____ ___________ ________________ __ __ _____________ | |
\ \ / / ___ \ _____/ \/ \ / \ /_ \______ \ | |
\ Y / \ \/| __)/ \ / \ \/\/ / | | / / | |
\ / \___| | / Y \ / | | / / | |
\___/ \_______ /\_ | \____|__ /\__/\ / |___| /____/ | |
\/ \/ \/ \/ | |
VCFMW17 was fun. (To avoid confusion: The 17 means this was the 17th | |
vcfmw. It happened in the year 2022, not 2017) | |
Leading up to the show we had some difficulties. Due to various | |
circumstances we did not have a dog sitter, which meant my wife could | |
not make it to the show. Moreover, When prepping the nuclear keyboard | |
I accidentally broke not one, but two arduino pro micro usb ports, of | |
my last 2 arduino pro micros. These things are ludicrously fragile. | |
The micro-usb ports are barely held on with the teensiest bit of | |
solder. I did have a regular arduino micro, so I made an adapter that | |
sits on top of the board i already had, that makes it work with that. | |
All very last minute wackyhacky. To make matters worse, thursday when | |
I finally made it to the show, I realize I didn't bring the right usb | |
cable for the thing. I grabbed what looked like a long micro-usb | |
cable but instead it was a micro hdmi cable - AAAARGH - Thankfully my | |
friend who was to meet me later friday evening said he could bring me | |
a cable, and friday I got it all working during setup day. | |
Thursday, we got there around 5pm - wife dropped me off, I quickly | |
unloaded everything on my table, some weird social interactions. | |
Decided to hide in my room the rest of the night and avoid people. | |
Thursday night, my first night in the hotel room felt rather surreal. | |
Since I was by myself, it was very quiet in the room, and I can't be | |
bothered to turn on the hotel room TV since it's all spam anyway,... | |
Breaking the silence was the old familiar sounds that somehow are | |
universal for every hotel room experience: | |
* The humming airco and/or room-fridge. | |
* Muffled sounds of people talking nearby. | |
* A kid running down the hall. | |
* Someone in the next room unlocks their door, but it sounds | |
like your room. | |
* Someone leaves their room and the door slams shut. | |
* Distant plumbing sounds... is it running sinks? Is it toilets | |
flushing? Who knows! | |
It kind of sounds like being surrounded by people with lives more | |
interesting than yours, or more complicated perhaps. Wandering | |
through the hotel corridors, endless rows of closed doors, each one a | |
potential gateway into someone else's world. What goes on behind | |
them? Who knows! Yes, between the above narrative playing in my head | |
like a cheesy noir-movie, and trying to get accustomed to a different | |
bed, needless to say I did not get much sleep thursday night. All in | |
all, maybe 3 hours. | |
Got up friday morning at 8 to be ready at 9am which is when setup | |
time starts. Got everything set up rather quickly. Got the terminals | |
logged into SDF - this year I had no problems logging in with the | |
vcfmw account, since i just screen -x'd the terminals and logged in | |
with a normal keyboard. Last year I had some issues with that because | |
the account password is rather long and uses some special characters | |
not present on the honeywell terminal. Heck, the thing doesn't even | |
do pipe characters. We take that stuff for granted, but obviously a | |
terminal for a non-unix environment (GCOS) would have no use for a | |
pipe character. | |
Technically the show doesn't start until saturday - yet friday felt | |
like it was a normal day open to the general public. So many people | |
walking around looking at things, buying things, tinkering with stuff | |
-it's great. I tinkered a bit with Forgotten Machine's [1] Convergent | |
Technologies AWS CTOS system. It has some sort of forms system. Forms | |
can be saved into files, and presumably loaded from COBOL - I started | |
with trying to get a basic COBOL program compiled on it, but ran out | |
of time eventually. I may look around to see if there's a way I can | |
emulate CTOS and tinker with it at home a bit. It's a rather | |
fascinating menu-driven OS. Forgotten Machines also brought a cute | |
little Polish terminal. He said he went all the way to Poland to pick | |
it up, and it took a lot of work to reverse engineer it into a usable | |
terminal. It does not use ascii, nor serial. Fascinating. | |
It's easy to feel overwhelmed with all the interesting projects at | |
the show. I couldn't help but feel like my stuff was kind of lame in | |
comparison haha, but I guess it's important to remember that some | |
people have more resources, time-wise or money-wise - also, the best | |
projects were collaborations where many people helped make it happen. | |
All in all, I think I had 4 hours of sleep Friday night. | |
Me at my table, desperately trying to get a toobnix stream going. | |
My laptop already has shitty wifi. The hotel wifi was also really bad | |
and the combination just made it near impossible to stream anything. | |
Saturday morning, got in slightly after 9am opening time, and quickly | |
got everything up and running. Things very quicly got CRAZY with how | |
many people were there. Both front and back parking lots were FULL, | |
and there was cars parked in the street all the way up to the | |
intersection. I felt very overwhelmed and when my friend offered to | |
