Past events: 2004
PhillyClassic 5, March 20-21, 2004
VCF Europa 5.0, May 1-2, 2004
PC Software: The First Decade, May 6-7, 2004
VCF East 2.0, July 16-17, 2004
KansasFest 2004, July 21-26, 2004
VCF 7.0, Nov. 6-7, 2004
by Evan Koblentz
Cambridge, Mass. -- Any discussion about vintage computing must eventually cover Hewlett-Packard. But when it does, the talk is usually of oscilloscopes, calculators, computers, and the Compaq / DEC / Tandem branch. Printers tend to be an afterthought.
Frank Cloutier, CTO of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, believes that shouldn’t be the case. "I have one of the best jobs on the planet. Recently I was referred to as the grandfather of inkjet," he joked, in a lecture last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here.
After years of research beginning in 1979, HP employees at an early-1980s design meeting debated their goals for inkjet technology. The raw technology had existed for a long time but "it had a dismal reputation," Cloutier noted. The situation improved slightly when someone held up a National Geographic cover. Finally, the realization came that the goal wasn’t just better color or better fonts or better resolution, but the ability for people to print an entire such image directly from a PC.
Of course HP’s inkjets of 20 years ago "did not do this [but] using that as a galvanizing vision was a really important tool," he said. In fact the first ThinkJet models of 1984 could print just 96 dots per inch (www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/timeline/hist_80s.html).
In one experiment, Cloutier covered a prototype miniature cartridge with aluminum foil, having poked holes in it with a sewing needle to allow the ink through. Suddenly the lens on his microscope went dark and he wasn’t sure why - until he looked again and realized that "I was coated with ink and it had coated the entire microscope!" Lab accidents aside, "We looked at where we were then and where we wanted to go, and we interpolated," he said.
By 2004, HP has shipped 300 million printers. What’s impressed Cloutier most is the resolution available in a typical desktop printer, which followed a technology curve similar to Moore’s Law. "The person who coined the phrase that ’a picture is worth a thousand words’ was at least an order of magnitude off, actually more’," he observed.
[Editor’s note for a detailed history of inkjet’s cousin - laser printers - see Chapter 9 of Michael Hiltzik’s book, "Dealers of Lightning Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age."]
by Evan Koblentz
King of Prussia, Penn. -- This weekend I attended PhillyClassic 5, a video gamer’s event in suburban Philadelphia. There is plenty of overlap between computer collecting and retro gaming, I reasoned. Sure enough, many of PC5’s attendees expressed interest in our hobby. Just like many of us, several of the gamers already have vintage computer collections, but may not necessarily realize it’s a distinct hobby.
Perhaps the PC5 coordinators realized this too, for they situated my exhibition table adjacent to a non-profit company called Good Deal Games (www.gooddealgames.com), where I met collector Michael Thomasson and video game historian Leonard Herman.
Good Deal’s staff demonstrated a reproduction of the original Magnavox Odyssey prototype, known simply as the Brown Box. As explained by Good Deal’s Michael Thomasson (who says he’s "the last remaining Sega games publisher on the planet"), the 12-game Brown Box system went through seven versions from inventor Ralph Baer before it became the Odyssey. Equally notable is that the original prototype is located at the Smithsonian, and that it was an inspiration for Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. (For more information, visit www.ralphbaer.com.)
Herman, meanwhile, signed copies of his 300-page book, "Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames," currently in its third edition. A fourth edition is due by the end of 2005, which will address the latest consoles and the online gaming trend, he said. Asked about the future, console games will always be ahead of computer games because of the console’s dedicated electronics, but conversely, computer games are cheaper and easier to make, he noted. Regardless of platform, developers need to keep games fun and not too complicated, he added. See www.rolentapress.com.
I also met Jaysen Mercer, editor-in-chief of a new retro gaming magazine called Manci Games (www.mancigames.com) at feedback@mancigames.com. The logic behind the name "Manci" is secret, but "The first person who guesses it gets $250 and a free subscription," he said. The name is not an abbreviation, nor is it an inside joke. "Once you hear it, it’ll be obvious," he said.
Manci’s first issue (which was celebrated with a pool-hall party, interrupted by a brawl among two brain-dead outsiders!), is colorful and comprehensive. The articles and reviews are insightful and a very enjoyable read (but could stand the addition of a copy editor.) A price guide and great interviews are excellent too.
