VCF East 2.0 report...

Take two days off work and it takes a week to recover... Anyway, here is a brief summary of my experience of VCF East 2.0. For those that want to look at some pictures (quality not guaranteed, my camera sucks) with no captions or anything: http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/vcfe2004/ Thursday, 7/15 Left Washington, DC at 6:20am. The drive was uneventful but long. Ten hours including gas and lunch stops. Couldn't find any other VCF'rs right away, so I settled into my room, posted to classiccmp and surfed a bit. The in room high speed internet at the hotel was nice, easy to set up and well firewalled. Later, went back out to my car for a couple of things and saw Hans Franke in the lobby. He had some stuff to do, so we agreed to meet in the hotel bar later. I drove over to recon the Sun site. Getting there was as easy as it looked on the map and the visitor parking was right next to the main entrance which included a ramp. Met Hans at the bar and after a little while, Lawrence Wilkinson joined us. Learned that Sellam was on his way from Japan and would be arriving the following morning. Suggested new classiccmp motto: "Collect vintage computers and see the world!" Had a beer (Thanks Hans!) some pleasant conversation and called it a night. Friday Arrived at Sun around 8am. I wasn't the first one there. Curt Vendel and Evan Koblentz were already there and several others arrived soon after. There was some waiting around while the Sun employees figured out what needed to be done, then we were registered with Sun security and started setting up. The area for the exhibits was a nice atrium adjacent to the employee cafeteria. I started setting up my machines, fully expecting the OSI to be a pain, due to the less than reliable "fatherboard" bus system it uses. It surprised me however, coming right up on the first try. I should have suspected something right then! I finished getting set up and started wandering around taking pictures, waiting for the speakers to start. After about an hour, I noticed that the display on the OSI had gone blank. "Ha! Got me after all, didn't you, you silly box?" So I broke out the toolbox, expecting to have to reseat the cards. A little thought went through the back of my mind that usually, when its bus is compromised, it displays garbage and I didn't remember it ever going blank before. A few people noticed me getting out my tools and wandered over to watch. As I picked it up to turn it over (you have to put the integrated keyboard style OSI boxes on their backs to work on them... great engineering) an embarrassing rattling was heard by all, eliciting a chorus of "Hey, you've got something loose in there!". Now I knew that there was nothing loose in that box when I brought it in which had been humming along just fine when I powered it down, so what gives? I proceeded to open the case and there were two button style diodes loose in there. A quick look around showed that they came from the power supply and seem to have simply dropped off their leads. They must have heated up to the point that they melted the solder and fell. Well, nothing to do for it but put them back. Another testimony to OSI design is that you have to pretty much completely disassemble the box to get the PS out. Part of the PS frame supports the fatherboard. Repairs killed the whole speaker time and extended into the actual exhibit time, but I was able to give my spiel and make conversation with the people looking at my exhibit. Got it all up and working again and those diodes heated right up. I reached in with a toothpick and the solder was clearly molten so I powered it down and declared the OSI a non-functional exhibit, sigh. The rest of the exhibit time went well, with my Sol and Northstar both running like champs. The Sol running _Space_Raiders_ and the Northstar running _Zork_. We closed up for the day and a large group went to Victoria Station restaurant for dinner. It is a neat looking restaurant, with real train cars incorporated into the building. The food was good and I sat next to Art Hill and his wife and got a little bit of a preview of his Saturday talk. Saturday I attended all of the speaker sessions on Saturday. They were all great! Art Hill has had a remarkable career with computers, starting back in the tube days. He shared some of the experiences he has had along the way. Lawrence Wilkinson told us about bringing an IBM 360 back to life along with all of the logistics involved (like, where are you going to put it?). Evan Koblentz shared the results of his research into the history of PDAs, which goes back a good bit further than you might think. Finally, Jon Titus told us about the Mark-8, both in technical terms and about the process of getting it (the article) published. The exhibits were pretty well attended on Saturday. Several Sun employees came back and brought children with them which was fun. Showing them _Zork_ in particular... "Wow, you can have a game without pictures?" Things finished up. Oh yea, I won first place in "Manufactured personal computer - Pre 1981" and third place "Best of Show". Got everything packed up and went with Hans, Lawrence, Evan, Bob Maxwell and William Donzelli to Chili's for dinner. Hans would have preferred to go back to Victoria Station (with its large portions) but he made do by ordering two entrees! We got a call from Sellam and, after dinner, Hans and I went back to Sun and rescued a VCF sign that had been forgotten out by the entrance. Sunday Before the trip home, I went over to MIT for the swapfest. I got there at 7am, thinking that I would just pay the sellers fee to get in for a while before I hit the road. I discovered that, while it's not mentioned on their flyer, they do have a $15 "early bird" admission that gets you in at 7:15. No $1 discount on the early bird admission however. The $15 was worth it as I made a great find, a blue, 9 inch Ball monitor, manufactured in 1979, in great shape. For $10, an almost perfect match for my Sol, down to the PL59 cable that came with it! I found Hans at the swapfest and gave him the VCF sign (that had been left in my car the night before) and hit the road for home at about 9:15am. Thanks to everyone whose efforts went into this event! I had a really great time and will make every effort to attend next year. Bill Sudbrink