* * * * *
HAM FEST!
Once inside, we started past the primary exhibit area, like we do every year,
and headed towards the back of the hall where they house the swap meet. We
pass the obligatory food stalls and walk into a nearly empty back hall.
We looked around.
Nothing.
No swap meet.
Slow panic starts to build as we search around and find one of the side
loading dock doors to the hall open and people milling in and out. Through
the door we could see another building that people were entering and leaving
and it looked like they had moved the swap meet to a separate building this
year. Odd, but perhaps they had more people and needed the space to house
them.
We worked our way over there, picked a random starting direction (right) and
started to work the rows.
This year was a very disappointing year.
It turned out there were fewer exhibitors this year and possibly the reason
for the change of location was to mask that. Usually there are three huge
areas in the back of the main exhibit hall for the swap meet, but the
building they held the swap meet in this year was about half the size usually
set aside for this.
It also turned out there was less interesting equipment. For the first year
no one ended up buying a computer, although there was a very interesting
military spec 486 PC (which turned out to be the only interesting computer
this year, unlike last year (of which I didn't write about sadly) were
someone hacked up a GRiD pentop computer [1] to run Linux but the price was
too high). It was a portable (read: luggable) in an Army Green metal case,
removable harddrive, detatchable keyboard that fastened to the front to form
a lid and came with I think 8M RAM. was a fairly standard PC inside even
though at first I thought it was a piece of test equipment. The asking price
was a bit high, and upon investigation, the power transformer was too hot to
keep it running although it was very tempting. I wanted to buy it for use as
area51 the firewall/NAT server I want to reset up.
We did however, come across more IBM PS/2 keyboards (which are the keyboard
to have—everything else is crap) at one table. Not only IBM PS/2, but black
IBM PS/2 with the pencil eraser mouse between the G and H keys. Between the
five of us, we bought all the black IBM PS/2 keyboards. You can never have
enough of them. They're indestructable, feel wonderful and you can bludgeon
lusers with them. Perfect for the BOFH in your life.
The only other interesting thing was a huge UPS (on the order of 900W) that
Mark scored for only $25, still in working condition.
Other than that, nothing.
All in all, a very dissapointing HAM fest this year.
[1]
http://www.pd.com/gbpen//wwwboard.html
Email author at
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