Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 16 | Hacker News Reader

Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 16

vcfmw.org

130 pointserickhill60 comments

This makes me nostalgic for the Dayton Hamvention flea market back in the early 1990s. There was always a ton of 8-bit computer stuff and I used to load up every year on cheap deals on Amiga, C64/128, Atari 400/800/ST, TI 99/4A, et al. I'd get boxes and boxes of stuff for almost no money. My favorite find was a C64 with serial number S00001185. Still the second earliest known C64 outside of prototypes. I got it with a couple other C64's and a bunch of software for $5.

I haven't been to the Hamvention in many years now. The old Hara arena where it was held in those days is gone, and if there is still any 8-bit computer stuff at the flea market I can't imagine it is cheap any longer.

I have been to a few in the last decade. I picked up some Atari joysticks pretty cheap. I wasn't in the market for too many things, but there were lots of things to be had. You almost have to go there with a list of things that you have in mind. I primarily wanted to get a very large high voltage variable capacitor for a decent price, but I actually found out that everybody wants that and they go for a regular price most everywhere. I did see some vintage computer stuff going for a hefty price, but really not much vintage computer stuff really.

I'm a huge fan of Dave Murray's. It's great to see that he'll be there demoing the Commander X16. He has a great way of making vintage technology accessible and relevant as a teaching tool. I've spent some time watching his videos with my son. I think the technology of that era is great for learning computing basics from first principles.

Neat, just watched his video on how to brighten yellowed plastic on old computers.

A great storyteller I enjoy is the professor from computerphile:

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUTypj9XuPp4YBaHucPvr-z...

I attended the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 8 a couple of weeks ago, here's the pictures I took.

https://imgur.com/gallery/hi5Yb50

And for even more photos, probably thousands, see this page from the linked website (aggregation of visitors own photos/videos): http://vcfmw.org/past.html

Hey fellow Southern Fried attendee! I'm glad we were able to do it this year. The room set aside for the vintage computers was great.

I used to go to the computer show at DuPage County Fairgrounds to check out the new computers, that are well, vintage now...

That was a decent show. Great place to find AT cases, SIMMs and imported knock-off Sound Blasters in identical blue/orange boxes.

Good Lord, that website rules.

;)

Note the lack of HTTPS and social media preview tags.

Wow, "it's so dense; every single frame has so many things going on".

Love the walking cat gif http://vcfmw.org/friends.html

We all need more blink tags in our lives.

It feels cozy. I can already hear the faint buzz of the CRT and see my dim reflection on the curved glass.

I hear the sound of my 56K dial-up modem dialing.

Can I get a shoutout for my dot matrix printer?

D'oh, my Jaz drive just crashed again and I can't get the cartridge out!

3d rotating text banners, I've missed you so. Not to forget the flying cows.

Beautiful. Some real geocities vibes

If only it had some marquee tags

Hah, it does after I checked the source but they don't display (at least on lagtest FF), despite supposedly still parsable https://caniuse.com/#search=marquee

Yeah, it looks like Firefox is the only browser where they don't work.

Mouse ribbon?

I exhibited at VCF West this year, my first time. It was a lot of fun. I hope that visitors had a good time, but the interactions between exhibitors were almost as fun.

That’s my favorite part of doing conventions, especially for fields in which one typically labors alone most of time.

I spoke there! (Saturday 1:00 pm)

Sorry I probably didn't see your exhibit; too keyed up by the talk & the following book-signing to get into the rest of the show.

Here's a gallery (and video) of previous shows that may give some more insight into what goes on at a VCF:

http://vcfmw.org/past.html

This was my first vintage computer con I attended back in the pre-pandemic days. It was a wonderful experience and the people were great. Looking forward to attending next month.

Is it also next month? I thought it was like right now. Oh. September 11-12.

To save a few clicks, Elmhurst is a suburb of Chicago, IL.

Do people lug their vintage machines to the event, or is it more of a software-based meetup?

I've exhibited at VCF West many times, you get part of a table or more depending on your exhibit, its a good time/place to show off your stuff and share your excitement of it.

Since it is mainly just enthusiasts, and limited to "vintage" (see event exhibitor info for the definition) it is a great place to reminisce and find some old hardware/software/media as well.

Here's some pics I took from when I attended (2002-2006) Later ones probably have the same vibe, and as it has grown in popularity you may see more tech luminaries attend/present.

https://portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=photos:start

The parking lot is full of vans and trucks, and some beleaguered sedans and stationwagons. There's tons of hardware, literally.

There are vendors that sell some stuff and there is a place where people drop off unwanted vintage equipment that you can take home for free.

Absolutely heavy on the hardware. Lots of micros, obviously, but there are always a few minis (PDP-8/PDP-11/HP 1000/etc), Unix workstations and odd stuff. This year there is even an IBM Midrange display (System/34, /36, AS/400).

Appropriate vendors are welcome and loads of stuff changes hands.

Kind of off topic, but I always wonder who decided that Chicago, Ohio, and that whole corridor count as "mid-west".

When I see mid-west, I think the Dakotas, Minnesota, and southwards. I'm always disappointed to see that actually what most people think is "mid-west" is pretty far from me. Shouldn't those areas be called the mid-east?

As someone from Illinois I'm always surprised Nebraska and Dakotas are considered the same region! But we all share a certain flatness and the central time zone. We're not the mountains, we're not the east coast, we're the middle.

Like my sibling says, it also helps to remember that Peoria, IL used to be the last settled town before you were in the western frontier, St Louis a little later (that's what that arch is all about).

The etymology dictionary has an interesting note on the matter [0]:

" Midwestern (1889) in reference to a group of states originally listed as West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas "

1889 Is the same year Montana and N/S Dakota was created !

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/Midwest#etymonline_v_14805

Iowa is peak midwest. It drops off as you move away from that center. I will postulate that the American midwest is mostly areas settled by Scandinavian immigrants with a little bit of German, Polish, and Dutch mixed in, mostly settled in the late 1800s by farmers. My own family was in this group and they were in direct contact with Native Americans, who watered their horses in their troughs.

Minnesota - definitely.

Wisconsin - definitely.

North Dakota - No. Might not actually exist.

South Dakota/Nebraska - mostly, but just the eastern quarter. The rest is West.

Missouri - Maybe a little bit on the border but mostly no. Iowa fought a war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_War) to keep Missouri out of the midwest.

Illinois - It's complicated. The northwestern corner is but no further than Rockford and nowhere south.

Kansas - probably not. It is mostly West.

Indiana - No.

Ohio - definitely not. Go find your own classification.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

If you want to suggest your own version of the Midwest, preface your claims that you are straying from ordinary/conventional usage. If you don't know what the Midwest is, allow me to inform you.

Chicago is the center of the Midwest, geographically and culturally. Always has been. Draw a big circle around Chicago, and that's roughly your Midwest states. Another good proxy for the Midwest is to look at the original members of the Big 10 athletic conference.

Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and Minnesota are the Midwestern states. Maybe some of Nebraska and the edge of Kansas and Missouri, but that's as far as it goes.

Hmm, well I'm from Michigan and we always referred to ourselves as part of the midwest. Official we are (along with Indiana and Ohio):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

Michigan is definitely there.

Before 1803, The Mississippi River was the Far West of the contiguous US terrirory.

New Orleans & further west still belonged to France.

Ohio and Indiana were known as the Midwest since they were about halfway to the Mississippi from the east coast.

Part of Kentucky is very close to Ohio & Indiana and the rest were Southern States.

Now Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and part of Missouri seem to have snuck in somehow but Dakota, Newbraska and Kansas are highly exaggerating.

No doubt Oklahoma and Texas are in The West, with almost all of Texas being part of the Southwest.

Midwesterners represent more like a regional/cultural designation than their geographical location, although both features do apply.

Western Pennsylvania is not very much like the East Coast either.

State lines really do a poor job of dividing regions nicely, like you've indicated. My home state of Ohio, for example, is a good demonstration of a border state. Southeast Ohio is definitely transitional-Appalachia, whereas Northwest Ohio is all flatland cornfields where you'd struggle to differentiate from Iowa.

I think your distinction is Upper Midwest vs. the legacy Northwest Territory/"Great Lakes" states. Midwest to outsiders seems to be a catch-all for "not West, not South, but west of the Appalachians" when in reality it's a mix of Great Lakes, Great Plains, and other gradients of other regions.

> Illinois - It's complicated. The northwestern corner is but no further than Rockford and nowhere south.

I'd say that anything north of the 618 area code would be very midwest, but once you get roughly south of I-70 the vibe is much more southern.

Of course, urban midwest can be very different indeed from rural midwest.

This is an interesting map that aggregates what various organizations consider to be the Midwest. Illinois is the only state that is on all such maps.

http://www.radicalcartography.net/midwest.png

Those states where originally the Midwest territories, which at the time were much more central than they are now.

Like half of them were originally the Northwest territory, the Midwest territory was never a thing.

The jump from Northwest Territory to Louisiana purchase basically defined the Midwest. Everything northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Colorado River has a fair claim at “Midwest.”

> who decided that Chicago, Ohio, and that whole corridor count as "mid-west".

The US Census Bureau named the region the Midwest in 1984. Previously the official name was the North Central Region. But the name Midwest has been used to refer to the region in an unofficial manner since 1886.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

As someone who lives on the west coast I’m similarly struck by the occasional realization that states like Nevada and Colorado are considered in “the west”.

I’m guessing it’s because the terms were all defined by people on the east coast some time ago.

I grew up in Northern California, as in one county away from the Oregon border, and was confused by a child when people referred to the Sacramento and San Francisco areas as "Northern California" since we had to drive several long hours south to get there.

When I was growing up in South Florida (which does not include any of Florida's Gulf Coast no matter its latitude) in the very old days, they came out with a John Wayne movie called "North to Alaska" which had a catchy soundtrack.

For us it was always "North to Orlando" :)

There is a spectrum and it isn't just a east coast thing.

I think you can basically divide it out where the primary crop is wheat vs. corn/soybeans, and where the crop irrigation starts. As you drive from east to west, you can feel exactly where this line occurs.

People move around a lot - and let me tell you about what actual western residents like old CO front range and Montana residents think about SV California people moving in. But there is a bell curve-type shape as you move west of a certain kind of individualism, which tails off in central CA. You don't have to get much east beyond SF/Mountain View to get to the "real west".

"... Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reserve....

More from Wikipedia: "Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reserve, and Case Institute of Technology, founded in 1880 through the endowment of Leonard Case, Jr., formally federated."

Yeah as a Canadian I've always found this odd about the US geography. Here we are divided into west/coastal, prairie, central/great lakes/st lawrence, east/atlantic, and north...

Much of that sits right next to what the US considers "midwest", but it's very diverse in terms of terrain.

I'll be there. Maybe I'll find an Atari 400 or 800. Those were aspirational when all i could and did buy with my Lego money was a Zx81. Or a (white, Forth running) Jupiter Ace.

Looking at the source to that webpage got a chuckle out of me

I’ll be going and trying to auction my DecWriter III.

My high school had one of those, and a couple Decwriter IIs, on their PDP-11. The III, in its day, was absolutely amazing.

My office had a III sitting in a storeroom years ago, which got pitched in a move. I had no place to keep it, otherwise I would have tried to save it. One of the keycaps was busted as well, and I had no idea how much restoration it would have needed.

Fuck covid, I want to be there.

"Vintage"? Hah! Vintage is IBM 1403, IBM 360, CDC 6600, Univac 1101, DataGen Eclipse, PDP 11/34, VAX 730, HP 3000.

We've had all of the last five at the show before. Older than that is "Antique."

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