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Final reminder! :) VCF Pacific Northwest is THIS WEEKEND

EvanK

VCFed Founder
Joined
Aug 14, 2003
Messages
1,017
Location
New Jersey
Helloooooooooooooo forumites!

We've been planning this for almost a year and now it is time for the inaugural Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest, this weekend (10am-5pm both days) at Living Computers: Museum+Labs in Seattle.

There will be all the usual goodness that you expect from a Vintage Computer Federation event: computer museum tours, incredible exhibits, amazing venue, interesting presentations, consignment booth, food, tours of the nearby Connections Museum, and you can pick up a snazzy VCFed mousepad or coffee mug. :)

If you live within a day's drive then you owe it to yourself to check out this show! All the details are at www.vcfed.org and don't forget to use #vcfpnw in social media posts.

And of course, if you see me there then please come say hello. I love meeting Internet people in person.

Special thanks to our supporters: LC:ML, Hackaday, ACM, and the IEEE History Center.

-Evan

:p:D:):cool::eek::):biggrin::wow::mrgreen::thumbsup::shock::eek:nfire::happy2::computer:
 
Huge thanks to the LC:M+L, VCFed, the family of 8, and especially Mike Brutman for a great show! Was a truly heavenly week away from work. Stephen, Bruce, Keith, Cindie, Lath, Josh, Karl, and all the staff at LCM were phenomenal hosts!

Nice to meet some additional forum members in person. Ian, Josh, and Tom's exhibit was amazing. Alan's Sun's were "cute" - minus the missing /bin/login! Monster Eric has way too much time on his hands - still. Dwight's troubleshooting instincts are as sharp as ever. Wise-guys Jeff and Evan still have too much Jersey in them. Was great to hang out and chat with Alex in consignment. Stephen, Seth, and Ian have me super excited over new 3B2 possibilities. I wanted to bow to Sergey, but his adorable family was there and he might have blushed. Gene keep up the fighter jet work. Eric K have a save drive home and hug a CHM machine for me. Kevin stay Terrible. Jim S travel safe back to CT. And to Kyle, Vince, Jorge, Oscar, Doug, Angelo, and Jack.. what can I say but cheers, it was great hanging out all week but I'm sick of you! (at least for a short while)

And to the V.I.P. Mike B. /salute, rest, recover, and we'll see you next year!

PS. Chuck G. - I still want to thank you in person for all you do for the community. Please make the short drive next year!
 
And for those that have never been to the Seattle-Tacoma area, I'll leave you a splash of the exit scenery as I write this and snap some quick shots on my flight back to Atlanta. It's well worth spending a few extra days up here checking out nature at it's best!

pnw1.jpg

pnw2.jpg

Rainier in both photos. St. Helens can be seen to the left in the second.
 
View attachment 43732

Rainier in both photos. St. Helens can be seen to the left in the second.

Nice photos. You got lucky with some clear weather. Possibly that is Mt. St. Helens (elevation 8,366′) on the right (south and west) of Rainer (elevation 14,411′) in the second photo, and that is Mt. Adams (elevation 12,280′) on the left (south and east). If that is Mt. St. Helens on the left I'm not sure what that is on the right.
 
I think you may be right. I assumed Helens when I saw the clear but lower north face. But Adams would make more sense geographically. We had one clear day in Portland where both were visible from down town.
 
I second everything eeguru said. Except I didn't meet nearly as many members as he did. It was a GREAT SHOW!! Many thanks to all involved especially Mike Brutman.

I did spend some time conversing with Dwight Elvey. Who knew he could talk so much! ;) I also talked with Sergey about his 8088 processor board and back plane. Was that his daughter programming in Quick Basic? She is very sharp!

And YES!! We need to convince Chuck(G) to be there next year. I could go down to kidnap him if necessary. I don't live very far.

I am also happy to report that I have sold all of the MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA converters that I had there in the consignment area. I guess I need to order more parts to build some more.

By the way, who won the best Exhibit?
 
I did spend some time conversing with Dwight Elvey. Who knew he could talk so much! ;)

Yes, Dwight is very impressive (and share'itive). I pulled out my new-fangled USB PicoScope to diagnose a blown PSU and it took longer to explain the controls than it took him to diagnose the exact failure!

I also talked with Sergey about his 8088 processor board and back plane. Was that his daughter programming in Quick Basic? She is very sharp!

