Advent of Computing - VCF SoCal - Interview with Micki and Steve

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

In this episode I sit down and talk with Micki and Steve about VCF SoCal, a new Vintage Computer Festival! The event is taking place in Orange, California on Febuary 16th and 17th. VCFs are a wonderful time, and a great opportunity to meet up with other retro enthusiasts. The weekend will be filled with exhibits and speakers, including myself! I will be in attendence, and talking about some super cool technology. Stick around until the end of the interview for the full details. More information on VCF SoCal can be found at: https://www.vcfsocal.com/

making a surprise appearance yet again. It is editing bay, Sean. I'm running a quick interview and I thought it would be a little weird to not have an introduction. Now, as you know, I don't do interviews often on the podcast. It's something that I'm perennially saying I'll do more of. Well, I'm going to start out 2024 strong on that note. Last week, I was contacted about the possibility of running spot on the show for the new VCF SoCal Festival. Now, how can I resist the opportunity to talk to you, the very people planning this exciting event? The festival will be happening February 17th and 18th in 2024, in case you're somehow listening to this in the far-flung future. Its location is the Hotel Farah Event Center in Orange, California. You can find everything at

vcfsocal.com. Now, I'm going to roll the interview, but if you stick around to the end, I will have an exciting announcement, so there's some incentive to listen. Okay, let me find my bumper reel somewhere here. Today I have with me a very special interview. I have Mickey and Steve, who are here to talk a little bit about an upcoming vintage computer festival. So before we start, would you guys like to introduce yourselves to my listeners? Yeah, I'm Mickey Diederich, partner of Steve Diederich. And my background is light on computers, although I was an early vintage computer users back when they were called computers to quote a friend of ours. But my passion is event planning. And so that is why I am the showrunner for VCF SoCal.

Yes. My name is Steve Diederich. And that is why Mickey is the showrunner of VCF SoCal. showrunner of BCF SoCal, her, uh, her organization skills and, um, just putting things together and running a show, uh, is far above, um, my experience. My I'm, I'm a nerdy tech computer consultant, been doing computers for over four decades. And, uh, like Mickey said that my original computers were just computers. Now they're just, you know, all the best computers are old now, right? They're classics, like the music. So a few years ago, I got back deeper into retro computers and started a YouTube channel called The Vitner. And we're sitting in our studio right now. Your listeners can't see it, but maybe if they listen very carefully they can hear plastic

cracking and yellowing so um so we've had a lot of fun with that with the vintage retro channel and we started going to some vintage computer festivals uh across the country and we discovered those and we're like why isn't there one in southern california so that's that's why we're on your show that really is a great question um especially since there's so many folk in socal i know i've i've also been touched by the vintage computer festivals i've been to the far west ones uh once i need to go more often i say that perennially uh so for people who don't know since not everyone's plugged into the community what is vcf and what is the vintage computer federation yeah so the vintage computer federation is a non-profit that is established to

share computer history uh both with folks that want to reminisce and enjoy those retro tech machines, but also introducing computing and the history of computing to the next generations. So they have workshops and lots of options, camps and that sort of thing for kids to get to know vintage computing and current computing now just to note we are using the vcf moniker for the vintage computer fest that we're doing here in southern california but we are not officially part of the vc federation or vc Fed that we call it, the nonprofit that's up in New Jersey, they started doing VCFs and they just want people to do more of them, do more with vintage hardware, get stuff out there.

So they've let some other groups, and all of us are just separate groups of people that didn't really know each other, start VCcfs of vintage computer fests in their area so like the one that popped up again in dallas last year and they're doing it again this year and the one up in midwest the one in southeast uh vcf west in northern california and vcf east in new jersey are actually run by the VC Federation. So that's our connection with that. They were very nice to let us use the VCF moniker because it does have a lot of, you know, a lot of energy behind it.

