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VCF Midwest - who's going?

twolazy said:
I seen two Prolineas for sale.. EISA machines .Was super busy. The crowd this year was insane! Couldn't even get into the YT panel. Was too full. Didn't catch it was downstairs this year (my fault). Great deals all round! Sadly no 360kb full height drives. Upside got all my XT documentation stuff cheap! Basic / Guide / debug 5 bux each with floppies. Even grabbed something from the free pile (Some IBM branded Pascal coding robot stuff. And parking lot HDD man had some good deals. Still kicking my own ass on the IBM 5153 monitor that was 50 bux and needed a recap. Seen a working example for over 250 bux, not paying that. Ended up hanging out with Ben Heck till the panel started lol. Was looking for you Next, but didnt see ya brother. And yet I seemed to miss Texelec... If anyone has a reasonable priced 5153 monitor , let me know before you go home....
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Oh no i missed these! Where abouts did your see them?
 
They were in the C room? I think. Room with the Giant CRT g3 *think 21" never seen it before and was geeking) monitor and HP server on the corner... and huge HP server on the walkway next to it, think it was a 5 cpu pentium server? But wasnt for sale sadly... Then exit out of it had a vendor with 3 pentium pros blacks on a card. I offered em a fair offer for 2 of them, but sadly said no. Still on the lookout for 2 Pentium Pro Overdrives.... And a Tandon full height IBM branded 360kb drive. And of course a 5153 monitor...
 
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twolazy said:
They were in the C room? I think. Room with the Giant CRT g3 *think 21" never seen it before and was geeking) monitor and HP server on the corner... and huge HP server on the walkway next to it, think it was a 5 cpu pentium server? But wasnt for sale sadly... Then exit out of it had a vendor with 3 pentium pros blacks on a card. I offered em a fair offer for 2 of them, but sadly said no. Still on the lookout for 2 Pentium Pro Overdrives.... And a Tandon full height IBM branded 360kb drive. And of course a 5153 monitor...
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Ah nuts, somehow i totally missed those. I do recall the giant screen MAC too. Will have to open my eyes a bit kore next time and see if they come back next year... thanks for pointing that out!

I liked the dual and 6 core ppro machines, those were neat. The orange glow in the dual was very sweet. None for sale, wish there was more of this kinda hardware still kicking around for sale!

Jonathan
 
Silent700 said:
As posted above, additional parking has been arranged, about 80 spots: https://vcfmw.org/parking.html
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Thank you so much for arranging the extra parking! I wasn’t one who needed it (this year), but I know many people apparently do, and that has got to be a godsend.

NeXT said:
Now that I'm here there's a lot of cash-only deals. This is not like VCF West at all.
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Yes, if you see stuff you want that is inexpensive ($1 for USB stick drives, $2 for a Beta tape, $5 for an IBM USB floppy drive (all of which I bought), etc.) cash is definitely best.

NeXT said:
However there is a LOT of publicity going around right now for the sheer size of the free pile
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It was monstrous. Partly because of me. But I promise I won’t bring that much stuff ever again. Even the stuff I have left from Computer Reset doesn’t amount to as much as I brought.

Silent700 said:
We do see a lot of old PC junk treasures lately. Some people like that stuff!
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I can’t explain how marvelous the free pile is at this convention! I brought an entire 10-foot U-Haul truck so full of stuff to give away (80% of it from Computer Reset). The truck was so full that nothing in the truck had to be strapped in place. I just needed to get a ton of stuff out of my hands to people who wanted it. (Don’t worry that I’m missing out; I still have more than a storage unit worth still in my possession.) And 95% of the stuff I put down was picked up eventually. I took back one book, and that was it. Monitors, terminals, keyboards, wires, cords, a 42-inch projection television, the hundreds of 1984 “Karel the Robot” Pascal textbooks, 30 beaten-up tower cases with various complete and incomplete innards, 12 Zenith VIS 2000 boxes full of miscellanea, about 12 laptops, several dot-matrix printers, and even some stuff donated to the garage sale and auction.

There are things that I found in the free pile that are a big blessing to my collection, too. A great new small CRT monitor, a Compaq Presario tower with front panel stickers (Im a Compaq collector), a 15-pin steering wheel and pedal set, 2 flying drones with cameras, keyboards to match other Compaqs I have, various useful cords, odd software, and more.

There were a lot of CRTs that people put in the pile. Everything from a 25-inch Zenith black TV to a 5-inch black-and-white under-the-cupboard TV-radio. But not a single CRT of any kind was ultimately left in the free pile at the end of Sunday. Everyone wanted what was there.

At the least, I bet this has to be a major concern for the convention committee (impeding traffic for loading/unloading, keeping to fire code, risk of cost of scrapping (especially CRTs), and where to put the pile as it is happening). The free pile got so big this year that it had to be extended on to the rear patio in the courtyard.

