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Vintage Computer Festival in San Jose
K2 noted the Vintage Computer Festival taking place in California ... apparently MIT does this too (not that this matters to us midwesterners). At least there's a lot of interesting looking reading material on the site that those of us who aren't there can read (the true Apple story, archives on vintage computers, petitions to sign wrt releasing specs of vintage hardware into the public domain etc).
Those who are interested in the MIT event should probably check out the flyer.
It's a relatively well-attended event, although the hardware (and software) available ranges from antique (vacuum tubes and all) to the relatively new (PII-range tech). Decent prices, however, and you can generally get whatever you're looking for.
What qualifies for this distinction?
:) For cars this is easy; anything over 30 years or so. But in the computing industry, where machines advance fast enough that something two-three years old is out of date, where is the line drawn?
I mean, I can reasonably deduct that anything from the 70's and earlier is going to be a good qualifier, but what other lines of machines can we expect to see?
Their website doesn't seem to go into much detail on it; would this include the first Macs that hit shelves? How about my old Amiga 500? An itty bitty Sun IPX?
What is classified as a "vintage" computer?
Is a place to get rid of all the "vintage" computer stuff I have now. I'm starting to run out of storage space!!!
jred
www.cautioninc.com
jred
www.cautioninc.com
caution, inc.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Nothing like the Slashdot effect on a vintage computer.
/. load. I got the first graphic loaded before the site slowed under the pressure. Either that, or the web server is a TRS-80...
I guess everything is vintage under the
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Vintage Computer Festival?
Is that anything like a Renaissance Faire?
"Hail and well met! Prepare to eat fiery death from my Vic-20, knave!"
love,
br4dh4x0r
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
Certainly the MacAquarium will be on the list...
Maybe I'll be able to gather ideas about what to do with my P3 and case...ya know....seeing as the P4 isn't compatible and all....
If they have my first computer, the Texas Instruments 99/4A (TI-99/4A), I'm there. Started programming BASIC on that thing at the age of 6. It had a surprisingly robust assembly language as well.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I'm sorry, this is a great idea, but dont host the site on a vintage computer :) Its a little slow.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
If you can do without the couple of pennies you'd earn by selling it, several charities would most likely be happy to pick up your used computer equipment. I know from experience that Good Will will gladly take whole systems dating back to the IBM PS and PS/2.
If what you've got is just loose components there are still options. There is a charity, "Computer Bank Charity" if I remember correctly, here in Seattle that takes older computers and computer parts, rebuilds and refurbishes them and supplies them to lower income families - an effort to breach the "digital divide". I'm certain there would be something along those lines in your area.
A previous slashdot article about computer charity in general : http://slashdot.org/askslashd ot/00/07/01/226259.shtml.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
A car is vintage if it's more than 30 years old. Car makers put out one new model every year. Computer makers put out a new computer about every six months. IMHO a vintage computer should be 15 years old. UNIX was written in C Try writting Windows in VB
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
Slashdotted methinks (stuck loading front page).
Cheap trick gets round slashdot effectso you can actually read something and be able to post with intelligence ;) is :
use Google's Advanced Search and search vintage.org for a word like "computer" or "old" like this :-) and load up the cached pages of the site
should work for any slashdotted site, just pick a word not too generic to be eliminated by Google's engine bu tlikely to appear on every page, and enjoy the cached files!Don't you just love Google?
Karma whoring for my /. soul please look away if this is obvious to you
At the current rate that computers get obsolete, the machine I bought last year, would qualify too.
Ug picked up on this, making his own wheel and distributing it with the notion that it was _his_ idea. Oog was not happy, but nevertheless wanted to share with the world his discovery. After Ug sold his patent and namesake, the 'UgRoll' (as it was then called) sold like hotcakes, amazing the world and caveman society alike. And all the while, Oog gave away his free wheel. Ug soon had him destroyed, by a pack of mean, nasty dogs and a bodyguard named Stomp.
Generations later, there was Bill. Bill was a skinny, geeky kid, and he had an idea. He had a proposterous idea. And he was going to find other people to make it work. So he did. And they flourished. Soon, he was the richest man in the world! There were parties. Women. Cars. Etc. But, somehow, it didn't make him happy. He couldn't be satisfied with being number one. He had to have EVERYTHING. So he began bullying, and terrorizing. And threatening. And soon, he was known throughout out the world for his actions, and a bad rep was attained in a few short years.
