On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, John Lawson wrote:
> Well, I suppose a Statistically Significant Number of folk are
> attending the VCF II... not, however. (snif..)
Did you catch the write-up from Wired?
http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/15244.html
I missed all of the talks today, mostly because I couldn't take myself
away from the exhibits and flea market. I will attend the talks tomorrow,
including Gordon Bell's keynote, and, of course, the Nerd Trivia
Challenge.
ZDTV was filming the exhibits all day today, so if you get them on cable,
there should be some good footage. In addition, a lot of pixs were taken,
so they should be appearing on a web site near you pretty soon.
In the exhibits, there were two basic themes: mass quantities and cool
stuff. Uncle Roger and I exhibited mass quantities of portables, about 60
or so, including pretty complete collections of Kyoceras and Osbornes as
well as a bunch of odd-balls like the WorkSlate, GO, EO, at least five
prototypes, and more.
There were also mass quantities of Macs, just about every model, and all
of the important Commodore and Atari models. A nice collection of Suns,
including the Sun-1. A nice collection of HP's, including the 9100 (1968)
and 9830 (1972). An a nice collection of Heathkits, including the H-8 and
my own EC-1 (1959).
Highlights of cool stuff include two PDP-8's, an Apple 1, a module from
the Whirlwind, a nice COSMAC Elf display, a homebrew Digi-Comp I, several
MAD models, and, of course, the obligatory Altair, IMSAI, and Sol
(beautifully restored and running a game of Target). Philip and Hans were
there with Tek workstations and German micros.
The flea market had almost as many interesting machines as the exhibit
area. Kai dominated (with the list he already posted), but an Exidy
Sourcerer was also sold, lots of S-100 and DEC stuff, a MAD-1, and *tons*
of home computers and game machines. I bought several books (including
titles from Scelbi, more early DEC paperbacks, Apple's "So Far" book, and
other good stuff) as well as a few portables, an early 8080 SBC, and a
nice CSA 68000 microprocessor trainer with wooden case sides (any computer
with a wood case is an instant classic, you know).
Oh, and Tony Cole was there selling his Cray bits. He's fishing for early
micros now, so hold onto yours lest they become keychains or something.
-- Doug
Received on Sun Sep 27 1998 - 01:30:15 BST