VCF Gazette Volume 2, Issue 1

VCF Gazette Volume 2, Issue 1 A Newsletter for the Vintage Computer Festival July 24, 2003 The VCF Gazette begins its second volume with this extra large issue. We've tried to stay fairly on schedule, but this issue has been delayed a bit due to lots (and I mean LOTS) of stuff going on. So, without further ado... In this issue: Yet Again, a New (Permanent?) Home for the VCF Archives VCF 6.0 Commodore 64 Parallel Super Computer Project Commodore 64 Prototype Up for Auction at VCF 6.0 Coming in August: The VCF Marketplace! Planning for VCF East 2.0 VCF Producer to Speak at XGDX VintageTech Launches e-Cycle PDP-8 Replica Project New VCF Donation Program Latest Additions to the VCF Archives Yet Again, a New (Permanent?) Home for the VCF Archives ------------------------------------------------------- Ok, so some of you might have been eagerly anticipating the planned Open House that we were supposed to have last December, which got delayed due to the move by the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, the fine folks that have been hosting the Archive for the last two years. Well, forget everything we said in the last issue. The VCF is proud to announce its new--and hopefully permanent--home for the VCF Archives. We've acquired a lease on a 4,560 square foot office/warehouse in Livermore, California. The new facility has a grade level roll-up door, a loading dock (for the big stuff), and lots of space to store lots of old computers. The VCF staff has been busily packing and moving the archive from the old facility to the new. As of this writing, most of the collection (60 pallets worth plus an additional 20+ SUV loads) has been moved already, with a couple more truckloads to go to finish the move. The collection has certainly grown much larger than was realized in the time we've been at the ACCRC. Once the remainder of the collection is moved over, the real work begins. It will take several months to a year to fully sort and catalog the collection, something we've been trying to accomplish for years now. However, this time it's different. With a new venture (see below) and a new focus, we intend to achieve this goal and finally establish a world class computer history research facility for hobbyists, researchers, and the business community to utilize and enjoy. We'll keep you posted on our progress. VCF 6.0 ------- Hooray! The sixth annual Vintage Computer Festival has been scheduled for October 11th and 12th. The Computer History Museum will again be hosting the event, but this time at their spacious new home. Being that this is the 20th anniversary of the Commodore 64, it is being honored as the theme computer for this year's event. We expect to have some great Commodore 64 exhibits and, if enough people pull together, perhaps we can finally complete the long-awaited C64 parallel supercomputer. We've also got an amazing auction being planned: a rare Commodore 64 prototype (serial #19) will be auctioned during the VCF weekend. See below for more information on each of these news items. With a larger budget and a desire to push the envelope of the VCF, we expect this year's event to be the best and biggest yet. Help make this year's VCF a success by contributing a talk or exhibiting your favorite old computer. Call For Speakers One of the most enjoyable aspects of the VCF is the series of superb talks we assemble year after year. We've got some excellent sessions already lined up, but we're looking for more. Have you got an interesting computer history topic or workshop you'd like to present at the Vintage Computer Festival? Let us know! Send your abstracts to &lt;vcf(a)vintage.org&gt;rg>. Exhibit at the VCF Exhibitor's at the VCF enjoy a special status. Not only do they get all the attention, as well as ribbons and prizes for their award- winning exhibits, they also get to be part of the behind-the-scenes action at the VCF. Along with the speakers, the exhibitors are the VIPs of the VCF. Learn more about exhibiting here: http://www.vintage.org/2003/main/exhibit.php Buy, Sell and Trade at the VCF Marketplace As always, one of the most exciting aspects of the VCF is the Marketplace, where you can find a large and varied assortment of some of the most fantastical old computer thingies anywhere. Find that odd part you've been seeking out for your collection, then touch, smell, even taste it if you like, before haggling out a deal. There is simply no better place to buy and sell vintage computers than at the VCF Marketplace. For more information on selling at VCF 6.0, please visit: http://www.vintage.org/2003/main/vendor.php Stay tuned for more information about special events at the VCF. Get the latest updates at the VCF 6.0 website: http://www.vintage.org/2003/main/ Commodore 64 Parallel Super Computer Project -------------------------------------------- In 1999, the VCF envisioned connecting 64 Commodore 64 computers together to form one massively parallel Commodore 64 Super-Computer. The project has sputtered and stalled but the vision has never died. So this, being the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Commodore 64, makes it imperative