what makes today’s world of technology common place. Talks include Dr. Ted Nelson, the pioneer of hypertext, the building block of the World Wide Web.

Listen to stories from Scott Adams, who brought adventure gaming to personal computers and David Ahl, who literally wrote the book, “Basic Computer Gaming”, that fueled many early home computer purchases.

Hear stories from Bil Herd’s years at Commodore and get him to sign his new book!

Hear from Bill Mensch about how a small microchip company from Pennsylvania in the 1970’s created a 6502 microprocessor that would not only power the home computer and home video game revolution thru the 1980’s but is still in use today in consumer devices.

For tickets, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vintage-computer-festival-east-2021-tickets-157239897767?aff=affiliate1

Learn more about the Vintage Computer Festival East at https://vcfed.org/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east

Pictures from VCF East 2019: here and here

Click HERE to download our 8 & 1/2″ x 11″ flyer.

VCF West This Weekend

Posted on by Erik Klein Category: Vintage Computer Festival
The 2021 Vintage Computer Festival West will happen as planned this weekend, August 7th and 8th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.
We have dozens of awesome exhibits and an amazing schedule filled with great speakers as well as PDP-1 and 1401 demos at the Museum.
Tickets are available for pre-purchase or may be purchased at the door.
Please note: As of midnight last night Santa Clara County is instituting an indoor mask requirement for all people, vaccinated or not.
This means that everyone at VCF West needs to be masked during the event.  The only exceptions are for people speaking on stage or those with proven medical necessity, including communications for the hearing impaired.
We look forward to seeing you there!