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”

Website fixed.

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: General Announcement, Website

We have discovered the solution to our website having so many 500 server errors. This has been a persistent problem for the past year and elusive as to the cause.
The problem has been fixed on 3/29/2022, then we moved to another server on 3/30/2022.
Please clear your cache, and restart your browser to clear the 404 error. If you did this on 3/29, then you will have to do it again on 3/30.
Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!
We will be updating many of our pages now that things are running smoothly and we can update without errors. Some changes and updates were not going through in recent months.
VCF East is in high gear and we hope to see all of you there!
VCF West is in the early planning stages and set for August.

Updated March 30, 2022

VCF East 2022 – Pre Event Survey

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: Events, Survey

Vintage Computer Federation is looking to gather feedback on our upcoming VCF East event.

Please fill out this brief survey to help us to create better events for everyone: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/X3KRG5L

This is an anonymous survey that will help us plan our events.

Thanks so much for your help!
=========================================
Jeff Brace
Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner

Website errors

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: General Announcement, Website

Hello everyone,

You may have encountered some 503 and other server errors trying to access our website for the past year or so. It is a problem with out WordPress installation. We have been trying to troubleshoot the existing installation for the past few months, but the fixes haven’t lasted. Locating the exact problem has been elusive and our fixes haven’t worked. So we will be installing a fresh copy of WordPress onto a completely new server and copying our web pages over. We are hoping that fresh install will alleviate the problems that we have been having for the past year. We hope to complete this change over the next week. There many be a few hours when the website is unavailable. We will do our best to minimize the time and let you know in advance.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

Thanks you for your continued support and patience!

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 Swap Meet Update 2/25/2022

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: Events, Swap Meet

Here’s a map of the event and where everything is:

Rooms where swap meet Vendors are

Overview of swap meet Parking.

Vendors will be in 9032-A, 9001, 9010-D.

Free Pile is in 9010-D.

Food is 9010-C, but you must go into entrance of 9010-D and turn left.

Vendors drive through front gate and check in at 9032-A.

Buyers park in parking lot and walk through front gate.

Any more updates will be put onto swap meet web page: https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/

VCF Swap Meet Free Pile

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: Events, Swap Meet

VCF has collected several items over the last few years of events
that have not sold over multiple events which will be offered for free
in a “free pile” at this weekend’s Swap Meet and this is the last
opportunity to rescue these items as anything left will be recycled.

Sellers who have paid for a spot will have first opportunity access to
this “free pile” before the start of the event and in all cases items
are available on a strict first come first serve basis.

Additionally, both sellers and buyers are welcome to put items in this
“free pile” with the understanding of certain rules.

RULES FOR THE VCF FREE PILE:
1. Please ask a VCF staff member for permission at the event to put
any items in the free pile.
2. Please understand the policy for the free pile is that anything you
leave which remains at the end of the event must be taken home by you
(or someone you designate). VCF cannot be held responsible for storing
or recycling it.

Thanks and happy free hunting!

Updated July 28, 2022.

Swap Meet Sat Feb. 26, 2022 @ InfoAge is a go!

Posted on by Jeffrey Brace Category: Events, Swap Meet

Sign up now to reserve a space at VCF Swap Meet Sat. Feb. 26, 2022 @ InfoAge

The VCF swap meet scheduled for Sat. Feb. 26 is getting into high gear as vendors are signing up and buyers are inquiring. 

VENDOR SETUP at 7AM

GENERAL ADMISSION: 8AM until 2PM

There is still some spaces available, but pre-registration guarantees a space.

This is an indoor swap meet. It’s February after all and likely to be cold that day.

Location is inside InfoAge Science and History Museums campus

Food and drink on site.

Additional information about the swap meet is here

Look at the attached PDF for someone selling some nice Tektronix items.