Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 16

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&#x2F;128, Atari 400&#x2F;800&#x2F;ST, TI 99&#x2F;4A, et al. I&#x27;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&#x27;s and a bunch of software for $5.<p>I haven&#x27;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&#x27;t imagine it is cheap any longer.

I&#x27;m a huge fan of Dave Murray&#x27;s. It&#x27;s great to see that he&#x27;ll be there demoing the Commander X16. He has a great way of making vintage technology accessible and relevant as a teaching tool. I&#x27;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.

I attended the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 8 a couple of weeks ago, here&#x27;s the pictures I took.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;hi5Yb50" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;hi5Yb50</a>

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

Good Lord, that website rules.<p>;)

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.

Here&#x27;s a gallery (and video) of previous shows that may give some more insight into what goes on at a VCF:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vcfmw.org&#x2F;past.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vcfmw.org&#x2F;past.html</a>

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.

To save a few clicks, Elmhurst is a suburb of Chicago, IL.<p>Do people lug their vintage machines to the event, or is it more of a software-based meetup?

Kind of off topic, but I always wonder who decided that Chicago, Ohio, and that whole corridor count as &quot;mid-west&quot;.<p>When I see mid-west, I think the Dakotas, Minnesota, and southwards. I&#x27;m always disappointed to see that actually what most people think is &quot;mid-west&quot; is pretty far from me. Shouldn&#x27;t those areas be called the mid-east?

I&#x27;ll be there. Maybe I&#x27;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.

Fuck covid, I want to be there.

&quot;Vintage&quot;? Hah! Vintage is IBM 1403, IBM 360, CDC 6600, Univac 1101, DataGen Eclipse, PDP 11&#x2F;34, VAX 730, HP 3000.