VCF East 2024 Review: Old Computers in New Jersey
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- Vintage Computer Festival East is back for 2024 with more to see than ever before. After a banner crowd in 2023 the show needed to make some adjustments in 2024 to account for more people. Were those changes a success? Join me for a tour of the east coast’s big retro tech expo.
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= Chapters =
00:00 - Intro
00:18 - Exhibits, Vendors, and Things to See
13:51 - Panels & Events
20:04 - Consignment Considerations
30:15 - A Change Will Do You Good
= Links =
* The Vintage Computer Federation - www.vcfed.org
* InfoAge Science Museums - www.infoage.org
= Contact =
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Oh hey! 6:31 that is me! ( I'm Jorge, I was at our Argentinean side of the table.) Thanks for the shutout to our Clones of South America!
Hope you liked our display!
I loved it!
My dad and I are at 2:33, the guy with the green backpack is me, and my dad is the guy with the gray sweatshirt next to me. The bag I had on my shoulder was an old Compaq laptop carry bag that I had my PowerBook 1400c inside, I also used it for sticker storage.
So good!! I wish I had something like this in my area. I’d totally go to this one if it were feasible for me. I’d stare at everything, and it would be neat to be amongst my people 😂
Some day I’d love to go!
I’m only 22, but it looks like a very fun event. Vintage computers have been a passion of mine since I was younger. My own collection is pretty small, but I have a few I’ve restored and mess with too. :)
It’s more about a state of mind than a collection. :) I’m always so happy when people in their teens and 20s actually give a crap! Thanks for caring!
Great video! It was my first VCF East and it was a great experience. And it was nice getting to meet you again and hang out a bit.
I'm very happy that every PicoGUS found a new home!
i bought one of them!
It was also my first VCF East, I had a blast! My dad and I will try to be back next year.
@@jhigginsas did I, it was way better than waiting for them to be in stock when I had the money to buy one.
Hands down the best video coverage of VCF, along with former VCF videos on this channel. I like the fact, that you film the exhibits in a way, that you can easily pause the vid to have a longer look on a properly focused image. I really appreciate that.
NICE coverage and, especially, camera work. Not the usual hyperactive scanning which makes attempts at a video pause for any particular item nearly impossible and blurred if accomplished.
Hey, I made the thumbnail! :) Honestly, what a great summary video!! There was so much to do and see, but you've somehow captured it all in a tight 33 minutes... well done! I only found you thanks to Mac84's post, but so glad I did... insta-sub :)
The thought occurs to me-is it pronounced "3 DIY" like a Roman numeral? Hopefully I guessed correctly.
@@userlandia The intention was "aye yai yai" as in, "oh boy, that's a rough restoration", but it's a big stretch to get to the linguistic pun. I enjoy how different people interpret it! :) Usually get "triple-eye" or "iiiiiiieeeeee", and the Roman numerals idea is new -- all are fun!
Awesome video man! Please show up to VCFMW this year. I like how you describe what was being shown and by whom.
I went to VCFMW the past two years, I'll be back this year.
Beautiful documentary work as always Dan! It was nice meeting you in person!
Thanks! Also, I think I actually got the chip wrong on your project Mac-it's the FPU, isn't it?
@@userlandia Yeah, it was the 68882 FPU, but close enough!
Gosh i gotta go to a VCF event sometime, watching all of these videos makes me happy.
A well presented video! An excellent overview of the show. I appreciated the time and effort you put into this. Great work!!! 🙂
Fantastic review as always!! Feel like I didn't miss it. Thanks for making this!
29:08 Hey, I know that guy! Thanks for a great recap... and for sending me the PS/2 memory after the show. I'm installing Windows NT on it right now as I watch the video!
Very comprehensive review, thank you.
Excellent video as always, Dan! I really appreciated the in-depth look at a lot of the tables, especially since I wasn't able to visit all of them while exhibiting. I hope to see you again next year!
Great video. Thanks for making it!
The VCF staff and volunteers actually did make an attempt at checking receipts for those leaving the consignment area on Saturday and Sunday morning. I made several trips to the consignment area and purchased things several times and each time they checked my receipt as I left. I think they were just verifying the number of items not the actual items but it was better than nothing.
When exhibitors started taking their items back early Sunday afternoon they stopped worrying about this as much which was likely when you took your systems back.
