Vintage PC Festival

Just returned from nice visit to the Computer History Museum in Santa Clara host of this years Vintage PC Festival 8.0. I was pleased to give a presentation on my PC collections and the history of ACP Superstore. They had a nice turn out and the new facility for the Computer History Museum is very impressive. They have a current exhibition of Computer Chess that is worth the visit.
Sellam Ismail did a nice job producing this event and his overall efforts over the past decade in keeping vintage PC's a part of our history is truly appreciated by all.

Here are some photos of the exhibit and the festival:

Vintage PC Festival Favorites:
Very complete and comprehensive display of working single-board-computers including RCA CosMac, Kim and Rockwell AIM-65. All working and performing applications.

Erik Klein's Kenbak display was incredibly complete and Erick removed the top cover and demonstrated how the computer works and its design. All discrete IC's, no LSI chips!

Evan Kobentz had a nice assortment of handhelds and he spent his 3 days in the Bay area visiting the Intel Museum, DigiBarn and other vintage collections.

Michael Holley's SWTPC display featured working units, all original plus TVT. He also has a PC that looked like a SWTPC 6800.

The Computer History Museum has a ways to go as far as its display of personal computers. I understand that the present display is temporary as it consists only of PC's stacked way to high to see all of them. It also lacks software, marketing brochures and peripherals as they only display the PC. It would be much more exciting if all the historical pieces of each PC were included in the displays.

I highly recommend a visit to the Computer History Museum on your next visit to the Bay area. Call in advance for hours as it is not open all day.

We then headed north and took in the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park. Wow! Very nicely designed building, all copper, and the view from the tower of San Francisico is not to missed!