A lot of good vibes and people know they get an idea of what they should expect if they want to come out to SoCal and visit RVC Festival. Yeah, it's definitely a name that's I'd say has a lot of clout behind it. Yes, it's powerful. I know speaking from my experience going to the festival in Mountain View, the is that the west or the far west? It's just the west um that that was a just a really really neat experience and the year i went they had presenters talking about the xerox alto restoration yes live demos of the alto just as an example of some of the you get to see unique history in an interactive way that you normally wouldn't so to that point specifically what can we expect from the socal festival this year well you're hitting

the nail on the head the um each fest is is different because uh like up in west there's a there's a lot of um old tech uh from the mountain views of Silicon Valley area. And then, for example, in Southwest, in Dallas, they have a lot of Texas instrument people and some Tandy stuff. You know, they're in Texas. And up in Midwest, you've got what's going on up there. Already from the fests that we're familiar with and that we've been to, we're seeing a different mix, of course, here in Southern California of what people are wanting to bring out. I'm in charge of setting up the exhibitors, and we have a number of them on our website, the vcfsocal.com, where you can go look at the current exhibitor list. I'm also working with some other exhibitors and vendors who haven't finished up paperwork and stuff to get them on board, but we've got some, well, we just signed up somebody who's creating using a Raspberry Pi,

a Wi-Fi modem for the Coco. So, and they're still in development. They're looking for people to test it out and such. It's kind of an early expo for them to be showing the hardware. That would be a great way to get connections for testing resources, too.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the fun thing is it's all breadboarded still. Oh, sweet. Yeah, it's going to be kind of cool looking. Another gentleman who um created a midi synthesizer himself from discrete components so yeah that's pretty wild that's a lot of work yeah oh exactly so uh there's there's that and then of course there's the the other mix of people who have these vintage computers that they've restored it's kept in pristine condition

hopefully you know, things happen. But they're bringing their beloved retros out and running their favorite software or their hardware on it. I may end up doing some light pen stuff for display, which people

have no clue what light pens are anymore, usually. It's all those really niche interface options, right? Yeah. Well, light pens were the future. And then mice took over. Yeah. So.

Well, I just want to expand. Steve went through a lot of the, a few of the exhibits that we're expecting. But we're trying to build the components that the other VCFs have. So we'll have a panel of speakers over the two days and then, you know, doing presentations. And then we'll have hopefully a consignment in an auction area. And hopefully definitely. Yeah.

The infamous free table that is just constantly changing with a pile of actually the free table is one of constantly changing with a pile of actually the free table is one of my favorite things not not that i can go like pick up something cool for free but that people if you don't know what to do with it you've got some odd piece from an odd computer you don't even know where it came from you don't throw it out you know they're not making those parts anymore just bring it to the show put it on the free table and somebody would be like oh my goodness that is a bracket from the whatever computer and i've been looking for one of those so i it's a nice way to just share get you know get stuff into people's hands that can continue to use it yeah it's in line with these festivals

being just wonderful resources for anyone interested in computer history or retro computing as a hobby. So there will be displays. Like I talked about the exhibitors and Mickey, excuse me, Mickey's handling the speakers. So she's getting all of them on board. And then as she said, we'll have an auction later on the the sunday afternoon of of uh older or

maybe not older but just things that people can use uh and then the um uh consignment area the people that who want to sell their stuff they want to attend the show but they got an old pc or retro whatever and they just want to sell it without having to pay the eBay fees and having to ship it out and stuff like that. So hit or miss to ship anything with CRTs in it especially. Yeah, I've received a few broken things. Oh yeah. I think we all have.

I know personally I have a PS2, an old IBM PS2 model 25 back there somewhere on my shelves from a VCF. That's from a VCF consignment sale. And I've been looking for one forever, but I didn't want to get one shipped because I knew it wouldn't arrive intact. And those tubes are hard to replace. So for the VCFs, again, the consignment area, the auction area, the ticket sales, t-shirt sales. The VCFs have become known

to have those. But one of the reasons behind that is Mickey and I bit off a large chunk here with the hotel and took it on ourselves. So it's paid for, the show's happening, but depending on how sales, consignments, shirts and stuff go, we'll see if we get all the credit cards paid off by the end of the weekend. And hopefully we do, and we have enough to put a down payment for the following year. So we're upstarting this, hopefully to have it year after year. So everybody who can support, come out, be an exhibitor. There's a fee for that because we're renting the space for people to show their fun stuff.

