[wplug] Vintage Computer Festival East - April 4-6

[Vance Kochenderfer]

Passing this along; several hours' drive away, but might be of
interest to some...

----- Forwarded message from Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> -----

Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2014 00:29:12 -0500
From: Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net>
Subject: Vintage Computer Festival East - April 4-6

The ninth ?annualish? Vintage Computer Festival East will be held
April 4-6, 2014, at the InfoAge Science Center, in Wall, New Jersey.

VCF East is a celebration of computer history from the 1940s-1980s.
The schedule includes a hands-on exhibit hall, technical workshops,
lectures, a marketplace, tours of the InfoAge museum complex, a
dollar-per-pound book sale, prizes, more.

This year's show will be bigger than ever. New attractions include
Friday's ?VCF East University? which is a full day of technical
classes. Friday attendees can win an oscilloscope courtesy of
Tektronix!

The main show on Saturday-Sunday will have lectures/workshops and
dozens of exhibits.

Keynotes include former IBM archivist Paul Lasewicz and IEEE 802
LAN/MAN committee founder Maris Graube. Other lectures topics include
software preservation, the history of Franklin Computer Corp., and
many more, all scheduled for the morning. In the workshops you can
learn hands-on vintage computer repair skills or even build a working
replica of something exotic.

This year there will be two exhibit halls instead of one. Exhibits
open in the afternoon ? imagine an antique car show, but instead of
?no touching? signs, everyone has to take you for a ride! Registered
exhibits so far cover everything from a real Apple 1 to the M.I.T.S.
Altair to DEC minicomputers. In addition, the event's main sponsor
MARCH (Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists) will debut its UNIVAC
1219-B military mainframe computer, circa 1965.

Tickets for VCF East University are just $20 and include a pizza
lunch. Tickets for the main show are $15/day and $25/both days.
Saturday/Sunday tickets are free for ages 17 and younger. A three-day
adult admission is $40.

Proceeds benefit MARCH. Official sponsors include the InfoAge Science
Center, VintageTech, Tektronix, the Trenton Computer Festival, Eli's
Software Encyclopedia, and Vintage-computer.com. Archive.org, IBM, and
the IEEE History Center are providing informal assistance.

? Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple: "Seeing the early equipment at
VCF is an amazing experience. For many of us, it's better than a
museum. It touches on all the hopes and dreams of the time and the
many efforts to achieve what others thought would never happen. It
brings back memories of a revolution in the making. ... The people you
meet at the VCF are amazing."

? Lee Felsenstein, moderator of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club
and creator of the Osborne 1 portable computer: "In 35 years the
personal computer grew from nothing into the most important device
shaping everyday life. It should be part of everyone's education to
see how it grew and to learn from the people who grew it in ways they
wanted to see it grow. VCF is the place to be where not only the
equipment can be seen and tried out but, perhaps more importantly,
where the people who rose to the challenge offered by these machines
can be met and heard from."

? Gordon Bell, top DEC engineer and co-founder of the Computer History
Museum: "As a speaker at the first September 1998 VCF, I have been
delighted to see it grow and flourish. The Vintage Computer Festival
is an important institution for computing history simply by getting
everyone together for collecting, sharing, and trading all form of
bits. Having a forum, gathering, and market for old stuff a.k.a.
vintage computers and the software that made them live is an essential
way to preserve and expand the history of computing -- for some of us,
the greatest invention."

? Dave Ahl, founder/editor, Creative Computing magazine: "Vintage
Computer Festival East celebrates the hard work and vision of all the
volunteers who have made the InfoAge Science Center ?- now a National
Historic Landmark -- a place where one can learn from the past to live
for the future. Oh, and it's great fun too!"

Full details are online at http://www.vintage.org/2014/east/ and
http://www.facebook.com/vcfeast. Contact: Evan Koblentz (President,
MARCH; VCF East Producer): evan at snarc.net / (646) 546.9999 .... thank
you and happy computing!

----- End forwarded message -----

Vance Kochenderfer        |  "Get me out of these ropes and into a
vkochend at nyx.net          |   good belt of Scotch"    -Nick Danger