that we finally deliver on this vow to do what no normally sane group of individuals would waste their time on. Power supplies will die, chips will burn out, and nerds will struggle over implementation details, but do this we must! To find out about how you can contribute to this project, please visit: http://www.vintage.org/projects.php Commodore 64 Prototype Up for Auction at VCF 6.0 ------------------------------------------------ What's cooler than 64 Commodore 64's tied together to form a massively parallel supercomputer? How about an original Commodore 64 prototype? At VCF 6.0, the VCF will auction off a pre-production Commodore 64, built in early 1982 just after the Winter CES, and harboring serial number 19. This is perhaps the rarest of all Commodore 64 computers, as no other prototype Commodore 64 units are known to exist. More information about this computer will be made available in the coming weeks, including photos and screen-shots. Auction registration will begin a couple weeks before VCF 6.0. Coming in August: The VCF Marketplace! -------------------------------------- We've been hinting at it for months, nay years, but it's finally come to fruition. The VCF Marketplace--THE place to buy, sell and trade vintage computers on the internet--will be open for business in August. The VCF Marketplace provides many innovative features, including a number of different selling methods. You can offer up an item for sale in several formats, hold an auction in one of several different formats, even list an item for trade, for give-away, or even for lending! You choose the format that best fits your preferences or needs on a per listing basis. The VCF Marketplace will be a veritable vintage computer bazaar. We've deployed one of the most powerful search engines on the net. You'll be able to search on a specific make and model of computer hardware, a specific vendor and title of software, a specific title and author of a book, and so forth. No more will you have to wade through dozens or even hundreds of irrelevant hits to find what you're looking for. Also available are invaluable notification features. You can program the service to alert you the very moment an item you've been desperately seeking gets posted. Take advantage of the personal inventory functions, allowing you to manage your computer collection online and share photos and information with other collectors (a free service!) Future phases will include store fronts for volume sellers, realtime online pricing guides (instantly generated from past sales data) and registry features (track the lineage of your most prized old computers). To celebrate our launch, the service will initially be free to all users for the first six weeks. After that, the site is still free to use for most sellers, with very reasonable fees for volume sellers. A separate announcement will be sent out when the Marketplace is officially launched. Stay tuned for further details! Planning for VCF East 2.0 ------------------------- Knock! Knock! <and you say, "Who's there?"> VCF! <and you say, "VCF who?"> VCF East 2.0! That's who, silly! That's right, the much anticipated follow-up to the first east coast VCF in 2001 is being planned for April of 2004. You poor denizens of the right coast vintage computer collecting scene have been starved long enough. The economy still sucks, and you're probably still out of a job, but we're going to forge ahead and finally fulfill our promise to return. Much more details are of course to come, and we've still got to nail down a date and place, but we've got plenty of time, and we've got to get VCF 6.0 out of the way first. But don't fret, this time we mean it: VCF East 2.0 is coming! Your feedback is warranted at this point. The Boston area is still being considered as the location, but enough noise from enough people in the same place can certainly put other locales in the running. Let use know where YOU'D like VCF East to be. Send your comments and suggestions to &lt;vcf(a)vintage.org&gt;rg>. VCF Producer to Speak at XGDX ----------------------------- VCF Producer Sellam Ismail will be giving a talk on the history of video games at the next Xtreme Game Developers Xpo. The talk will cover the first video game system, Tennis for Two, developed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958, plus Spacewar! (1962), the Magnavox Odyssey (the first home video game system circa 1972) and Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space (1970) and Pong (1972), the games that launched the video arcade industry. The talk will include video clips, screen shots, and even actual demonstrations with original hardware of some of the games and systems discussed. The Xtreme Game Developers Xpo is the premier gathering for developers, programmers, designers and anyone with a passion for video games. This year's event is being held September 6-7 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. XGDX is open to the public and is targeted to all levels of Game Developer, from the new game programmer to the seasoned professional. There will be approximately 20-25 technical lecture sessions and roundtable discussions