Overall, PhillyClassic was well-run, very well attended, and fun. I picked up some games for my 2600, spent plenty of time at the dozens of free full-sized arcade systems, witnessed an elaborate game character costume contest, and wished more people would dress like that in real life (from grown men dressed as zombies and Pitfall Harry, to countless young women in Zelda and assorted skin-tight heroine outfits...)
by Sellam Ismail
Munich, Germany -- They came by train, plane, and automobile. VCF Europa 5.0 held this last weekend was a resounding success, drawing over 360 visitors across both days from all over Europe. The event featured 35 exhibits and eight talks.
Probably the coolest aspect of this year’s event was the integration of the Cray-Cyber Project with the exhibition. The Cray-Cyber Project (www.cray-cyber.org) is run by John Zabolitzky and features an actual Control Data Corp. Cyber 960 and a couple of Cray mainframes running and connected to the Internet. John gave the first talk of the VCF and then escorted a group of attendees to the underground lab from where the project operates (actually a sub-level car garage in the suburbs of Munich) to hack on the various mainframes. John also provided an exhibit at the VCF which included an IBM 129 keypunch. Throughout the event, attendees were able to punch small programs on a card deck at the VCF, then a courier would run the cards over to the project data center, run the batch through the Cyber 960, and then return the printed results back to the programmer at the VCF. Besides the sheer geek aspect of this exercise, it also served to demonstrate just how dreary the computing experience used to be for most programmers 30-40 years ago, and how far we’ve come.
As usual, there were a great many excellent exhibits, mostly featuring European computers not normally seen (or not seen at all) in the U.S., and the marketplace was overflowing with lots of vintage computing goodies (some of which I couldn’t help but to partake of). We’ll be publishing a full photo gallery showing all the various exhibits and other shots from VCF Europa 5.0 on the VCF website in the next week or so.
VCF Europa producer Hans Franke hosted the Nerd Trivia Challenge, one of the more popular features of VCF Europa. Participants were chosen from the audience and then drilled on computer history trivia with questions of increasing difficulty. Winners were treated to prizes while losers were admonished to go home and brush up on their computer history knowledge.
by Evan Koblentz
Needham, Mass. -- Anecdotes were shared, history was clarified, and lessons were learned, all firsthand, at the PC Software The First Decade conference here last week.
"We got started to some extent because Fortune magazine said Bill Gates invented the software industry. He didn’t," explained Burt Grad, president and co-founder of the Software History Center (www.softwarehistory.org/home/PCsoftware.html), the Westport, Conn. conference sponsor. But the industry’s pioneers, several of whom attended this year’s conference, can partially blame themselves for the mainstream media’s misunderstandings "We were all too busy doing... we didn’t record a darn thing," noted Larry Welke, a trustee of the Los Altos, Calif.-based Charles Babbage Foundation.
VisiCalc -- the spreadsheet program that made the term "killer app" synonymous with the microcomputer revolution -- illustrates those points. Decisions such as which hardware to support, what to name the product, and whether developer Software Arts and publisher Personal Software (later VisiCorp) should merge or sue each other are all slightly different stories today, depending on who tells them.
In general, Apple was the best hardware choice because of its openness and the quality if its disk drives, agreed VisiCalc co-inventors Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, along with Personal Software/VisiCorpco-founder Dan Fylstra. But the fact that Apple keyboards only had two arrow keys was a problem, Bricklin said. Years later, besides the Software Arts (Bricklin / Frankston) and VisiCorp merger that never happened, there were other close-but-no-cigar events along the way, Bricklin said, such as a deal with H&R Block/Compuserve that came within 48 hours of closing. So if either the original SA/PS merger or the Compuserve deal had transpired, then today’s software industry might be a vastly different landscape, the founders agreed. Mitch Kapor’s leaving the VisiCalc team in favor of co-founding Lotus Development Corp. might also have been affected, for example.
The good news is that Bricklin and Fylstra, sparked by the conference, each re-examined the whole story in new papers that will likely soon be made public. (We’ll publish hyperlinks to these papers when they are finalized, which should occur within a month or two.)
Although it’s been 25 years, it is good for history -- and provides valuable insight for collectors -- that the whole story of this groundbreaking software is finally becoming known. (Equally exciting is that Bricklin recently left his CTO post at web hoster Interland Inc., and is beginning to develop new software again. For his direct explanation, see www.softwaregarden.com/about.html.)
I also attended conference sessions on development, testing, and maintenance, and on customer support, documentation, and training. In the former, alpha and beta testing of PC software in its early years was "purely a gimmick... in most cases they were disruptive in giving you bugs," said Mike Maples, a former software executive at IBM and then at Microsoft Corp. In the latter, the computer book industry may have been partly responsible for software piracy in the 1980s and 1990s, because of how easy they made it for consumers to get the equivalent of a product manual without actually buying the software, well-known writer and trainer Adam Green said.