So with all the support and help that everybody can do, it would be awesome. So to that point, what's the submission process like? Is it all, all streamlined on your website? I'm assuming. Oh,

pretty streamlined. Like for exhibitors, there's a sign-up form. I then reach out to them with the specifics on it, check how many tables they'd like, how many exhibitor passes they'd like for the weekend. Same thing for vendors. Vendors are a little bit different because they're selling. In California here, we have some paperwork we have to work with,

sales tax permits and stuff uh for speakers uh they sign up uh we still have a couple slots or so yeah we're actually doing pretty good on speakers and of course for sponsors as well there's a sign-up form for there and we're extending out uh for sponsors you know putting them on the t-shirt and other areas, depending on what the sponsorship level is. I want to interject that VCF Southwest was the first VCF to use sponsors. Yes. And when we were talking to BC Fed, they were like, I don't know why we didn't think of that before, because that just helps you do a bigger, better show. Yeah.

I guess I never clocked that. I haven't seen sponsors lists before. That's neat. That does make sense that that's just something they should have always had. It's good. So, Mickey, you were saying you're managing the speakers. Do you have, can you share some of the presentations that we're going to be seeing? Yeah. Well, we're going to be seeing? Yeah.

Well, we're going to have a presentation on Fujinet because that's, you know, an essential resource for a lot of the hobbyists. So Thomas Cherryholmes is going to come out to do that. We have Sean Harrington talking about the Aquarius Plus, which is a plug-in for the Aquarius computer, a very short-lived computer by Mattel. I believe it's a replacement. Oh, I thought it was a... No. Oh, okay. It's like a re...

You gotta see it at the show. Yeah. Okay. There is so much retro stuff. You can't... It's hard to follow everything. Well, especially with all the new projects. Right. Constantly new stuff, which is... I think it's hard to follow everything. Well, especially with all the new projects. Right. There's constantly new stuff, which is, I think it's really exciting personally. And then we've got some like industry folks that have been around for a long time.

They're going to talk about the early days of PC computing and sales and building a computer superstore that rode the wave, you know, in its heyday. And then some educational folks that will talk about bringing the history and the passion of vintage computing to everyone else. Yeah. So there's a lot of info there. We're going to be updating the website this particular weekend. I'm not sure when this is going to be broadcast, but we're going to be putting the speakers on now.

We haven't published a speakers list yet because we hadn't figured out the schedule and got everybody on board. We've been working. The whole show show everything is just from ground zero just scratch we had to build the website and everything that we're doing yeah that takes a whole lot of a whole lot of time and effort yep we were in vcf southwest and we didn't know what to expect it was our our first one. And we were just surprised at how eager everyone was to share their story.

And everyone was genuinely interested in what we were exhibiting. We had programming cartridges. And we thought, like, well, you know, it's kind of interesting, but it's not, doesn't have a huge wow factor. But people intently listened and understood the combination and the sequence of them and um that actually translated on to west as well i thought maybe like oh we're in the south everyone's so nice here but in mountain view same sort of thing just great community and the eagerness to share. We had a gentleman come up and point to one of our cartridges and say, oh, my wife wrote

that. Yeah, it was a hard thing. Oh, cool. Yeah, we had all the known hardware cartridges, programming languages for the Atari 8-bits. And of course, we had Atari Basic and he walked up he's like my wife my wife wrote that right there i'm like i know who you are so like mickey's saying everybody's nice so here's my take on this i've been to plenty of trade shows that's a totally different vibe though right. So you go up to a booth and you're like, I love that product. And you start talking to the person and they're like, this is just my day job.

And what quantity and how much do you want? And it's like, OK, it's transactional. At the VCFs, everybody who's there wants to talk about retro. So the people displaying their exhibits, the vendors selling their stuff, the attendees, the speakers, you could turn around to anybody and just start a retro conversation, and it will go somewhere. So everybody's really friendly, and that's the topic of the weekend. Is anything right? Hey, there's Doom run on that. Hey, have you modified that yet how much memory you know oh you you put that new memory upgrade in there have you looked at fuji net so it's it's really good for just

constant conversations all weekend long by the end of uh southwest i i was burnt out and my i'm just losing my okay i was losing my voice so the next day we left uh we drove we drove from southern california to texas over two days to get there because we didn't want to fly with our special yeah we had stuff so the next day uh i walked into a subway to order a sandwich as we were driving home and uh the the lady paused for a said, has anybody ever told you that you sound like Jeff Goldblum? And I do today. So my voice was just way off. I talked so much that weekend.

