Trenton Computer Festivalt

From: John Ruschmeyer <jruschme_at_exit109.com>
Date: Tue Apr 13 20:59:16 1999

> > I'm thinking about attending the upcoming Trenton Computer Festival.
> > Unfortunately, if I do go, I won't be able to make it until Sunday. Any
> > opinions on whether or not the second day of the TCF is worth a two and a
> > half hour drive?
>
> In the old days it was bargain and dumpster dive day.
> TCF was a lot like what the VCF sounds like. (Except with a mix of some of
> the classic stuff with some of the newer computers.)
>
> PDP 8's, and PDP11's as well as S100 stuff was common. Now there's some
> Sun, Vax, HP Unix stuff, some older S100, H89, H8. Some CP/M (rare)
> some Macintosh and Apple II/III... But it's becoming more and more
> a Windows and PC kind of show.

It should be noted that we're talking about the flea market here. The
inside vendors are your basic computer show- probably more so this year
with the Ken Gordon influence. (For those not of the NJ area, Ken Gordon
is the largest of the 3 or 4 companies which run computer shows in this
area.)

Last year's flea market was the year of the cheap 486 (66mhz and below)
and '030 Mac (lots of IIsi and IIci CPUs, often with net cards and
40 or 80mb drives, for $25). You can sort of judge the strata of
"obsolescence" by what is common in a particular year; though you will
see older, it seems to be few and far between.

I suspect that this will be the year of the low-end Pentium (75-100) and
(I hope) the '040 Macintosh. (I'd like to find a cheap Quadra.) There
will probably be some IIsi's and IIci's, but almost no Plusses or SE's.
I suspect we'll also see some more Sun4 and Sun4c class systems, though
those seem to be being gobbled up by college age kids in what I assume
is either "Workstation Envy" or a big interest in S/Linux. This will
probably be the last chance to grab a Sun3.

<<<John>>>
Received on Tue Apr 13 1999 - 20:59:16 BST