Vintage Computer Festival West (#vcfwest) is underway. In addition to the exhibit hall, there’s a full slate of lectures, panels, and special demonstrations. There’s nothing like being there in person, but this year we are experimenting with our first live stream — please forgive us if the quality isn’t fully professional. Make some popcorn and click over to our YouTube channel to watch all weekend. Enjoy the show!
Vintage Computer Festival West is August 3-4
VCF West is just a few weeks away! You’ll find three dozen incredible hands-on exhibits, a special exhibit with at least 10 original Apple-1 computers, a restored Apollo Guidance Computer, an amazingly detailed technical lecture by legendary Commodore engineer Bil Herd, our huge consignment sale, and much more!!! It’s all happening at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, right in the heart of Silicon Valley — with special thanks to our supporters at Hackaday and the Association for Computing Machinery. Get your tickets online now to save time at the show! Click here for all of the details.
CHM’s Dag Spicer joins VCF board of directors
We’re honored to announce that Dag Spicer is our newest board member! Dag is senior curator at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.
Dag’s background is in electrical engineering and history. He joined VCF to assist in expanding the grassroots involvement of computer enthusiasts in the story of computing, one in which every person on earth is now a part. Originally from Canada, Dag now lives in Santa Clara, CA. His hobbies include reading, hockey, and Cycladic art.
VCF West: Call for exhibitors and speakers; online ticketing is open!
Vintage Computer Festival West 2019 is just two months away! The show is August 3-4 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
We are going to have a fabulous show and hope to set a new record for attendance. Buy your tickets online now!
This year we’re having a special gathering of several working Apple 1 computers. Their owners will participate in a panel discussion to tell the stories behind these rare machines. We will also hear from the team who restored an Apollo Guidance Computer, and we’re always happy to welcome Commodore engineer Bil Herd.
Additional speakers and classes are pending but we still have room on the schedule for more of everything. So if you have something to share, please let us know!
If you haven’t signed up for your exhibit yet please do so ASAP. The sooner we get that list together, the sooner we can lay out the hall and get the program started. Click here for the exhibits page.
Comments/questions? Contact erik@vcfed.org.
VCF East wrap-up, win a prize!
Vintage Computer Festival East is in our rearview mirror. It was our biggest east-coast show ever! The highlights were the keynotes by Unix co-inventor Ken Thompson (with Brian Kernighan interviewing him on stage) and Atari hardware engineer Joe Decuir. Watch all of the show videos here.
We’d also like to thank all of the exhibitors, especially those who banded together to make anniversary-edition Unix and Atari exhibits. Additional special thanks to all of the volunteers and speakers, and of course to everyone who attended!
We wouldn’t end this blog post without also thanking our sponsor Hackaday and the Association for Computing Machinery. We also owe gratitude to organizations that simply retweeted us to large audiences, such as the IEEE, Bell Labs, and ArsTechnica.
Upload your show photos here. We’ll see you again next year!
Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest 2019 wrap-up
We had a great time last weekend! Congratulations to our award winners!
- Max Tonnage Award, Josh Dersch, 40 Years of the Three Rivers PERQ Workstation
- Youngest Exhibitor, George Amores, Commodore 64 vs. Commodore Plus 4
- Most Interactive, Joerg Hoppe, BlinkenBone, Program a PDP-11/70 over reanimated front panel
- Best Display, John Ball, AppleTalk – Apple’s First Generation Network Protocol
- Most Interesting Presentation, Rick Bensene, Wang Laboratories’ Electronic Calculators
- Most Complete System, Jason Howe, Atari 800 Productivity
- Garage Queen, Stephen M. Jones, SDF Public Access UNIX System
- Best Restoration, Chris Henkel, Early PC based Engineering Workstations
- What the heck is that?, Kaylin, Hayes, & Papenhoff, PDP-6 emulation with interface to PDP-6 Console and 340 Display
- Kill-A-Watt, Madeline Autumn-Rose, CompuServe and Their PDP-10 Clones
- The Overachiever Award, Ian Finder, Only Amiga Makes It Necessary and The GRiD
- Best in Show, Sergey Kiselev, Retro Brew Computing – Do-it-yourself 8-bit Single Board Computers
It was my first time handing out awards, so I apologize for the flubs and wonderfully awkward moments. 🙂
Links to the presentations can be found on the event page at https://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw/.
If you attended the event please consider adding your pictures to the shared photo album at https://photos.app.goo.gl/e2rzk4iT4aHrQUoy6. It helps others to see the show from a different perspective, and it helps us who were too busy to take pictures.
And one last request – help us make VCFed events even better! If you were at VCF PNW 2019 please fill out a short survey for us: https://goo.gl/forms/V3DiyxwkpbIOCKn73
See you in 2020!
Mike, on behalf of VCFed
VCF Pacific Northwest 2019 is this weekend!
VCF PNW 2019 is this weekend in Seattle!
Come check out the 30 exhibits, enjoy six presentations, and go hunting for treasure in the consignment area. And of course come for the people – they are what make a VCF event so fun!
Details can be found at https://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw. We hope to see you there!
Mike on behalf of the VCF PNW crew
Exhibit registration is open for VCF Southeast
A note from our friends at the Atlanta Historical Computing Society about Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 7.0: exhibit registration is open! The show will be Saturday, April 27, 2019, 10AM-7PM, and Sunday, April 28, 2019, 12PM-5PM.
This year’s focus is on the 50th anniversary of Unix and 40th anniversary of the Atari personal computer (and the TI-99/4). More space is expected to be available than last year, so visitors should expect to see more than 30 exhibits. The event takes place at the currently under-construction Computer Museum of America in Roswell, Georgia.
Visitors will be able to view the museum’s artifacts and construction in progress through viewing panels. You may be able to explore part of the museum, depending on the status of construction.
Announcements about keynote speakers are coming soon.
Ken Thompson to speak VCF East
Ken Thompson, who invented the UNIX operating system with Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the 1960s and 1970s, will be a star at Vintage Computer Festival East this year! It’s the 50th anniversary of when their work began. Thompson also wrote the programming language B, which preceded Ritchie’s world-changing language C. His accomplishments on these and other important works in computer science must be acknowledged. Ken will be interviewed on stage on Saturday morning, May 4, by Bell Labs’ Brian Kernighan of K&R fame. Brian himself spoke at VCF East in 2015.
VCF PNW 2019: Last call for Exhibitors!
If you were thinking of joining us for VCF Pacific Northwest 2019 in Seattle then now is the time to let me know!
The event is March 23-24th (Saturday and Sunday) with setup the day before. We still have room for some more exhibits if you are interested in joining us. If you are going to join us I need to know by Friday, February 8th. If you have told me you were coming but did not complete the registration form, well, now is the time …
A description of the event can be found at https://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw. General information for exhibitors including pictures from last year, a link to the registration form, and a FAQ can be found at https://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw-exhibitor-registration/. Also, yell at me directly if you have questions.
Thanks,
Mike
mbbrutman@brutman.com or michael@vcfed.org
PS: Not exhibiting at the event but interested in unloading some tonnage? We are hosting a consignment area again! The consignment area is open to everybody; now is a good time to start cleaning and testing things that you might want to sell.