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
from the car and there are no moving parts in it other than the fan,
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
Received on Sat Jul 24 2004 - 09:08:35 BST