scheduled each day. If you've attended in the past then you know that this conference is all about people sharing a common passion: the creation ofi video games. How will this year be different? More sessions, more peers, more opportunities to benefit What hasn't changed? The belief that providing a forum where people in every aspect of the gaming community can gather, interact, share, and learn, will produce extraordinary results. To celebrate the inauguration of XGDX (formerly the XGDC), all attendees who pre-register online prior to August 1 will receive a $250 library of Game Development books free from Premier Press (you must attend the event to receive your lirbary in person). For more information, or to register online, please visit the XGDX website: http://www.xgdx.com/ VintageTech Launches e-Cycle ---------------------------- VintageTech, the VCF's historical computing consulting firm, has just launched a new service to serve its local community. Electronic waste has become a major issue in California and throughout the nation as well. Discarded computers and consumer electronics--basically anything containing a printed circuit board--can no longer be simply tossed in the trash due to the toxic elements teeming inside of them. To serve the need for electronic waste recycling, VintageTech has launched a new electronic waste recycling service called e-Cycle. e-Cycle serves the electronic waste recycling needs of the Tri-Valley area of California's Silicon Valley. More information can be found on the e-Cycle website: http://www.ecycle.info/ To find out more about electronic waste recycling in your area, your best bet is to do a web search. Not all localities are served by recycling facilities, and there may not even be requirements in your area to recycle discarded electronics. But you should start getting into the habit of finding sensible alternatives to the landfill for your obsolete electronics because there will soon come a day when it will be required. Suggestions for alternatives to the landfill: o Donate to local schools, churches, charities, or non-profits o Donate older hardware to local community college engineering departments for spare parts o Give or sell your old computers to local used computer resellers o Sell your old hardware on the Vintage Computer Marketplace ;) o Donate your vintage computers to a local collector, or to the VCF :) PDP-8 Replica Project --------------------- The VCF was hired to create a replica PDP-8 for an exhibit at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, Massachusetts. The replica is part of an exhibit that shows how computer technology changed the economy. The PDP-8, which defined the "mini-computer" class, is significant because it made it possible for small- and medium-sized businesses to own a computer. The PDP-8 replica will go on display at the Bank in the next several weeks. In the meantime, a photo gallery documenting the construction of the replica can be found here: http://www.vintage.org/gallery.php?grouptag=PDP-8 New VCF Donation Program ------------------------ In order to help defray the production costs of Vintage Computer Festival events, the VCF has begun a new donation program. Donations at various levels will be rewarded with VCF pins, t-shirts, and VIP passes to upcoming VCF events. Give enough and you can receive a lifetime VIP Pass to all future VCF events! Times are tough for the typical geek today, but if you can help, please visit the VCF donation page to learn more about this program: http://www.vintage.org/donate.php We greatly appreciate your support, in any form! Latest Additions to the VCF Archives ------------------------------------ We've added some very cool artifacts to the VCF Archives in recent months, including: o Sphere 6800 (the "first" all-in-one microcomputer circa 1975) o Basis 108 (German Apple ][ clone circa 1982) o MAC-8 microprocessor trainer (circa 1978) With any luck (and possibly with your help) we'll have the VCF Archives sorted, organized and catalogued within a year. Find out how you can contribute to this worthwhile project by sending an inquiry to &lt;vcf(a)vintage.org&gt;rg>. And remember: almost everything in the VCF Archives is available for loan to hobbyists and researchers. Let us know if you'd like to borrow something for a project or some academic research and we'll be happy to help you out. That wraps it up for this issue of the VCF Gazette! Until next time... Best regards, Sellam Ismail Producer Vintage Computer Festival http://www.vintage.org/ The Vintage Computer Festival is a celebration of computers and their history. The VCF Gazette goes out to anyone who subscribed to the VCF mailing list, and is intended to keep those interested in the VCF informed of the latest VCF events and happenings. The VCF Gazette is guaranteed to be published in a somewhat irregular manner, though we will try to maintain a quarterly schedule. If you would like to be removed from the VCF mailing list, and therefore not receive any more issues of the VCF Gazette, visit the following web page: http://www.vintage.org/remove.php I'M a PEACH ;) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *