posted by
janrinok
on Wednesday March 04 2015, @05:03AM
from the getting-my-flared-trousers-and-flowered-shirt-ready dept.
from the getting-my-flared-trousers-and-flowered-shirt-ready dept.
Hackaday news has a story on VCF East, coming up from April 17-19 in New Jersey. This is pretty much the premier East Cost display of Vintage Tech. It's rumored that there will be 5 (five) running PDP-8 computers on display this year, in addition to all sorts of Home Micros and whatnot.
There are also a host of talks and classes about different topics. The exhibit hall usually has a ton of hands on exhibits, great for the old nerd and their kids alike!
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Vintage Computing Festival (VCF) - East
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 14 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday March 04 2015, @05:52AM
In '80/'81 or so I was in a college that was open for it's first semester. In my computer engineering class a field trip came up, it was on Saturday and only 3-4 of us showed up. Instructor showed up in a pickup and asked for a volunteer to drive the rest of us.
Turned out the field trip was to a company the instructor used to work for, we picked up a PDP-8, put it into the pickup, took it to school, and installed it in the computer lab. The installation was basically muscling the thing into position and plugging it into the wall.
/CSB
/ I've still got my TRS-80 model II
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 04 2015, @06:26AM
In my first Uni year (physics), I had the pleasure to use punch cards and wait for a week until the listing of all compile errors came back. Fortunately, a semester later I "graduated" on a Sinclair spectrum clone - worked good enough for linear and non-linear regressions I needed for crunching those few numbers after practicals.
The fact that muscled that PDP brought me some extra advantages only one year later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by fleg on Wednesday March 04 2015, @06:51AM
there were Sinclair spectrum clones? i did not know that!
here's [wikipedia.org] the wikipedia page in case anyone else is interested.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 04 2015, @08:48AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday March 04 2015, @10:09AM
Back in 2007, they had a video chat with Chuck Peddle about the old days of Motorola and MOStech. A few former C= engineers spoke as well, and showed off some old literature and prototypes. My one complaint was that most of the hardware on display just sat there, it wasn't actually powered on doing something.
Maybe I'll check it out again if I have nothing going on that weekend.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday March 04 2015, @02:49PM
Being born in '82, i missed most of that tech. First computer was an HP 486 DX2 at 66Mhz running Windows 3.11. So i can't fathom a reason to have a computer if it can't connect to the internet and do something useful. Either to share something you created locally or to view something someone else created. A computer without a network is like a cellphone without any radios.
Anyways, it seems sad to have those nearly indestructible machines powered down instead of hosting a BBS, or mailbox, or mailing list, or something useful (and retro!).
Oops, just thought of the one thing i did with an offline computer. Games : ) But even then, i would often coordinate with a friend and dial-in to their machine for some multiplayer.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 04 2015, @04:54PM
There are plenty of things to do with a computer that isn't connected to a network. We're just all too addicted to to care.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 04 2015, @04:56PM
apparently the system didn't like me using a less than sign and greater than sign together in the sentence... It should have been "Insert Game" between the two tos.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday March 05 2015, @09:21PM
In case anyone does not know why that happened the < and > signs are being parsed as the start and end of an html tag, the tag is then looked up by the parser but since there is no html tag named "Insert Game" it is then discarded and ignored and not displayed either.
The solution is to use what is called “html entitites” for those two signs. Think of html entities as code words replacing such signs so that one is able to write them and avoid the issue. It is what was used above to write the less than and greater than signs. The html entities are:
<
for less than, and
>
for greater than.
So if one wanted to write <start> what one should write is <start> Not much different as long as one is aware of it.
There is one catch: throughout this comment is written examples of html entitites code in an attempt to explain it but by doing so I had to use the & character a lot. This character is always parsed by the browser and html as the start of an html entity so how can one write it instead of having it interpreted as the start of an html entity? It is the same as the original problem and one might have to use the html entity for the & character whenever one doesn't actually want it parsed! :D
The html entity for & is:
&
so each of those times one wanted to write out the actual entity code for display rather than processing one should write & :)
There are many other characters that also have html entity codes and on can search for “html entities” to find lists of it but those three are the crucial ones everyone here should be aware of.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by fleg on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:03AM
games? sure. but for your classic geek of that era they were used to learn how to code (few schools had them). at the time such an activity was considered less socially acceptable than playing d'n'd (or runequest in my case).
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Wednesday March 04 2015, @03:54PM
This year marks the 10th year of VCF-E, I suppose 2007 was the 2nd or 3rd year. The show has grown near exponentially the last couple of years. This year I think it's about twice as big as last year, needing not only an outdoor tent to help contain the activities, but also the addition of a third day. If you wander through the MARCH (Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists) museum on the InfoAge campus during the show, the stuff is all powered off as MARCH staff are otherwise occupied. At this point it's pretty much a requirement that exhibitors must man their booths during Exhibit hall hours, so you should see plenty of stuff powered on and running there as long as you're wander through during the correct time, which should be on the schedule linked in TFA.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:53PM
The first computers I learnt to program on was the BBC Model B and the ZX81.
It's funny, every time I hear americans talk about old stuff, I think about the Eddie Izzard quote...
"I saw something in a program on something in Miami, and they were saying, "We've redecorated this building to how it looked over 50 years ago!" And people were going, "No, surely not, no. No one was alive then!"
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday March 05 2015, @04:40PM
Given that this thing is on the east coast, I'm sort of surprised that no one in Boston could shovel their way out to get a Symbolics 3600 to Joisey, though I'd probably be much more interested in the Fairlight CMI that will be there.
That is all.
(Score: 1) by evanak on Thursday April 02 2015, @11:46PM
Hello! I'm the producer of VCF East. This year we're having 16 technical classes (Friday, April 17) and 38 hands-on exhibits (Saturday/Sunday). The exhibits include our "PDP-8 Pavilion" which is now at 10 systems, not five! :) There are also VIP keynotes, consignment/vendors, museum tours, food, prizes, and more. Plus our snazzy PDP-8 / Star Trek mousepads!