Looking forward, software’s history will be recorded through the new Information Technology Corporate Histories Project, a Sloan Foundation joint venture between the Charles Babbage Foundation, Computer History Museum (of Mountain View, Calif.), and Software History Center. Staff members will first study the timesharing industry, and later will explore industries such as databases, financial services, mainframe and PC applications, and storage, project leader Luanne Johnson said. The research will include oral and written recollections, via online and in-person methods, she said. "We’re going to need hundreds of volunteers," she added. She can be reached at luannej@sprynet.com.
by Evan Koblentz
Burlington, Mass. -- (Sun Microsystems) -- This week, I’m happy to report that VCF East 2.0 was a success. Everyone learned something, or bought something, or just enjoyed reminiscing.
Personally, I experienced all three, and took home a second-place award in the "other" category for my exhibit, "PDAs 1973-1993". (Compared to all the minis and micros, my PDAs and heldhelds fell into the "other" category. Hopefully in the future there will be enough people who collect luggables, notebooks, handhelds, and transputers to make "portables" a full category of its own.)
Here are some of the event highlights, from my point of view.
- Friday morning set-up. A great thing about VCF events is that everyone helps with the venue set-up. Getting vintage computers to work, especially for people who traveled a long distance to attend, can be challenging. Luckily, there’s no better place than a VCF floor to find knowledgeable people who can help you. From schlepping to sharing power cords to configuring boot-up sequences, there was something for everyone to do. Unlike during the public exhibition hours when you end up showing the same functions of your computers over and over, during the set-up period you can really get your hands dirty and learn something, and that certainly was the case this time. At one point we all learned that the power outlets in our portion of the Sun building shared just TWO circuits. Thankfully nobody killed the power for eastern Massachusetts. (Everyone setting up Friday morning also is indebted to Sun for letting us take over their building and parking lot, and especially to public relations staffer Samantha Moulton, who served as the event liaison. Sam -- THANK YOU!)
- Also Friday morning, many exhibitors took a break from set-up and joined the attendees at the speaking sessions. My own exhibit set-up is relatively simple, so I went to the first two sessions Curt Vendel and Steve Golson’s Atari "7800 20th Anniversary" talk, and event owner / newsletter writer Sellam Ismail’s "VCF Ramblings" talk. In the Atari talk I learned the reality vs. the legend of how Atari’s executives ran the company, how that affected customers, and how companies like Coleco and Nintendo exploited Atari’s mistakes. The talk also gave me some new respect for the technical brilliance of the 7800 and its developers. Next, in Sellam’s talk, I learned the details of his PDP-1 replica for Tokyo’s National Science Museum. The replica worked by running Bob Supnik’s simulator software on a Linux computer behind a "blinkenlights" front panel, with the computer case itself made from wood. Besides the case, I was amazed to learn how many of the replica’s switches and other electromechanical parts came not from a computer parts bin, but from Sellam’s local hardware store! Now that the PDP-8 and other replicas are built, Sellam says he’ll build one for anybody. More information will come in the future. Unfortunately I missed Bob Supnik’s own talk, and that of Sun’s panel on the history of storage networks. The good news is that all of the panels were recorded, so hopefully they will be available soon for public viewing. We’ll let you know the details as soon as possible.
- The influx of Sun employees -- almost 1,000 work at the Burlington facility -- into Friday’s public exhibits was terrific. At my own exhibit, I really enjoyed that so many of them appreciated my handhelds collection and asked smart questions. Looking over the 20 or so devices that I brought along, many commented that they owned this or that device back when it was new. But even among them, most were suprised to learn some of the virtually unknown PDA functions and options that existed in the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s. That’s definitely inspiration for me to keep collecting and researching.
- Vince Briel’s Replica 1. Vince, congratulations on winning the "Best of Show" award! Vince’s exhibit area was right next to mine, so during the rare slow times, I talked to him about his project. My soldering skills are shaky, but I’m strongly considering attemting the Apple 1 replica build. Vince generously took the time to explain every step to me, in terms I could understand. If I do attempt the project, then I’ll record every detail here in the newsletter. The moral? If I can do it, anyone can, trust me! Vince also impressed everyone with his industrial design skills, as the Replica 1 he brought along has a case made of see-through plexiglass, with a hinged top cover. As cool as an Apple 1 replica is, this made it even nicer.