It was great. But we went away on a high. Yeah. Like that's what we knew. Like, oh, we've got to do this. Yeah. Yeah. But like we've all been saying that's

one of the wonderful things about the retro community in general and vcf in particular is it's amazingly open and inviting to everyone and everyone's so passionate about the topic i mean you kind of have to be to show up to any of these events right i know when i was at vcf and mountain view i got to beat one of the authors of space war at space war on original pdp1 and as i was walking out of the consignment section later i think the next day i'd gotten some books on programming lisp i was walking away and the same guy walked up to me. He's like, oh, Lisp. I remember writing an implementation of that and just hobbled away towards a coffee shop. It's definitely one of those things where you run into people that you'd never think in a million years you'd ever see, but they're there and they're very eager and happy to talk to you about their work. So one of the speakers or presentations that we're having is from the guys and gals, ladies that would program for the Intellivision back when they worked at Mattel.

So the Blue Sky Rangers and a lot of them live in this area because the office was located here. So they're going to do a presentation. So if you like in television, now it's a vintage computer show, but you can't have a vintage computer show like games. They're adjacent. They're very much adjacent. So that whole era. So they're going to be talking about what it was like in the days

to do all that work. And they're going to be at the show and you can ask them questions and tell them that you know whatever they wrote was your favorite game and so it's those those connections you know 40 years ago you'd you'd never be able to talk to them and now we're all just hanging out just shooting the shit and having stories very good now quick question and not to put any pressure on you guys to do more um are you going to be streaming or recording any of the presentations is that in the cards the answer is yes the logistics is not figured out yet yeah i mean look at you you know video and audio and once you get more than two you you know, more than one mic.

It's a lot. It's a whole lot of work. Yeah. So we're not planning on streaming live from the event just because of, you know, headaches with Internet and Wi-Fi. We could possibly do a test for next year. Yeah, yeah. We don't we there's no test. There's no dry run. Yeah. It's the first time at this location and the infrastructure i mean they have wi-fi you know they have internet there but once you get a festival you know they hold these uh disney ana uh shows there to sell disney type products

in the same area they don't use internet right but we're gonna have a room full hundreds of people that want to you know get on wi-fi yeah we don't know once we've got 99 folks on their wi-fi we don't know how well our quality would be but we of course want to capture all you know all the presentations yeah good that that's good to hear because I can definitely tell you recordings of interviews and presentations are always primo resources for folk like me. Oh, another thing for exhibitors and vendors and speakers and VIP people is even though the show is on Saturday and Sunday, Friday night, Friday afternoon is load in and set up for exhibitors and such. And after that, we're going to have a welcome party for all the exhibitors, speakers, VIPs and such. No attendees, sorry, attendees. But one of the problems is when you go to these VCFs and you exhibit, you never have a chance to talk to anybody else because you're at your table doing all the

stuff. And that's what we experienced. So Friday night for the welcome party, people, the attendees and all, sorry, not the attendees, the exhibitors and all can hang out and talk to the other exhibitors and take a look at the other tables and just enjoy it without hundreds of attendees coming through and asking questions and stuff. So we thought that would be a very nice addition to ours. Yeah, that does sound like a lot of fun. As someone who's done trade shows before, I get it. That sounds like a good time. So make sure you come down Friday night.

And on the side note, if you're coming down, get a hotel room. By Tuesday night, the special price disappears. Okay. They cut it off a month ahead of time. So the 16th is the last day we can offer the $159 rate. It might go to $189

or $200 or I don't know. Why don't we get into the actual details of where, when, and the website since I don't think any of us have mentioned that yet. Okay. Go ahead. So you can get all the information at vcfsocal.com.

