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Vintage Computer Festival 8.0

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the places-to-be dept.

Sellam Ismail writes "The 8th annual Vintage Computer Festival is being held on November 5th & 6th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The highlight of this year's event is a Homebrew Computer Club retrospective featuring a panel of original members of the Club including Steve Wozniak, Lee Felsenstein, and others. VCF 8.0 also brings the return of the Nerd Trivia Challenge, a game show style trivia contest for hardcore computer history buffs, and for the first time is hosting the award presentation ceremony for the International Obfuscated C Code Competition."

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder? by elgee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder if any of the Obfuscated C Code was ever folded into commercial products? Or mission critical enterprise applications?

  2. Beauty of the old machines: simplicity by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting
    With only a few k of memory and a few thousand or few tens of thousands of transistors, these old machine were 100% comprehensible. A hobbyist could readily learn the purpose and functioning of every instruction, every chip, and every circuit trace. In contrast, modern machines are largely inscrutable black boxes with millions of lines of code in deeply layered architectures.

    I'l gladly give up knowledge of 100% of the internals in exchange for the power of OS X on a G5, but those old machines do provide a pleasant simplicity.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  3. The first computer I programmed. by elgee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An RPC-4000. Picture here:
    http://home.att.net/~lgaska/images/rpc-4000.jpg
    If memory serves me correct, it had 4096 words of rotating drum meemory. Paper tape or Flexowriter input. It was great.

    Yes, I am older than dirt.

  4. my first computer experience, HP 2000 by rheotaxis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In early 1970's, I recall this computer, the HP 2000, with real-time BASIC, paper tapes, and teletype terminals with modem connections. (My first computer program was on this machine, 1972!) It had great interactive games, all text of course, and some based on real physcial science. I recall one our Physics teacher wrote, trying to land Apollo Lunar module on the surface of the Moon, without running out of fuel, or crashing into the surface too fast. It wasn't easy, and I remember kids screaming with joy when they actully made it safe, which wasn't very often. This was real science teaching at its best.

    --
    Software freedom...I love it!