Fair; I probably should have written that better. It's not that an effort wasn't made, more that there wasn't consistency or the crowd was too much for them. The volunteers were usually around the entrances especially when lines had to be managed at the busier times. Something I didn't get too far into the weeds about was the overall traffic flow and changes that went on in the hall over the weekend. When they first opened to customers they tried using one of the side doors as an exit. This was abandoned quickly because it caused a cold breeze to blow through. But where lines formed and people moved after checkout was kind of in flux during Saturday. Eventually they made a sort of in/out separation at the front door, but this conflicted a bit with the checkout line until the crowd died down on Saturday. It's entirely possible that when they had people exiting through the side that they were checking receipts then. Although I made several trips into the hall during Saturday I didn't end up buying anything until the afternoon, and I recall just walking out the front door, though I did have my receipt in my hand.
The floor problem hurt what I think was their original plan which was to have checkout situated next to an exit. Checking/inspecting receipts sucks from a traffic movement standpoint, so ideally you could set it up so that after people paid for their stuff they'd exit immediately. But for a variety of reasons that wasn't practical. Like most things it gets solved with a little more space.
Always love your reviews/recaps of the VCF shows! Thanks for showing our table!
"Old computers in New Jersey" 😱
Sounds like a movie title. 😊
5:36 Oooo...I want to see graphics on that WYSE terminal!
@25:30 Dann that PC-8001 MK2 SR is a dream machine!!! I should have gone this year. Oh well!! Great video btw
Great video! Caught a glimpse of myself taking out the garbage at consignment! :P BTW, I still have that complete Atari 1040STf system for sale!
I always love your videos, thanks!
I appreciate your comments! (And the other things that you do)
Thanks for covering us. :) -Thom from FujiNet.
One thing I found out after the fact is that there was a food truck festival that weekend elsewhere in New Jersey. They likely prioritized that event over VCF. I do appreciate that refreshments were available on site. Having to travel out of the site (and maybe lose a good parking spot) to grab something to eat can be a drag. Hopefully the fire company is back for the next swap meet cause those chili dogs......
InfoAge is a neat venue for the event, but there are some growing pains that are hard to navigate, particularly the limit on exhibitors (I feel bad for the folks stuck in front of the VCF museum in the back building). Also, if it rains, it gets really annoying to have to travel from building to building. All I have to say is, fill out the post show survey and make any concerns known. They DO read the feedback given the changes this year.
While I'm torn about moving from InfoAge, I could totally see them hosting a future show out of the NJ Expo Center in Edison. It hosted a few Trenton Computer Festivals in the past, and also used to host monthly computer shows back in the 90s and early 00s, so it does have a part in local computer lore (at least for me). The easy highway access and proximity to lodging is another plus.
Yes, the food truck event is what I heard as well. But I think OCEAN stepped up to the plate and did a good job. I wouldn't mind seeing them back again.
They definitely do listen to feedback, and I echo the point about filling out the post-show feedback form.
Nice summary! 👍
Another amazing vid. Thanks so much sir! Appreciate you sharing your VCF East experience.
I went on Sunday this year and the vibe was a lot more chill than Saturday last year. I even parked in the main lot at around 11am. By Sunday afternoon (~1pm) there were a lot of empty tables, even though the exhibits were scheduled to close at 4.
Exhibits actually closed at 2 on Sunday, so people who had to avoid traffic definitely had to clear out by 1 PM or so.
Looks like you missed my exhibit to the right of System Source at 9:28, but it’s all good! Incredible video as always, it was nice seeing the exhibits I missed!! 👍
Also I got a 2010 iMac for $70 at consignment, I’m going to do an SSD upgrade and hack Sonoma on it, and it will be the ultimate $150 Mac! It has an i7-870 and 12gb RAM
Sorry, Charlie! I think what happened is that I missed you on Saturday and by the time I did my second run of filming on Sunday you were missing for some reason? My "one fear" shirt is always missing out on one particular exhibit.
@@userlandia it’s all good! I could only exhibit on Saturday, I went home on Sunday morning because the drive is long and as a young vintage computer enthusiast, I gotta get back to school 😂
All in all I got a boxed complete socket 370 motherboard with a 1ghz pentium iii and 512mb of ram, an Apple Extended Keyboard II, a 51b DDR SODIMM, some slot blanks, a PCI Radeon 7000(for the motherboard), a pack of ECC DDR3 for my x58 machine, an AT cable for my PS/2 IBM Model M, and a USB bracket inside the main building. Inside Consignment I got an IBM PS/2 keyboard from the Free shelf, a Pentium 133 desktop with AT split keyboard for $25(it also has a cool sound card), an PicoGUS, and finally a Mac Pro Radeon 2600 XT.
@@EvilTurkeySlices I think that was my 2600 XT lol, I was selling one for around $20
@@charliesretrocomputing mine was at $25
For the consignment store. At Sales, scan the attendees card and match to items paid for , then scan check on way out with items = match to sold or match to brought but not sold for vendors. should not be a problem , and might even allow , if no other better idea , for matching of "you might also like"... at sales point too ?
