VCF SoCal 2024

Prior VCFMW2023 (Chicago)

This was the first VCF in SoCal, taking place south of Los Angeles. Thanks to other unrelated travel, I ended up able to attend this “pop-up” VCF (that had only been planned a couple months prior). This took place February 17th and 18th, 2024.

Reminder: Click on the images below for larger view.

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I flew into LAX. I overheard the bus driver (on the way to the car rental) talking about how all the bus drivers will be out of work within two years, due to new tram construction going on at the airport (a tram from the airport to the car rental facilities). Until then, traffic around LAX remains miserable.

The actual VCF was at Hotel Fera in Orange, California. I ended up staying at an Embassy Suites that was a 10 minute walk away. Two quick notes: had a view of Angel Stadium and could see (and hear) the Disneyland fireworks around 9:30pm (the noise from those could bother some light sleepers).

The early morning on Day1 had a bit of rain, but after 10am the rest of the day was pleasant (just a tad cool, mid 60’s). I parked in the parking garage just across the street from the Hotel Fera main entrance (fee ended up $10, with no fee on Day2 which was on a Sunday).

The Embassy Suites was nice, good breakfast as always. My only nit is they kept texting me throughout the day asking how was my stay going, it was a bit excessive. I heard some folks in the VCF complaining that some of the elevators stopped working at Hotel Fera, causing quite a bit of delay for taking a break back at the upper floors (unfortunate for those who had a limited schedule; there was only 1 out of 4 elevators working, causing 20+ minute delays just to go a few floors).

Given the impromptu preparation of the venue (and that February is generally a time when many folks are still in school or just busy with work), we didn’t expect things to be too busy at this VCF – and it wasn’t (relative to some other VCF’s), which ended up making it a very relaxing event.

So, I’ll begin with the first two things I saw when first entering the event: (1) an Atari 600XL running a terminal program (operating across a WiModem type device) that was connected to a BBS being ran by an Atari 800XL at a remote location (Southern AMIS Project). The claim was that the 800XL was hosting the BBS software that had itself been written in BASIC (the source of which was being listed), so that’s pretty impressive in of itself. (2) an “Atari Video Music Display” with numerous CRTs jamming out to some music and coordinated patterns. Definitely gave a SoCal welcoming vibe!

Now for the general size of the venue, there was one main exhibit hall with about 10 rows of tables (plus along the walls). Keep in mind that many volunteers setup the tables and chairs, power stripes, table clothes (the night before) and doing the check-in of all participants (and trying to setup the consignment, which had a bit of a delay on the first day). There was a separate presentation room where discussions/talks were taking place. The peak exhibit hall time, on both days, was around 11am to 2pm. It did get a tad noisy then (low ceiling) and a tad congested in the aisles, but still tolerable.

I’m not sure what’s up with the crystal donuts hanging from the ceiling in the presentation/lecture room, but they reminded me of a torus effect in some Amiga demoscene (I also had a vision of Phantom of the VCF, raising havoc with those as chandeliers, but I greatly disgress).

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There was a large set of Macintosh desktops for sale (of varying conditions) [Matthew Vaughn, with that neat Polaroid camera!], also a variety of smaller items: a table full of CPUs, cables, and peripheral cards (video capture, sound cards, serial cards), books, software (Jeff’s Vintage Electronics). The clock looking circular device was indeed a clock, using a small processor to wirelessly poll the time from the internet and keep current, while display interesting patterns around the circle of LEDs (this is a kit eventually to be available at http://www.tattlersolutions.com who currently has modern-day modems that replicate the audio tones of old-school dialup). There was a “still sealed Windows 3.0″ for $200 (with both 5.25″ and 3.5” floppies!) and a sealed up copy of “101 BASIC Computer Games” (and other great BASIC programming books). I had forgotten about the story of Wildcat BBS and Mustang Software (one of the most successful commercial BBS software, who ended up getting bought up and evaporating much like Sierra Online in the late 1990s), so seeing the boxed software about it was a nice reminder about those exciting corporate times (see here).

One package that caught my eye was a complete NEC PC-8201A in decent condition, which had a nice reference manual that described each of its particular BASIC keywords. It was sold on Day2, congrats to whomever picked it up!

Tandy Representing: WiFi’d-Up Tandy MC-10s with still-working printer attached to a Micro Color Computer, the CoCo Dancer from a Color Computer 2, and a nice collection of various Tandy Portable systems: Model 100, Model 200, Model 600. But mingled in all this was the Tandy Portable Disk Drive, that ran on AA batteries. Using a regular 3.5″ disks, its format only stored about 100KB. My understanding is a brief system loader is necessary (POKE’d in from BASIC), to read the actual loader software of the disk drive up. Thanks to J Rollins and Thomas Shanks for presenting these systems.