But alas! There is hope! Years earlier, a young man by the initials L.T. and something to do with a penguin made an amazing discovery: if you give it away, it will be better. Who needs this 'money' and 'stock'. Who needs 'coporations' and 'takeovers'. Give it away! He screamed. Give it back!
A bitter battle ensued, with the now heartless and evil Bill battling L.T. to the end. L.T. wanted nothing, and Bill wanted it all. They fought for years, in all battlegrounds imaginable. It was bloody, and violent. One 'Del' lead to another 'rm -rf'. One '.xls' lead to '.whatever-you-want-your-extention-to-be'. Lives were lost. Programmers were saddened. Many funerals were attended.
And in the end, it goes back to Oog and Ug and who wanted to make the best wheel. One wanted his wheel to be the bestseller, and the other just wanted it to give it away. Sometimes you want to do the right thing, and other times you get your balls cut off while screaming "Freedom!!!" Does it make sense? Will it ever? Only the future knows that secret, and it never tells...
The Festival site links to a petition on an important topic (well, important to vintage computer users anyway): legalizing `abandonware'.
These old computers would be even more useless without software, and a few thousand signatures might help convince some of these companies to release their old, all-but-forgotten software into the public domain.
So, go sign the petition, before it gets slashdotted too.
It's an interesting question. Is Linux vintage because UNIX is 30 years old? Look at the gear that GRiD made in 1992 -- pen-based handhelds with built-in wireless, like PDA's are just now beginning to sprout. Is there a distinction between "vintage" and "classic", design patterns that never really go away?
--
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Like that ancient PIII-933 I got a month ago? Yes, those were the days. I remember when I was the first person on my block to get a near-gHz PC... I was the envy of everyone in my country. For a mere $4000, I was on the cusp of gigahertz processing... opening up 87 instances of Microsoft Word was never easier.
Ah, but those simple days of pre-gHz processing are all but gone out here in the real world. Being the leading edge guy I am and obviously needing to keep up with the times and after hours of putting it off, I finally made the upgrade to the 1133 mHz P3.
Oh, sweet nostalgia! The 1133 performs as well as my pre-pre-gHz 850! Why, it seems like only months ago when the most I could get out of my desktop was a paltry 180 fps in Q3A. Happy days are here again!
How did our ancient pre-gHz brethren survive with such quaint technology?!
J
Old computers. Old video games. These are a few of my favorite things...
San Jose, here I come!
And the brethren went away edified.
-- compared to a modern ATX MB, let alone one of those tiny'st onechip webservers!
;^)
They have lots of room inside for adding a couple of FeeCee motherboards - for Amiga's, Ataris, MAME, or other emulators.
Most had giant powersupplys and PCBs by todays standards.
Those wood-ish chassis gave good sound, control, and airflow, and are easy to work with.
Lots of great memories will be for sale! SO REMEMBER: ~"Those that do not study history are doomed to repeat it---"
If you want to score a machine, bring lots of $$:
Cash TALKS - Credit balks!
Joe Torre - X - HardwareEngineer @ Amiga Inc & ZapMedia Amiga, AmigaDE, BeOS, Linuxz, QNX, Rebol, Windoze, ZME: So
Add a link to the VCF from your website and each time you refer a visitor to the VCF from the link on your website from now until VCF 4.0, you'll receive a point. The website making the most referrals (and therefore earning the most points) will win $50 cash and will be featured on the home page of the Vintage Computer Festival website!
Slashdot Wins!
Surely? Unless you've registered and goth the $50 for yourself ;-)
I suspect there are several things that would help classify a computer as vintage.
I'm guessing the most importaint factor is that it has been abaondoned by its maker. Things like a Sun 3 are vintage while a sparcstation 1 isn't (yet). A PDP-11 and most vaxen are but the Microvax isn't yet at least till the end of the month.
I also expect that a minium of 5 years (or should it be 10) is needed. My web server is running on a Sparcstation 1 that is now over 11 years old and its not vintage yet so maybe 10 years should be the cut-off.
I do know the the first computer to do music that they are installing accross the street from my house counts as vintage since its now 50 years old.