Man.. So cool..
Nice coverage! Spotted myself a few times ...Where's Waldo (er...Ken)? I *thought* I saw everything while I was there, but there were a couple of exhibits you covered that I totally missed. The size of the event felt right, and I spent way too much money at consignment (scored a Compaq Luggable!), so overall it was a win 😆
Hey Ken, you've got a nice channel! Now I'm going to have to play spot the Ken. Good luck with the CPQ portable!
Another highly informative video, following on from your British computing museum tour!
I think I watched a video about this event last year, and some of the criticisms of the logistics prompted a certain amount of "debate" in the comments of whoever's video it was. For example, I thought that the ad-hoc trading in the car park looked rather dubious indeed. So, it's good to see that it was all regimented this time round, perhaps literally given the people in combat fatigues!
There's no ad-hoc trading in the parking lots here, you might have been thinking of VCF Midwest where people did in fact sell out of their cars. I mentioned it in my video for VCFMW 23. That's a completely different show run by a different organization, though.
@@userlandia My apologies to this event's organisers, then. I hope the organisers of that other event get their logistics sorted out this time round, though. I have to say that the on-site museum makes this event seem a lot more interesting than VCF Midwest.
Hey that’s me at 19:05 when did my hair turn gray? Seems like only yesterday I got my first computer in high school. 64k coco2 with a 156kb floppy drive with 35 tracks. 30ms track to track seek time on the roms but the hardware supported 6ms.
I stayed at that exact hotel.
3:47 Illegal attendant caught in 4K
Haha 😂
16:12 Hey, it's Usagi! What's he doing to that disk platter???
He was cleaning the head. I think he said it took 40 minutes for a 1 square CM reader to be cleaned...
22:52 I see a TIPC that looks familiar.... who/where did that come from?
Only Ron would create a battery board for the IIGS that doesn't require a diode and think he did something clever!
Well I wish I know it before the event..
I wish we had something cool like there here in Australia but as far as I know Australia doesn't really have any retro-computing stuff... (although Perth does have a neat museum of video games including a bunch of stuff you can actually play on)
There is a Perth Amiga User's Group that does regular in-person events and AFAIK they get a pretty good turnout. They're not just Amiga users at those meetups either. Maybe that could be a good place to start-though if you're on the east coast I realize that's easier said than done. :)
Incidentally, I just heard about VCF Down Under by the Canberra Vintage Computer Enthusiasts. That might also be worth a look.
@@userlandia That's great to know but doesn't seem that there is anything in Brisbane... :(
is holiday inn low, mid or high level place? cheapest of the cheap or not?
A proper Holiday Inn is a decent mid-range hotel (on the same level of, say, a Marriott or a Hyatt). Holiday Inn Express is a step below (like a Courtyard) with less frills and not as good of a breakfast. It's a solid room and you are getting what you pay for, but it's not fancy and the breakfast is stuff like pastries and cereal.
To be more specific, I was referencing this series of ads: ua-cam.com/video/eHCTaUFXpP8/v-deo.html
@@userlandia ah okay haha
31:08 What is that?
I believe it's an Apple 1 Replica.
About the "highly illegal" clones from South America, copyright law in Brazil was only changed to cover binary software in late 1987 (just like it had been in the USA back in 1976 - source code was already protected by regular copyright since it was text written by a person). So these clones might have been unethical, but they were perfectly legal. On the other hand imports were banned until 1992, so bringing an original Apple II from the US would have been highly illegal, though practically no one would consider it unethical.
Hey Jecel, thanks for commenting. It's always great to have a subject matter expert I've read elsewhere chime in. :) I apologize for my rather blunt description of these machines, because you're correct about the intricacies of the Brazilian PC market of the 80s. Please forgive the upcoming wall-o-text, especially because you already know the underlying facts, but I aught as well explain myself. My "illegal" statement is in relation to generally recognized international civil principles of software piracy-what people would consider illicit copies, not criminal illegality. If the Unitron machines were made in America (or in Europe), Apple would've shut them down just as they did to the Franklin Ace in 1980. One of those "walks like a duck, quacks like a duck" things. From Apple's POV, these clones would be illegal copies (even though they were perfectly legal to make in Brazil under local law). But it wasn't illegal to own a Franklin Ace here either, even after Apple won the lawsuit.