go out for breakfast I gladly obliged. After breakfast we decided to | |
go to the Galloping Ghost arcade for a bit instead of heading | |
straight back to the show. The Galloping Ghost is the biggest arcade | |
I've ever seen. Many many rooms just full of arcade machines. It was | |
a welcome break from the crowds. | |
The Arcade (1) | |
The Arcade (2) | |
The Arcade (3) | |
The Arcade (4) | |
The Arcade (5) | |
The Arcade (6) | |
The Arcade (7) | |
I can't resist me some OPERATION WOLF | |
After we came back from the arcade things looked a lot calmer at the | |
show. I met up with whixr and wife who apparently came a long way | |
just to talk to me about sdf stuff! I felt really bad for being gone | |
most of the day on saturday. But I ended up talking to them until 5am | |
that evening. I had some of the best conversation I've had with other | |
humans in a long time. We reminisced about the hacker/phreaking | |
culture from back in the day, and how things were where I grew up in | |
Belgium versus here. We talked a bit about cyberpunk culture and how | |
everything cyberpunk pretty much warned about came true and how there | |
is a big need for a positive message these days. We acknowledged that | |
solarpunk is cool, and we talked about how to survive doing | |
innovative / creative things in a world that's all about money. | |
Needless to say, Saturday evening, was only a 3 hours sleep night | |
again. | |
I think I learned something. I wrote some comment on the sdf bboard | |
a while back about how I had mixed feelings on the show growing so | |
large that it gets harder to do the tinkering/debugging/playing at | |
other people's tables. I've just been doing it wrong this whole time. | |
The real fun happens after the show. I should just not bother showing | |
up at my table at 9am and sleep in so I can stick around at night. | |
Another really cool display was that a group brought an entire TV | |
broadcast set-up. Including Emergency Alert System - which they had | |
tied into the local phone system. A broadcast head created several | |
channels which they had TV's hooked into, and you could interrupt the | |
shows with an emergency alert by calling a specific number and | |
speaking in a custom message. Very cool - I feel like it needed a few | |
Max Headroom heads to complete the vibe haha. They even had a little | |
portable tv that received a broadcast signal over RF. | |
Broadcast setup (+finger) | |
Works on c=64 monitors too! | |
More... | |
BCAST Headend | |
More... | |
Weather Star XL | |
More Weather Channel stuff. | |
It's actually an SGI O2 but in a metal box?! | |
^^that. | |
More... | |
Not complete without a good ph0ne | |
The whole setup(sans-finger) | |
Someone triggered an alert... | |
This year I brought my payphone to the show, and it actually got lots | |
of use if not just for triggering the emergency alerts. | |
Earlier, when I was setting up the nuclear keyboard, I was having | |
issues getting phetch compiled on the pi, and I didn't feel like | |
messing with it anymore, so I simply threw up a vi instance and let | |
people type whatever to test it. Incidentially, this seemed to make | |
it more enticing for people to use, because they could leave their | |
own custom messages for others to see. | |
Here's what the final .txt file ended up looking like | |
Sunday was rather short, I had to pack up in a hurry, earlier than I | |
had anticipated - because the puppydog was by himself at home. | |
Many thanks to Silent700 and all the organizers and volunteers making | |
the event possible. | |
I apologize if I left in a hurry and couldn't say goodbye properly. | |
But that's how it goes sometimes if you have pets, hah :) | |
Here's more pictures - Most of these were taken by my friend since my | |
phone does not have a forward facing camera - : | |
Jesus Eric working on an oversized mechanical keyboard. | |
Someone was 3d-printing these on the spot. | |
VCFMW pic | |
OUTATIME | |
Totally accurate targetting device | |
Detail of ^ | |
Friggin' Bill (1) | |
Friggin' Bill (2) | |
Apollo 11 flight plan | |
Too rich for my blood.(1) | |
Too rich for my blood.(2) | |
Obligatory Altair 8800... but with a TVI term on top. | |
^^^ more of that. | |
Even more of that. | |
Processor Technology Sol Terminal Computer | |
Another shot of my table... | |
This person was selling stuff out the back of his truck. | |
Turns out he lives in Mahomet (not far from us). | |
More Altair | |
PDP 8/a panel (1) | |
PDP 8/a panel (2) | |
PDP 8/a 500 | |
Coolest phone. I want this phone. | |
Teletype Action | |
...Stuff going on? | |
Ralph Baer's brown box (1) | |
Ralph Baer's brown box (2) | |
Obligatory acoustic coupler. | |
ZX81 stuff | |
More ZX81 stuff | |
I didn't even know this whiteboard was there... | |
Right then... | |
Anyone want any Model-M's? | |
Hah.. | |
That Altair with the tvi terminal, but turned on this time | |
...broader view | |
...and again. | |
That's it! There was so much more to be seen, but I'm sure others | |
will upload more pictures and footage soon. There sure was no | |
shortage of camera's to be seen at the show this year. | |
[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/ConvergentMightyFrame/videos | |
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Gophered by Gophernicus/3.0.1 on FreeBSD/amd64 14.0 |