The event is Presidents Day weekend, February 17th and 18th. The main event will be Saturday and Sunday. But we selected Presidents Weekend so that you had another free day for travel on the way home. So folks hopefully don't have to cut out, you know, midday on Sunday to catch a flight. It's going to be at the Hotel Farah. It's a large double tree hotel that's been, it's right near UCI Medical Center and Angel Stadium. It's three miles from Disneyland. Anyone that's familiar with Orange County knows this tall building right where the four, I'm sorry, the five and the 22 come together, the 57. It's the Orange Crush. It's right there.

But what's nice about this facility, we wanted a hotel so we could build this community. You didn't have to go back to your hotel after being at the location. So the hotel is large enough that it has a kind of separate convention area. So there's nothing else going on there but us. So we're going to take over the hotel. And then the convention area has a separate entrance so if you're not a hotel guest you park and just walk in from the outside so it's really um looks like it's going to be kind of an ideal setup for us right so not only are we taking over all the event areas um but we're also so much taking over the lobby and the bar area.

Yeah. So they've got a nice bar, a nice restaurant, a bunch of outdoor area near the bar. We're really hoping it's just, you know, a two and a half day party. Yeah.

90% of the people there are just going to be all us retro guys. When, you know, guys and ladies, of course. Yeah. 90% of the people there are just going to be all us retro guys. Um, when, you know, guys and ladies, of course. Right. So even though the show goes till 6 PM, say on Saturday, then we can all just shift out to the lobby in the bar area. And, you know, you can eat dinner there. You can go get dinner somewhere else or come back to the bar. Uh, I already, um, talked to the management of the hotel and they said, do you have any trouble if somebody like set up a monitor and a computer and three laptops and they're doing this and doing that? And she's like, we've had people set up rice cookers in the lobby. So she's got she's got no problem if we take over the lobby in the bar area just with all that retro tech and playing games and doing whatever. the lobby in the bar area just with all that you know retro tech and playing games and doing whatever so i'm really i'm really looking forward to that uh and getting to meet new people yeah

and then just one more note on the location it's kind of in the parking lot of a mall that's called outlets of orange it used to be called the block and so there's i think 36 restaurants within walking distance of the hotel. So it's all inclusive. It's just right there. Sweet. So if you and everybody else are coming for the weekend, get a hotel room. You're just going to park your car for the weekend and never leave.

There's food. There's events. There's things. There's people. It's going to be a really nice time. There's a Best Buy across the street yeah if you're able so then what's the website where people can get all the rundowns and submission and tickets yeah that's vcfsocal.com perfect well thanks so much for coming on it's been great talking to you and hopefully i'll see you in socal no i hope so

welcome you there. Welcome to the end of the episode and the announcement I mentioned. I can confirm that I am leaving my fortress of solitude to venture to the VCF SoCal festival in February. I was a little bit on the fence when we started this interview, but I've committed, I have tickets, and I'm going down. Better still, I snagged a speaker slot. I'm going to be giving a talk on the Cryotron. Now, I have done an episode about the Cryotron in the past. This talk is going to be an update on that. I have some new exciting research that I've been toiling away on, so I think it'll be a fun opportunity to talk about some of that

work and show off the Cryotron to a larger audience. I'm going to be planning to record it and post it up as a live episode, so there's that to get excited about as well. If nothing else convinces you to attend, then why not come down and meet your favorite podcaster and listen to me ramble on about superconductive circuits and possible secret computers designed by the DoD? On a more serious note, I am actually very excited to have the chance to go to VCF SoCal

and to speak there. Big prompt to the showrunners. I haven't done any live appearances since I've started the show. I've done some live online presentations, but nothing in person, so I'm stoked. I don't know if it comes up very well in the audio, but I am very excited. Anyway, I hope to see at least some of you in SoCal this February. Until then, I do actually need to return to my fortress of solitude. I have a whole lot of legal documents and kind of poorly written books to go through in preparation for this next IBM episode. I plan to have that out about a week after this interview hits the feed, but that might get pushed back maybe a week, just depending on how sources line up.

Since we're going to be talking about US vs. IBM, that's a very big topic, and I think I have a handle on most of it, but scope creep is a perennial issue in my life. Anyway, I'll talk to you soon, and thanks for listening to Advent of Computing.