VCF Gazette Volume 1, Issue 2 A Newsletter for the Vintage Computer Festival June 12, 2002 Hello Vintage Computer Fans! We've got a lot of exciting news for you in this issue of the VCF Gazette, including: VCF Europa 3.0 Retrospective VCF 5.0 Update VCF Open House Update Latest Additions to the VCF Archives VCF Archives Now Searchable Online Upcoming Features VCF Europa 3.0 Restrospective ----------------------------- VCF Europa 3.0 was a smashing success. With about 300 attendees and 30 exhibits, the air was rife with vintage computing nostalgia. The Best of Show grand prize went to Thomas and Hendrik Falk for their exhibit of amazing analog computers. See photos from VCF Europa 3.0 here: http://www.vintage.org/gallery.php?title=VCF%20Europa%203.0&grouptag=VC… Gaby Chaudry, VCF Europa 3.0 Exhibitor and CP/M Archive maintainer, has more pictures of VCF Europa 3.0 exhibits here: http://www.gaby.de/vcfpics/vcf3gaby/index.htm VCF 5.0 Update -------------- The dates for VCF 5.0 have been finalized! Mark your calendar for September 21st and 22nd when the fifth Vintage Computer Festival will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. We are very happy to be moving the event back to the Santa Clara Convention Center which has a nice facility, a convenient location, and ample (free!) parking. As you may recall from the last VCF Gazette, we were planning to hold the VCF in conjunction with a handful of other events, tentatively calling it GeekWeek. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure a common venue for all the events to run together on the same date. However, we plan to regroup for next year and try again. But for this year, we are still running side by side with the Xtreme Games Developers Conference and possibly the tentatively named San Francisco International Conference of Hackers. California Extreme and Superauctions will be held September 7-8 at the Parkside Hall complex of the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California. We have created a webpage to provide information on affiliated events here: http://www.vintage.org/2002/main/co-events.php We are currently in the process of putting together another top notch speaker program. As in past years, we will have two tracks running concurrently with 8-10 talks total across both days of the event. Stay tuned for future VCF updates which will inform you of added speakers. This year being the 30th anniversary of the founding of Atari, we plan to celebrate this event by featuring talks on Atari's history, and we will be giving away vintage Atari computers for door prizes. More details to come. Of course, all the usual attractions that you've come to expect from the Vintage Computer Festival will be featured, including the Vintage Computer Exhibition, the VCF Marketplace, and the Nerd Trivia Challenge. We also plan to host vintage computer programming contests in conjunction with the Xtreme Games Developers Conference, with the goal being to create, from scratch, a video game on one of several different vintage computer platforms including, but not limited to, the Apple ][, Commodore 64 and PET, Atari 800, TRS-80, and IBM PC. Rules and procedures are still being formulated so stay tuned for further VCF 5.0 updates. The VCF always features some of the most amazing computer exhibits as individual collectors bring out the pride and joy of their collection to show off. If you are interested in exhibiting your computer at the VCF this year, now is the time to register. We have some great prizes to give away to our top winners, including a new, in-the-box, Sharp PC-5000. The PC-5000 is one of the first clam-shell type portables which was first sold in 1983. It is a truly historic computer, one of the first that was small enough to comfortably carry around yet still functional enough to be useful (unlike other portables of the day). To register your exhibit, please visit: http://www.vintage.org/2002/main/exhibit.php If you have a load of vintage computing items that you'd like to unload, be a vendor at the VCF Marketplace. The VCF Marketplace is the best venue to sell your vintage computer items to a targeted audience. We also have consignment sales for people who have a small number of items to sell. For complete vendor information, visit: http://www.vintage.org/2002/main/vendor.php General information on VCF 5.0 including date, time, location, directions, and lodging information, visit the VCF 5.0 web site: http://www.vintage.org/2002/main/ VCF Open House Update --------------------- You may recall from our last issue that we planned to announce a VCF Open House when we were done with organizing the VCF Archives and setting up a computer museum at the Alameda County Computer Resource Center. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer. We have secured enough computer floor tile to cover the area where we will be setting up the museum, but we lack the support members for the tiles. We are hoping to find what we need soon, or else come up with an alternative from our local hardware store. Either way, we are still working hard towards getting the VCF Archives ready for our Open House. We hope to have the Open House by late summer, before VCF 5.0. Stay tuned. In the meantime, please visit the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, the largest non-profit computer recycling operation on the west coast of the United States, who have been incredibly generous in lending space to the VCF to store its archives: http://www.accrc.org/ If you have computer flooring to donate, or know of someone who does, please contact us at <vcf(a)vintage.org>rg>. Latest Additions to the VCF Archives ------------------------------------ While we at the VCF have been focusing most of our recent attention on sorting and cataloguing the existing artifacts in the VCF Archives, we still occasionally go out to scrounge up new items and we receive somei items from helpful donors as well. The latest donation is an IBM 026 Printing Card Punch. The 026 was introduced in 1949 and served many computer installations dependably for decades. Some of these punches were still in use in some organizations as late as the 1980s, and there may still be some in operation in different parts of the world, a testament to the fine engineering of IBM. The 026 card punch was donated to the Vintage Computer Festival by Karl Bender of Bakersfield, California. We've created a small picture gallery of the 026 here: http://www.vintage.org/gallery.php?title=IBM%20026%20Printing%20Card%20Punc… Other recent significant additions to the VCF Archives include: o Teletype Corporation ASR-33 o IBM 3420 reel-to-reel tape drive o Apple //e with SwyftCard (converts Apple //e into a Canon Cat) VCF Archives Now Searchable Online ---------------------------------- Recently the VCF began cataloguing its archive. This will be a long and arduous process, as there are several thousand items to sort through and catalog. The VCF has made it's existing artifact database searchable on the web through its VintageTech affiliate business. To search the VCF Archives, visit the VintageTech website and click on the "Search the VintageTech Archives" icon. http://www.vintagetech.com/ The Vintage Computer Festival makes its archives available for use commercially through VintageTech, providing services such as patent litigation support and prior art searches, consulting and props for the film and photography industry, data and media conversion, vintage computer appraisals and sales brokering, and general computer history consulting. Upcoming Features ----------------- The VCF is always working on new features to keep the vintage computer enthusiast coming back to the VCF website. Upcoming additions include an online Nerd Trivia Challenge and the VCF Marketplace. The Nerd Trivia Challenge is a contest held at each Vintage Computer Festival to test the computer history knowledge of qualifying contestants. Now anyone will be able to experience this same challenge online. The online version of the Nerd Trivia Challenge should be available sometime this summer and will feature questions The VCF is also rolling out a new vintage computer marketplace. The VCF Marketplace will allow buyers and sellers to come together to trade old computers and related items in an open and fair market. Sellers will be able to choose from several different sale and auction mechanisms to vend their wares. Buyers will be able to quickly and easily locate specific items they are seeking. There will also be message boards and, eventually, personal inventory tools for collectors and store fronts for regular vintage computer sellers. The VCF Marketplace will initially be free to use. Look for it by mid Summer. Classic Tech Eletter -------------------- The Classic Tech Eletter, an e-mail newsletter that covers news, stories and events in the world of computer collecting, is now on its eighth issue. I love the Classic Tech Eletter and look forward to each new issue. Check it out! Subscribe to the Classic Tech Eletter and see back issues at: http://www.classictechpub.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ;) -- 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 *