- Friday night’s VCF party. At the day’s end, almost all of the exhibitors and their guests -- about 25 people -- went to dinner together at a local steakhouse, with the outside modeled to look like railroad cars. Beer, many laughs, and the meat all came in large quantities. Of course vintage computer collectors come in all shapes and sizes -- and boy, can some of them eat! I’ll refrain from naming the guilty, you know who you are. )
- Saturday’s talks and exhibit. We all dragged ourselves out of bed Saturday morning and, once again, encroached on Sun. The highlight from Saturday was Art Hill’s talk, "A Personal History of Computing," during which the 82-year-old Hill (who has more energy than me, at 29!) wowed everyone with his stories. To me the most exciting part was that Hill actually worked with and learned from J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, the builders of ENIAC. He also worked with the famous Navy Adm. Grace Hopper, who was largely responsible for COBOL, the "common business-oriented language," who but did not (despite the myth) coin the term "bug" in reference to computing. Some of Art’s stories were wilder than others,but as he admits, age has a way of muddying the details. I missed the next talk on the IBM/360 by Lawrence Wilkinson, as I had to prepare for my own talk that afternoon, and I missed the final talk, from John Titus who developed the Mark-8 hobbyist kit. (I’d like to think my own talk on the history of PDAs was a show "highlight" for others! A good sign came through the www.classiccmp.org mailing list last night, as an attendee mentioned on the list that "There is actually an HP41 calculator here," referring to my own exhibit. So it’s not just computer collectors that come in all shapes and sizes -- it’s the computers too.) Overall, Saturday’s attendence at the exhibits was a little slower than Friday’s, but it gave the exhibitors themselves a chance to check out each other’s work.
I brought home many good memories and a few new toys from VCF East. After dinner Friday night, I helped classiccmp.org administrator Jay West and others swap some DEC and other gear between minivans and trailers in the Marriott parking lot -- we sure hope Jay made it home safely to Kansas City, after his flat-tire adventures during the inbound trip on I-84 in Connecticut. It was also great to see newsletter founder Mike Nadeau sell many copies of his book, "Collectible Microcomputers." I experienced a really funny moment as well at one point Friday, Sellam walked over to my exhibit and, not joking, asked "Got a calculator?" Given the nature of vintage PDAs, I had about 15 calculators! Finding one that was JUST a simple calculator and had fresh batteries was the challenge, but we eventually did.
Many of us went to dinner again on Saturday night, and once again I was wowed by the computing stories (and appetites!) of my fellow hobbyists. As for toys, I acquired a TRS-80 Model 100, and a DVD copy of Steve Wozniak’s speech from last year’s K-Fest event. (Many VCF attendees will be at the Apple II event this week, including VCF Europa leader Hans Franke and Commodore 64 heroine Jeri Ellsworth. See www.kfest.org for more information.)
Tuesday, July 21 Day 1
Kansas City, Mo. -- Tuesday is arrival day at Avila University; it’s the day we all move into the dorm, set up our gear, and get reacquainted after a year apart - and, of course, meet first timers.
I arrived at around 5:30 PM, driving in from the airport with Jeri Ellsworth and Andy Molloy in tow. The first surprise was that Avila was really on the ball this year, with someone handing out the room keys at the office in Marion Center; in past years, the KansasFest committee had to deal with the keys themselves.
Once that was accomplished, and our stuff had been lugged to our rooms, it was time to wander the halls and say "Hello" to all our old friends, and to greet those we’d not met before.
Upon our return to the dorm, it was time to hang out and goof off. After a few hours of roaming the halls and checking out each other’s gear, a number of us coalesced into the lounge on the first floor and chatted until around 3AM, at which point we started to disperse to get one decent night’s sleep before the main event.
Wednesday, July 22 Day 2
Wednesday started for me with the KansasFest Kookout? After eating, Tony Diaz, our new Head Cheese, welcomed everyone to KansasFest, and Eric Shepherd provided a quick get-me-started on the HackFest programming contest.
Then it was time for the first session of the week, with Bruce Baker leading an interesting rap session on AppleWorks and the things people use it for. Bruce was followed by Eric Shepherd, who explained the code tricks used by Wolf 3D on the IIgs to optimize its screen refresh and to read multiple keys being pressed at the same time.
After that came Austin Phelps presenting a session on WiFi networking, including security advice. A very handy and informative session, indeed! Austin was followed by dinner -- our first meal served by Avila’s kitchen this year. The strange might-be-meat patties were a surprise, but the pasta and beef goulash-like substance was fairly tasty.