Son Michael. Kids and their long hair these days :) Michael was an inspiration to us all. He's has his eyes on following in his fathers footsteps and designing us a 486 SBC to build! And he beat us all and was the first to solve the front desk puzzle.

By the way, who won the best Exhibit?

Who else? Sergey!
 
Was that his daughter programming in Quick Basic? She is very sharp!

Son Michael. Kids and their long hair these days :) Michael was an inspiration to us all. He's has his eyes on following in his fathers footsteps and designing us a 486 SBC to build! And he beat us all and was the first to solve the front desk puzzle.
Oh, MY BAD!! Sorry Michael!


Who else? Sergey!
WAY TO GO Sergey and family!!
 
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Yes, Dwight is very impressive (and share'itive). I pulled out my new-fangled USB PicoScope to diagnose a blown PSU and it took longer to explain the controls than it took him to diagnose the exact failure!

It was good to have a scope handy. The PS was missing one phase so had excessive ripple. It didn't really show on the DVM but was clear on the scope. The original problem was a blown tantalum but Larry had replaced it and still not working right. I later, Sunday, was looking at Larry's 680b and thought I'd write a "Hello World" on it. I realized later that it was the first time I'd ever written code for a 6800 uP.
I also discovered that the front panel was software emulated and not a hardware function. I'd accidentally executed the text string ( not really sure what it did ) and the processor would halt but not reset. I had to do a power cycle to recover.
800+ miles each way by car! Aaah! Thanks for taking me along Eric.
Oscar had taken one of those Arduino KIM circuits and programmed it to emulated a 1802 with the RCA monitor. I was tempted to buy the kit that was in the consignment but I think someone else got it before I got back to it.
And, Thanks Mike B. for a great weekend!
Dwight
 
Videos will be posted in due course.

Several of us took photos. I'm sure they will go online as the next couple of days/weeks transpire .... right now we all need time to relax. :)
 
It was fun, and a great pleasure to meet many of you in person.
Mike B., Evan, eeguru, and others - big thank you for organizing this, and traveling here to make this event happen!

And for those that have never been to the Seattle-Tacoma area, I'll leave you a splash of the exit scenery as I write this and snap some quick shots on my flight back to Atlanta. It's well worth spending a few extra days up here checking out nature at it's best!

View attachment 43731

View attachment 43732

Rainier in both photos. St. Helens can be seen to the left in the second.

Yes, we have a very beautiful nature here. And we definitely got a nice weather during the weekend.

Peaks on the second photo from left to right: Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood (it is kind of faint, difficult to spot), Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens - it has what appears to be a flat top - but actually it is the blown crater from 1980's eruption.

My other hobby is to climb these mountains as the time and weather allows. Here is the view from the top of Mt. Hood to Washington side. From left to right: Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Adams
20170429_080847.jpg

Son Michael. Kids and their long hair these days :)

Yeah... give him a few years, he will grow a beard :)

He was actually programming on Turbo C. I think VCF PNW was his first time using it (he had programmed other things before - Arduino and such). I showed him some BGI documentation a day before the exhibition. So he has been programming a graphics demo. And then he experimented with some PC hardware - writing directly to video buffer, programming PC speaker (he wrote a simple piano application), and writing port 0x80 (I've got POST card/display in both systems, so why not).
 
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Unfortunately I couldn't make it (much as I love Cascadia), but it looks like it's gonna be a blast!

Also, I've made a kinda-flyer...Okay, Twin Peaks is in eastern washington, but i still had fun with it. :p
vcfpnw.jpg
 
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You need to change the tense on that - you did not make it. VCF PNW is a happy memory now. :)
 
...Yeah... give him a few years, he will grow a beard :)

He was actually programming on Turbo C....
There I go showing my ignorance again. I thought he was using Quick Basic based on what I remembered Quick Basic looked like when I used it last.
 
There I go showing my ignorance again. I thought he was using Quick Basic based on what I remembered Quick Basic looked like when I used it last.

Someone asked if my computer runs BASIC. And so I ran QBasic for a short moment. Michael quickly typed something like:

10 PRINT "Hi!"
20 GOTO 10

Watched the screen scrolling and soon, satisfied with the result, rebooted it :)
 

t2ePU.png


I was up in Vancouver but damn the weather was amazing all weekend.
 
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