Vintage Computer Festival East - April 17-19, 2015, Wall, New Jersey

[Bill Lange]

I'm look forward to seeing a lot of Atari 8-bit users at Vintage Computer Festival East this weekend in Wall, NJ.

 

Stop by and say "hello".

 

Bill

[+Ripdubski]

I wanted to make it up there, but it wasn't in the cards this year. Maybe next year!

[Fletch]

Bill,

 

If no other Atari users show at least we will be well represented! I look forward to seeing your booth and meeting you.

 

-Pete

[Subby]

Yeah, I was hoping to get back again this year Bill, but at my new job I just don't have any vacation yet.

Take some pictures!

 

Brad

[Bill Lange]

Brad,

 

My wife Lucy and I are headed down to Atlanta June 18th - 21st for the Southern Fried Game Room Expo. Maybe we could meet up then. We also plan to take in a Braves game that Friday. We want to get to the stadium before they tear it down at the end of the season.

 

Bill

[Bill Loguidice]

I'll be there (VCF East) on Saturday with two of my daughters.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Bill Loguidice

[Fletch]

I'll be there (VCF East) on Saturday with two of my daughters.

 

 

Bill and I both have Atari related booths. He is focusing on the 8-bits and I am focusing on games from the 2600 through the Falcon.

 

Hope you stop by!

[redman]

I'll be there showing 3 different 800XL's and an Atari 2600 game table that I built. I missed last year but I was there at the 2 previous shows.

[Bill Lange]

Here is a preview of my VCF East exhibit.

 

The 10-key handler and Visicalc are being loaded from AspeQt running on the laptop.

 

Lots of beige and lots of natural wood.

[Fletch]

Looks awesome Bill!

[Bill Lange]

Here are some pictures from today's sessions at VCF East. I attend five sessions: "8-bit music programming", "Vintage meets micro controllers", "Quarternet committee", "DEC PDP-8" and "Restoring power supplies". The Atari 8-bits were mentioned in the first three and was the main system discussed in "Vintage meets micro controllers".

 

Lots of Commodore and Apple folks.

 

Bill

[Bill Lange]

Saturday morning included a great hour long talk with Unix/C legend Brian Kernighan, as well as past co-worker as both my wife Lucy and I worked at Bell Labs in the 1990s and early 2000s. Brian is a great speaker. It wasn't as much a speech as it was a question and answer session. Lots of great stories.

[Bill Lange]

Sunday morning included a hour long talk by Visicalc co-designer and developer Bob Frankston. I got a picture of him standing in front of my Atari 800 running Visicalc. My wife Lucy also got him to sign a copy of Atari Visicalc for us. Very gracious man.

[Bill Lange]

On gentleman, Oscar Vermeulen, from Switzerland implemented a Digital PDP-8 on a Raspberry Pi .... a $120,000 ($120,000 in 1970's dollars and $120,000 in today's dollars) computer re-implemented on a $35 computer.

 

Oscar is trying to find 100 people to committee to buying the Raspberry/PDP-8 kits so that he can get the costs down. It is really cool looking.

 

http://obsolescenceguaranteed.blogspot.ch/

[+DrVenkman]

Sounds like a great show. I love that PDP-8 emulated system running on the Pi. I have Pi 2 and use it as a dedicated game emulator (everything from classic Atari, Commodore and Apple II systems to MAME). I bet building that PDP emulator and box of blinkenlights was a blast.

 

So what are those switches installed on your 800 (the metal toggle switch at left and the blue button on the right)?

[Jason1024]

The 'K' from the K&R C book! Few people have taught so many so much. Sounds like a great event.

 

Saturday morning included a great hour long talk with Unix/C legend Brian Kernighan, as well as past co-worker as both my wife Lucy and I worked at Bell Labs in the 1990s and early 2000s. Brian is a great speaker. It wasn't as much a speech as it was a question and answer session. Lots of great stories.

[Bill Lange]

So what are those switches installed on your 800 (the metal toggle switch at left and the blue button on the right)?

 

 

The blue button is a hard reset mod. I replaced the motherboard sometime last year and neither switch works anymore.

[Bill Lange]

Sounds like a great event.

 

 

We had a really good time. In addition to Brian K and Bob F, we met Peter (Fletch) and Ralph (redman) from the AtariAge 8-bit group. We also met and spent a lot of time talking with Boisy Pitre. I also saw Bill Loguidice and I think I saw Jason Scott walking around on Saturday but both times I was engage in conversations with other attendees.

[Fletch]

Bill and Ralph,

 

I really enjoyed meeting you both and your wives! You both had really awesome displays and it was great having a strong Atari showing at VCF East.

 

-Pete

 

[Bill Loguidice]

I was there on Saturday with my two daughters (the highlight for the three of us was finally learning how to solder thanks to a great class that ran all day). It was great meeting/seeing some of you.

 

In past years there was definitely far less Atari stuff, so it was good to see more of that. There was the usual plethora of Apple stuff and strong showing for Commodore stuff. In past years, we also saw a lot more obscure systems, like HP hardware and what-not, that wasn't there this year, though that was offset somewhat by more mini computer hardware and more S-100 stuff.

[redman]

Hello All,

 

This is my belated report about VCF East 10. Bill Lange and Fletch both had great displays and are great people. It looks like Fletch has one of every Atari product ever made The craziest thing that I saw at the show was a bunch of equipment from a Minuteman II ICBM circa 1970. The first 3 ICBM pictures are of cards that made up the control system. #4 shows the gyroscope and the "hard drive". The last picture is of me standing by my Atari VCS game table. I felt that attendance was down from previous years. At least Atari made a good showing.

[Bill Loguidice]

That's funny, I thought attendance was up quite a bit, at least from last year. In speaking with Evan Koblentz, he seemed to confirm the same thing.

[redman]

I missed last year. I was going to display an 800 with an Incognito setup but I'm still waiting for it. It probably depends on what room you're in also. Maybe everyone didn't make it to the second room.

Edited April 26, 2015 by redman

[Fletch]

I missed last year. I was going to display an 800 with an Incognito setup but I'm still waiting for it. It probably depends on what room you're in also. Maybe everyone didn't make it to the second room.

 

Saturday was busy. The doors opened at 10:30 and there was a steady stream throughout the morning and into at least the middle of the afternoon.

 

On Sunday attendance was certainly light. By about 2:00 PM the volume of people in the room Ralph and I were in was minimal. The other room appeared to have a bit more traffic, but nothing like Saturday.

 

Regardless, I met some very nice people and I think most visitors to my booth seemed to enjoy it. I did find it a bit weird that many people just wanted to pose for pictures with the hardware, but were not that interested in playing anything. I had a lot of requests for me to load a certain game, the requestor would pose next to said game for a picture and then move on. I was happy to oblige, but it sure seemed odd.

 

I think my joystick garnered as much interest as the computers. Lots of love for the Slik Stik, Tac 2 and Wico sticks. I had one visitor photograph just the joysticks. He did seem happy though

[Bill Lange]

I think my joystick garnered as much interest as the computers.

 

 

I had the most comments about how good my standard Atari joystick felt (thanks to the Best Electronic rebuild kit) and the flip-file case that holds about 10 to 12 Atari 8-bit cartridges. Multiple people mentioned that they didn't know there were Atari 8-bit cartridge inserts for the flip-file, they they had only seen those for 5 1/4 floppies.

 

Bill