There was a mention I overheard from someone that they didn’t know how the convention could get any bigger or better at this point without charging for admission. I’ll be the first to say that I would not mind paying for admission to VCFMW.
 
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This was my 2nd VCFMW and my first time exhibiting, I had an awesome time. Brought my Cromemco Z-2D S-100 system and had it all working with a BASIC Guest Book app I wrote. Uploaded the code & guest book entries to GitHub in case anyone would like to view.. Even had a few famous YouTubers stop by & sign.. :)

I really love the "controlled chaos"/DIY/anything-goes attitude of this event... can't wait til next year!

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the voltage dips were amazing. Some of us could champ through it but it was amazing how many other machines bot linear and switchmode just could not handle 90v or less.
 
NeXT said:
the voltage dips were amazing. Some of us could champ through it but it was amazing how many other machines bot linear and switchmode just could not handle 90v or less.
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haha yep we measured 88VAC at our strip! my system froze several times or would give read errors on the drive.. rebooted 10x and not even get a prompt.. Was down for about an hour then magically just started working again. I was surprised the walls didn't set fire with the amount of power everyone was drawing! Hope they get that sorted for next year or go with a bigger venue.
 
The free pile got so big this year that it had to be extended on to the rear patio in the courtyard.
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This was an issue. As it turns out there was a hornets nest in the shrubs so you had to disregard the cloud of bees, which I'm sure some people didn't want to get within a mile of.
The other is that early on someone started stripping PC's for the circuit boards and processors and left trashed cases strewn around outside. Between that and the fact someone left a punch bowl, a blender and a crock pot in the free pile (and they all vanished quite fast, which I find hilarious) it seemed the free pile had decent rotation but it needed someone there watching to see what people were doing or dumping.
I told a lot of people I wanted to drive here next year which also implies I'll be setting a table up. If we stick with the Clarion for another year I'll drag along some AC voltage dataloggers so we can spectate the fun. ;)
 
The unrelated stuff—punch bowl, blender, and crock pot—should just not be there.

There were no hornets. There was apparently an underground bee nest under that one bush. However, the bees did not sting a single person that I know of. Perhaps a variety of bee that does not sting.

I did the best job I could at keeping the free pile orderly and under control, since I was depending on it to get rid of my excess truckload, like I said. I sure didn’t want the convention committee shutting it down.

On that note, I want to say how thankful I am for the free pile at VCFMW. There is literally no other way I know of that certain tech stuff and documentation would be able to get to people who want it, since it’s not high-value enough to get the effort to be on eBay or even for sale at VCFMW. Please keep this tradition going; it saves a lot of stuff from recycling and landfill, and gets it to people who want it.
 
I parked with the kid exactly where you were talking bout. 95 Hyundai accent race car. With the Miata at the hydrant... That tiny house lawn had ground wasps! Upside neither us got stung so bonus... and a nice Ducati! Was geekin on the silver Jetta.
 
Did everything in the free pile find a home? I'm assuming if pc's were gutted, some stuff would've found it's way to a dumpster. Just curious as to what and how much was tossed?
 
This was a fantastic event to visit as a first timer!
I really had a good time, I think there was so much there, I didn't know where to start LOL.

Saw many things I didn't know existed, and met lots of very interesting folks to chat with!

Thanks for the tips and extra parking area, that sure helped!

p.s. Anyone recall what the T2000 sparc, and Vax 3100 ended up going for at auction? I wasn't able to stay ...

Jonathan
 
Moondog said:
Did everything in the free pile find a home? I'm assuming if pc's were gutted, some stuff would've found it's way to a dumpster. Just curious as to what and how much was tossed?
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In terms of cubic feet or cubic meters, there was about the size of a kitchen refrigerator worth of documentation and hardware that was actually trashed. Very, very little compared to everything that went through it. Tax stuff, broken printers, some cords and cables, and some other stuff. The one specific thing I recall was a remote control that rotated your TV antenna on top of your house. It was made of Bakelite.

Truly, some of the PCs I brought already had components removed when I got them from Computer Reset.
jc179 said:
This was a fantastic event to visit as a first timer!
I really had a good time, I think there was so much there, I didn't know where to start LOL.
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Next year, do some sightseeing as part of the visit. Probably the first thing you’d like to see is the Galloping Ghost Arcade. They say they are the largest video game arcade in the world. Only 20 minutes or so from the Clarion.

I also went to the Museum of Science and Industry. I only covered about 15% of the museum in the time I had, but that leaves more to be excited about next time!
jc179 said:
p.s. Anyone recall what the T2000 sparc, and Vax 3100 ended up going for at auction? I wasn't able to stay ...

Jonathan
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I gave a few items to the auction. I’m curious what they went for. I suppose that’s confidential after the auction, unless the auction video itself goes on YouTube.
 
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