Sep 7, 2024
at vintage computer festival midwest, newly relocated to the schaumburg convention center, the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living
seen from Sweden
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Singapore
seen from Iraq
seen from Türkiye
seen from Portugal
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Sweden
seen from United States
seen from Maldives
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Ukraine
seen from Kyrgyzstan
seen from Sweden
seen from United Kingdom
at vintage computer festival midwest, newly relocated to the schaumburg convention center, the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living
Upcoming Vintage Computer Festivals
Do you like vintage computers, and want to interact with the community at large? Well, here are the upcoming events we know of for the United States in 2023: Vintage Computer Festival East: April 14, 15, & 16 - InfoAge Science Museum, Wall, NJ https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/
Vintage Computer Festival Southwest: June 23, 24, & 25 - Davidson Gundy Alumni Center at UT, Dallas, TX https://www.vcfsw.org/ Note: this one is returning after about a decade, and is being organized by a new team of people.
Vintage Computer Festival West: Tentatively, August 5 & 6 - Somewhere in Silicon Valley Details pending formal announcement https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/
Vintage Computer Festival Midwest: September 9 & 10 - Elmhurst, IL Details pending formal announcement https://vcfmw.org/
Vintage Computer Festival Southeast in (usually in Atlanta, GA) has not had any announcement yet, official or otherwise.
This weekend was awesome. This was my first time exhibiting at VCF Midwest, so I was happy that everything made it in one piece.
I couldn’t get my hands on a functional terminal, so my Libretto 70CT filled that role. The sound card performed well. Visitors got a kick out of having a Commodore branded telephone, as well as the Libretto, and later on that blue box, which is a Decitek paper tape reader/punch. The show had a PBX set up, so my connected the Commodore phone to it as extension 1010. I didn’t get many calls, but someone on the other side of the room contacted the “Cactus Hotline” at one point.
I walked away with all sorts of fun things from VCF Midwest 13.
Not pictured is the Decitek paper tape reader & punch which is being sent along with friends on the road. Also not pictured are a pair of 6309 processors.
So what do we have here?
An Iomega Buz, which is a composite video encoder card intended for Windows 95 machines.
A floppy disk containing photos taken with a Sony Mavica of me and my exhibit (as well as a bonus shock image).
A modern blue box kit based on a tiny little PIC microcontroller.
Two military-grade 4K core memory boards.
A plot of the Cactus logo, made with an HP plotter.
A VCFMW punch card.
A book about the Motorola 6800.
A Rockwell 65XX series processor reference card.
A plot of the die of the MOS 6502, made on the same HP plotter. I’m told these took 4 hours to make.
Behold, my Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 13 exhibit booth, complete with Commodore rotary phone, new Decitek paper tape reader/punch, and core memory.
The modem under the phone was a loaner unit I didn’t get a chance to play with. The phone however served as the “Cactus Hotline” on the PBX that connected various machines at the show, which was amusing.
I was glad to give others a chance to use the Cactus.
Flying out to Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 13 in Chicago. I'm exhibiting the Cactus, and giving a presentation on Sunday at 1PM. Hope to see you out there.
VCF Midwest 13 rules