After that, a few of us made a run out to CompUSA? We barely made it back in time for Steve Weyhrich’s fascinating keynote address, comparing the history of radio and of automobiles to that of personal computing. (Okay, in reality, they had to wait for us to get back because they wanted Syndicomm to be able to tape the speech -- thanks, guys!)
Thursday, July 23 Day 3
Day three began with waffles. Or possibly they were the new heat tiles NASA is developing to return the space shuttle to flight. Either way, they were rock-hard yet strangely tasty once you managed to get it into your mouth.
The first session of the day was Greg Nelson’s presentation on graphics and animation software for the Apple IIgs. That was followed by back-to-back sessions from Geoff Weiss; the first was about the LANceGS card and Ethernet software development, and the second was an introduction to the capabilities of the KEGS Apple IIgs emulator, including some new code that’s not released yet that lets KEGS emulate a LANceGS card.
After Geoff wrapped up, we went to lunch, then returned for a session on ISPs by Howard Katz. Then came three rousing games of Apple II Jeopardy, hosted by Tony Diaz. After that, Tony demonstrated how to refurbish an Apple 3.5 or UniDisk 3.5 drive.
Friday, July 24 Day 4
Friday was a great day of KansasFesting; after skipping breakfast so I could get an extra hour of sleep, I headed over to the Eagle’s Nest -- the room our sessions have been held in since last year -- to attend Ken Gagne’s session looking at some of the best Apple II games that can be gotten free on the Internet.
After that, I presented my 90-minute session on Mac OS X programming using the Cocoa architecture, in which we designed and implemented a fairly complete word processor, including printing support, all during the session.
After that came lunch? After that, we returned to the Eagle’s Nest for Steve Weyhrich’s session about the history of digital music and how digital music works, which was very interesting, including sound examples from electronic music equipment dating back nearly sixty years.
Howard Katz was up next, presenting Unix shell commands and features of use to Apple II users whose ISPs provide shell access. His session included looks at doing email, web browsing, and Usenet access, as well as configuring the environment.
Steve Weyhrich then returned to the podium, talking about how to record digital music from an analog source, such as a cassette tape or vinyl record. After Steve, Sharon Knoblock talked about genealogy -- both in terms of research methods and ways to use computers to help track the massive amounts of information involved.
Next, we migrated back to Whitfield Center for the traditional pasta banquet, the awarding of prizes for best tie (to Jeri Ellsworth, who made a dress out of ties -- we’ll have a photo available soon) and best door sign (to Jeri Ellsworth and Ken Gagne for a creative door involving a talking fish modified to talk like a Furby and a dismembered mannequin head).
Saturday, July 25 Day 5
Syndicomm’s demo consisted of showing off its new Mac OS X word processor for kids, OK-Writer, as well as a work-in-progress version of Shrink II 2.0 for Mac OS X, which provides the ability to manipulate ShrinkIt files on the Mac. No release date was announced. Syndicomm also demonstrated a few interesting features of Mac OS X, including the popular GarageBand application.
After another break, Hans Franke presented information about the newly redone design of the AnyCard USB/VGA/Memory card for the Apple II series of computers. Blank cards were received this week, and the first prototypes should be built within the next month. Cards will then be provided to select developers that have volunteered to help with driver design. We’ll have a feature article about the new AnyCard soon. The vendor fair and swap meet followed, with Apple II developers and users selling their wares.
KansasFest was a blast, as usual, with fun and weird activities interspersed among genuinely useful and educational presentations. Syndicomm will be making DVDs of sessions and other KansasFest events available later this summer. Nearly 30 hours of video were captured on tape; as soon as we can edit that down into something palatable, we’ll let you know!
Sunday, July 26 Day 6
Sunday is move out day; the last day of KansasFest. Although we’ve all had a great time, we’re tired and ready to go home. But there’s still a certain sadness, too. We’ve bonded with the people we met at KansasFest, some of whom we’ve been hanging out with online for years, and others we just met for the first time.
While the Apple II is ostensibly the reason KansasFest exists, it’s really more about the people, the community, and the good times we have when we’re together, both in person and online.
So parting is a sweet sorrow, but we know that we can gather again in the virtual world and share our memories, and our expectations of the future.
And we’ll smile and look forward to next year when we gather again in Kansas City.
Because of an emergency at home, we were not able to attend the main VCF event this year. However there are some good galleries online, such as Robert Bernardo’s, Bruce Damer’s, Erik Klein’s, and Wayne Smith’s. (Were you there? Tell us!)
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