Another great VCF SW event during the weekend of June 14 through June 16, at least in terms of public outreach on awareness and reminding about a wide variety of classic computer systems. Thankfully, the weather was excellent this year for this particular weekend. There were a few behind-the-scenes hiccups (some power outages, or confusion on where certain events were taking place – all normal stuff; I’m thankful it all came together as well as it did!).
NOTE: Feel free to use any portion of this for your own discussions, consider permission granted. I do these as my own for-fun scrapbook memory of these events.
INTRO
On our way to the exhibit hall! And once again, I failed to get photos of that nice exhibit hall itself (being busy with loading/unloading of exhibits at the time).
This VCF was hosted at the Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at the University of Texas at Dallas. The location is about 20 minutes from the National Video Game Museum, a major sponsor of VCF and doubles as a small computer museum. I also found that across the exhibit hall from the Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center, there is an art school with some interesting exhibits of their own (including upstairs).
Why the Kurisu Makise figure (also known as “Christine”)? She was one of the main characters of Steins;Gate, which was themed off a time-travel story involving the IBM 5100.
VENDORS
There were many vendors – most with stories to tell! The sample below is a very small portion of what was there, as the hardware-focused vendors were setup in other rooms, and even more vendors in the building across from the main exhibit hall.
Sergio was also present (aqua shirt), demonstrating the usage of early plotters to print images captured from a more modern camera. Desktop plotters were some of the earliest applications for computers going back to the 1970s, typically to plot out graphs. Adapting them to this creative style of art is always neat to see!
TRS-80’s REBORN
All about this TRS-80 replica kit HERE, presented by RetroStack. Beyond just restoring TRS-80 Model 1 (the first home personal computers to reach over 100,000 units sold, between 1978 and 1980, at Radio Shack stores across North America), there is enough info here to request a re-print of a full TRS-80 case enclosure, PCB (for mainboard and keyboard), and spec sheet on all the necessary components. Also some examples of other RetroStack projects, like the DigiTrainer.
“Domesticating the Computer”
- The 8.5 foot long poster is available from Robert Weiss HERE
- We exercised Ahl’s Benchmark (published in 1983) on an HP9830A, a system that was developed a decade earlier in 1973 that was a “boot-up-to-BASIC” system before the 1975 Altair 8800. See results and notes HERE [ NOTE: the HP9830A and the punch tape reader/writer was on loan, we are still trying to figure out the GPIB I/O of the FACIT punch tape device ]
- Demonstrating a NEC PC-8001 Mk II, that had original “Mario Special” (which takes 15 minutes to load from tape! I used my 2009 Win7 Toshiba Satellite laptop as a proxy for the audio tape player to do the loading of this program)
- Left of the NEC PC-8001 was a 3DO, with the audio output split out to both stereo speakers and an o-scope in X-Y mode. Mostly I wanted to demonstrate Sid Mier’s excellent CPU Bach (he was the creator of the game Civilization, and CPU Bach was one of his exclusive “pet projects” for the 3DO).
- I was gladly-surprised by the amount of interest in my collection of cassette audio tape decks (that were used with early PCs). The examples range from the late 1960s CarryCorder, a 1970s Robin, and the late 1980s Tandy CCR-83. For more info about the Tandy line of audio tape decks see HERE.
- Also demonstrated my working IBM 5110 system (from 1978, a follow up to the IBM 5100 released in 1975). It has an interface at the back that is a serial-to-keyboard adapter that lets me “speed type” anything into the IBM system (typically as a way to load software by entering it directly into the DCP monitor, but can also speed-type out BASIC programs by interfacing directly with the keyboard signals). For more info about that, refer to KBD5110. I have other info about the 5100 and 5110 located HERE (the MAME emulator for both these systems is now available as of April 2024)
For more info about the “Domesticating the Computer” poster, see HERE. For the two video talks on the content of that poster, search “domesticating the computer” on YouTube (AARON edition and the MANDIE edition).
The VCF talk discussion related to these posters is coming soon!