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My personal favorite item of this VCF was this 1982 Otrona Attache, because I had never seen one before. These were presented by The Paul Gray Personal Computing Museum, affiliated with Claremont Graduate University (here). For the Otrona Attache, it had an “8:16” upgrade that allowed the system to run either CP/M (Z80A) or MS-DOS (8088), has a detachable keyboard, and external video out port for a larger screen. Its disk drive covers were very slick for keeping dust away, and the integrated stand allows the system to be height adjusted (similar to oscilloscopes from around that time). Also, it’s interesting that it has a LINE FEED key (in addition to RETURN). So, a nice compact system, very appropriately presented next to a Kaypro II and Osborne portable. Thanks to Anna Atkeson for presenting these systems.

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Two synth systems: A Commodore 64C with a 3D mold over the keyboard (the lower exposed keys change tone and the F-keys on the right changed octaves) (RetroBridge), and a Motorola 6800 based MIDI synthesizer (MetalLevel). This is a good reminder about how physical interface can influence the efficiency and enjoyment of a piece of software (i.e. maybe a “standard keyboard and mouse” isn’t the best approach to performing whatever the software is trying to do).

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DIY Vintage Replicas: this was an awesome variety of replicas (mixed in with a few actual original boards for comparison) presented by Larry Cameron. This included things like PDP-8 and PDP-11 miniature (but fully functional) replicas, IBM PC and MiniPET, KENBAK-1, ZX-80, Altair, Mark-8 replicas.

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Aquarius: I picked up one of the Aquarius+ prebuilt kit (by Sean Harrington, see here). While I have an AgonLite (another Z80 based kit), I think I’ll enjoy the Aquarius+ more. The original Aquarius was an early 1980s system built by Mattel, but launched near the peak of a major Video Game Crash of 1983. The Aquarius is said to have had the shortest product shelf life of all the 1980s 8-bit systems, by being just a few months before being pulled from shelves. But for that singular product cycle, this system still inspired a group of fans who have recently resurrected and expanded upon what the original system could do (hence, the Aquarius+ based on modern components). I look forward to exploring this system once I get back home!

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Wire Wrap Odyssey: A fully functional 8-bit system but has no traditional microprocessor. This was introduced in one of the side discussions. Presented by Paul Krizak (see here). While not quite as extreme as Usagi Electronics’ transistor based 4-bit computer, this is still a very impressive project. Recall the Wang 2200 series from around 1973 was also an early successful non-microprocessor based system, that could still run a version of (pre-Microsoft) BASIC (and was faster than the early microprocessor systems for most of the remainder of that decade).

Across the Pond (i.e. British): Loading software using iPod as a tape recorder on a Sinclair – that’s neat (and gruelingly slow!). Seeing a Q68 in action was also neat. I’m no expert about that system, but my understanding is it is a 68000 based system that came about around 2017. Another batch is being prepared for later this year. Thanks to Chris Satterfield for presenting these. For more details, refer to the following:

• Q68 Advance Notice | Dilwyn Jones Sinclair QL Blog (wordpress.com)
• Q68 – Sinclair QL’s “Spectrum Next” Board: an FPGA QL clone. (youtube.com)
• Q68 Order Process – Page 35 – The Sinclair QL Forum

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Now for a mixture of some interesting things:

• IBM software patches on a form of “microfilm.” We got to keep some samples of these, which we’ll review under a microscope to see what it really is (TBD). (Jonathan Gatos, The Cat’s Garage)
• 3D printer demonstration (quiet and handling multiple colors, was actively printing various things throughout the day) [Tech Ambrosia]
• Normally a joystick port is INPUT-ONLY, but here was an interesting example showing how on the Atari the joystick port can also be used for OUTPUT. [Jason H. Moore] (using the arrow keys, you select different output modes and see the result on the sample LED panel by different patterns showing up, verifying that your controlling output signals across the joystick port)

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Quick highlights of some systems that I only got a single-shot of:

• Intellivision (with volleyball game; the self-play demo mode of old games like this has always been interesting to me, on how they pull that off on systems with under 16K RAM — do they record a keyboard input sequence and just play it back with a common random seed, or do they have actual code logic to react to the game-state? either way, it occupies bytes in a situation where every byte counts)
• Amiga 1200HD (Reshoot Proxima 3, excellent Amiga gaming)
• Commodore PET 2001 (with upgrades), very neat to see this still in operation. The owner (Jim DiNunzio) also had a PDP-11 assembled kit, that could boot up in several 1970s mainframe operating systems, as well as a vintage terminal that was setup as an interface to type queries to ChatGPT (wish I had a better photo of that; but it was wild using a 1970s pre-VT52 terminal, connected to a PDP-11 OS, to send a query to an online ChatGPT API, and get the response back displayed on that terminal; it’s something I imagine you’d see in the house of the Addam’s Family).
• Data General NOA System (very old-school hard drive with a stack of large platters; this similar style was in the 1970 IBM System/3 Model 6); expect Usagi and AJ will be helping on this one!
• Foenix F256K (here, retro 8-bit system)
• Apple IIe and Commodore systems
• SGI (Silicon Graphics) systems
• A decent WACOM drawing tablet for Macintosh, next to a slew of portable computers (like Newton, Palm, various calculators, and others).
• A ColecoVision decked out in ADAM armor to buff it up into a full PC! rawr.

We weren’t too familiar with the BBC dialect of BASIC, but eventually we guessed enough valid BASIC syntax to get a little demo-program on the Feonix F256K: (its syntax highlighting in BASIC is neat)

10 X=INT(RND(0)*60)+10         : REM have to cast RND float back to INT
20 FOR I = 1 to X
30   PRINT " ";
40 NEXT                        : REM only "NEXT" on the last FOR variable
50 PRINT CHR$($90+INT(RND(0)*16)); : REM we guessed on Commodore-like heritage to get some color!
60 PRINT "foenix";
70 GOTO 10

Commodore Amiga CD
An excellent system from 1993, not originally released in North America markets. Presented by 10MARC.

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Representing Nintendo
I think these were a kind of “networked GameCube” systems? And were especially setup for some multi-player gaming. This was also a good place to rest your feet. In some of the games, the focus of your character shifted from one screen to another (based on whether you were in a group arena or had gone down some hole and into your own session momentarily). This setup was probably used in some professional gaming competitions.

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The “Free Pile”
I don’t have any photos of the Free Pile, but did want to report that there were several tables near the entrance marked for free items. And the items did rotate regularly throughout the day. For myself, I got a regular USB mouse and keyboard from there, a variety of unopened PC games, and a “Signs and Banners” program for an Apple II (since I’d like to try making use of my EasyWriter II printer). There were also disk drives and a few monitors (and many other things), that all did seem to still be in working order.

Consignment
For those organizing and participating in consignment, I know there was some delay at starting things off on time, and delays in getting items registered and available for sale. So, it may have been a bit chaotic for them and frustrating. But as a casual event attendee, to me the consignment was great and I’m thankful it was part of this event. At every VCF I’ve been too, it seems there are always some hiccups with consignment – so we should all appreciate the volunteers making the best they can out of it (lots of credit to Steve of VintNerd for helping out).

A great bulk of the consignment was Atari and Intellivision systems and games (both cartridges and Atari 5.25″ floppy software titles). There were a couple Commodore and Tandy systems, then a bunch of laptops and motherboards. Also, there were many books (like Commodore BASIC programming) and some PC/Apple packaged software.

Here’s a sampling of some of the things offered:

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Final Thoughts
I only got to attend a few of discussion talks, but of those they were all great (especially discovering Advent of Computing (here) and the excellent topics there; insights about IBM; meeting Sellam, the founder of VCFs; meeting Evie (BackBit) and learning more about her chip tester (here); and, of course, fun with Bil Herd hosting the panel talks).

No food was allowed in the exhibit area – this may have been a hotel policy, but is a generally good policy for this venue. I didn’t explore if the Fera hotel itself had food/lunch options. Just across the street was Wendy’s and Moe’s Deli (we tried Moe’s and had a lot of options and its good reviews seemed accurate), and a Starbucks next to Moe’s.

After the event, we checked out Microcenter which was only about 10 minute drive away, just to check it out. Lots of folks were there buying modern day computer components. Then we ate at India Kitchen (in nearby Tustin, CA), which had a great menu of excellent Indian food.

All around, a great area to host at and (at least to me) a very successful VCF! The above covers a good 90%, there were a few corners I didn’t get to.

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BONUS: Here is unlisted teaser video of some audio/visual effects from this VCF…
VCF2024 Teaser Video (youtube.com)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDzI6nHBIk

Feel free to use photos or notes here for your own media discussion about this event. Consider permission granted.

(my other vintage-computing notes)
VCFWest2021 (CHM)
VCFEast2023 (NJ)
VCFSW2023 (Dallas)