Your point about the select market import ban is 100% correct, and of course it wasn't illegal in Brazil to possess a locally-made Apple II clone under Brazilian law. But that's not the kind of illegal I was talking about. Pirating a ROM is still pirating a ROM, even if the piracy happens in a place that doesn't recognize binary software copyright. Not every clone used a pirated ROM-I know Unitron reverse engineered the Mac ROMs for their Mac clone and Apple willfully misrepresented their attempts when their attempted deal fell apart. But my understanding from what I've read over the years (and been told by others) is that the various 8-bit micro clones were using copied or hacked ROMs. That's why Apple and others eventually got the US government to play hardball in 1987 by threatening sanctions to "convince" Brazil to change their stance on software copyright (because Apple would have lost in a Brazilian court if they tried to stop Unitron and others on local law as you mentioned earlier). That was where I was coming from when I wrote the section.
Again, I know you know all this (because you're a Brazilian computer engineer who lived through it), but I wanted to offer my rationale behind saying what I did and I'd appreciate any more insight you'd have to offer. Your points are welcome and if I had a chance to rewrite it I'd try to add a little more nuance. But this exhibit was in my top three of the best in show, because I love weird turns of history like this.
I'm also not getting on my personal feelings about how companies abuse copyright/IP and how they overstate the claims of damages from software piracy, but I have a feeling we'd largely be in agreement if we talked about it.
Brazil isn't the only place where this happened either (like the Spectrum clones that were made behind the iron curtain), but that's a whole other kettle of fish.
@@userlandia It's also worth pointing out that these issues cut both ways. Since the US didn't join the Berne Convention until 1989, foreign publishers had a limited degree of copyright protection in the US. That undermined the position of American authors, who could experience being undercut by "pirated" foreign books, but it also undermined the position of the US as an advocate for strong international enforcement of the copyrights of its own citizens.
It was arguably only when serious money and new industries started to get involved that the situation finally changed. Instead of non-US companies needing to be cautious about operating in the US, it became the turn of US companies to get a taste of that medicine abroad.
And it wasn't completely clear that there were "generally recognized international civil principles of software piracy" until the late 1980s, maybe even after that. If you read the UK computing press in the early 1980s, there are a lot of issues familiar to us now, including the Franklin case and others, that were being discussed and litigated.
Another example would be the ownership of code generated by compilers, which was contentious, at least in parts of the industry that were new and not familiar with such issues. It isn't a coincidence that countries like the UK revamped copyright legislation in the late 1980s as a result of such matters.
@paul_boddie salient points, especially on the Berne convention, but on:
"And it wasn't completely clear that there were "generally recognized international civil principles of software piracy" until the late 1980s, maybe even after that. If you read the UK computing press in the early 1980s, there are a lot of issues familiar to us now, including the Franklin case and others, that were being discussed and litigated."
Right, you have to allow me the nuance that I'm talking about this stuff post facto in a hindsight kind of way. If the situation were to repeat today (as it sometimes does), we see the parallels.
There was a lot of litigation and "figuring it out" here in the US as well with our own domestic industry throughout the eighties. We didn't even have look-and-feel (mostly) sorted out until the early nineties. The saga of Lotus through Broderbund vs Unison World up to Apple v. Microsoft is an even muddier one, because it's not as cut and dried kind of copying as, say, pirating a ROM.
@@userlandia I think your use of "illegal clones" was very reasonable in a short phrase. My comment was just meant to alert anyone interested that there were complications. Clive Sinclair sued Brazilian Microdigital over their TK82C clone of his ZX81 claiming they violated his design patents for the keyboard and his copyright for the ROM. He lost due to his patents being UK only and this being years before the 1987 change in copyright law. Apple used this as an excuse for not suing Unitron for their Mac clone but getting the US government to pressure the Brazilian government instead. The lack of copyright protection actually hurt local developers more than foreign companies. There was only one successful local software company in the 1980s (in the niche of communication protocols between different computers in combinations not used outside of Brazil). The only way to make money was in hardware. And that hardware had to be clone so buyers would get a huge software library "for free". An original design with only a few programs that people would have to pay for was very hard to sell.
@@jecelassumpcaojr890 "The lack of copyright protection actually hurt local developers more than foreign companies."
Indeed. This is similar to the situation of American authors prior to various copyright legislation in the US. Who wants to read a local author whose name is unfamiliar when there are publishers selling cheap copies of authors like Dickens? And then there is the persistent notion that certain US companies deliberately overlooked their software appearing "for free" in various markets. Both practices - one affecting the US, the other perpetrated by US companies - were harmful to the development of the targeted markets.
It looks so small n cramped. Need a bigger venue. Remember the nerd rule of thumb....1 parking spot is 1 person.....still looked fun
0:26 is that “obsolete”+“computer fans” or is that “obsolete computer”+”fans” ? 😂
A little of column A, a little of column B...