THE EPIC CUSTOM C64 CASE
Extremely wild C64 custom case, including the use of vacuum tubes to help with audio output.
8BG – 8 Bit Guy
- Showing Planet X16, an extensive real-time strategy game available for the Commander X16.
- David and June discuss options on attempting to repair one of the earliest X16 DEV board, that had been made while using the wave-solder machine (and didn’t go so well at the time, but may still be salvageable).
- X16 Mania – a few case examples: my carbon fiber case editions of the X16 (custom build), the blue X16 is in a m00dawg special case (more info HERE), and a normal X16 in the Lazer3D standard white “pizza-box” case. Systems were setup to showcase some of the newest software on that system: Dungeon (Gauntlet), Time Pilot, KG3D Doom-like, 3D Earth, Kings Quest 1 port. The left-most system is completely standalone, with both the system and LCD running on battery (very “grab and go”!), jamming with a special SNES-enabled build of Melodius audio player.
NOTE: MooingLemur was also present at this VCF! The author of Melodius and he helps maintain much of the X16 System ROM software, very honored to meet up with him. He also helped update the SMC of all my X16’s (which fixes the mouse support for KG3D, amongst a few other nice feature updates) – TY!! Kevin Williams was around as well, hardware designer of the X16 board, as he was part of a couple of the talks at this VCF. Great to meet up with him (and to finally get my X16 serial-network cards, haha!)
NOTE: The little LED display I had is from techdungeon.xyz (that I got at VCF East awhile back, I had to program it myself – it comes with a nice set of example code to make all kinds of animated displays. The two “spaceships” near that are from Captain Power, an interactive VHS-tape toy from mid-1980s.
NOTE: With June in the photo is also David Monroe (to David Murray’s left) and John Alison, and Tom (red shirt), June’s dad.
GENERAL VARIETY
A number of Japanese and Russian systems, a great Tektronic 4054A (1983), Commodore PET original (1977) and Altair (1975), Apple Lisa’s (1983), Otrana Attache (1982), and wide variety of other systems (ending with the excellent modern make Feonix F256K system, running OS-9 for 6809 CPU).
MISCELLANEOUS KITS
SCELBI 8H (1974) was present, AMI prototype (~1976, I think), SWTPC 6800 (also pre-1978), a Heathkit variant, and I came across a modern make 1-bit Spingate.
IBM SYSTEMS
Great variety of IBM systems, from early 5150/51560/51570 to later PS/2’s. As always, excellent quality beam-spring keyboards. In fact there were a tad too many IBMs, there wasn’t enough power available to run them all at once.
TANDY ASSEMBLY HERE
Tandy Assembly and friends represented a massive variety of Tandy systems. This was mostly in the “other building” from the main exhibitor hall. The DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) area is central to the Tandy story, the “Tandy Towers” still stand in downtown Fort Worth (but sadly as of around 2016, they no longer have the “Radio” “Shack” bulb display at night). AByteBehind had a great display of TRS-80 Model II’s and early TRS-80 network, along with an excellent sample of a fully decked out Tandy 2000 (one of the few 80186 based systems – yes, ‘186 – and had a mouse option a year before the Macintosh).
I didn’t get as many photos this year. The above is only a small fraction of what was available at VCF this year. There was so much more, with just a few of them being…
- Usagi with the Centurion
- Nybbles and Bytes (and June’s new C128 dual-screen game)
- the Macintosh Librarian
- the overflowing Free Pile
- several software and hardware vendors (across two buildings)
- Forgotten Machine’s with AJ’s great demo of terminals and reel-to-reel hardware
- the auction!
- fujiNET / gotBASIC.com / NeXTSTEP
- Many back to back technical talks (those talks will be presented on video by VCFSW late this month). Thanks to Steve of vintNerd for hosting the Panel Talk!
- And, as an exhibitor, the many guests and talking with them on their experiences and memories about these systems
Great VCFSW and will be looking forward to next year!
I’m not a major YouTuber, but I have a few interesting things here.