Vintage Computer Show 1997 (Part I) by Robert Bernardo Rewind to the past...1992--my best friend and I travel to Washington, D.C., in celebration of our knowing each other for 25 years. Ostensibly, one of our major objectives is to get to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and view the massive 25th anniversary Star Trek exhibit. For a day and a half we wander through the miniature and full-size displays of prop-driven biplanes and monoplanes, jetcraft, Mercury and Apollo capsules, and Enterprise and Klingon starships. In our remaining time, we try to hit the other Smithsonian Museums. We move fast; in one, which I will dub the Science and Technology Museum, we come across an exhibit of computing history. There are photographs of Babbage's calculating machine of the 1840's and the ENIAC computer of the 1950's, an actual (but older version of the) Cray computer of modern times, various interactive games which demonstrate how a computer works, and for me, the piece de resistance--a line-up of the machines which started the home computer trend. There is Steve Job's homemade Apple I computer, complete with handmade, varnished, wood case covering the electronics. There is a Tandy TRS-80 computer. Next to it is an Atari 400 computer. However, the one that attracts my attention is the brown, "breadbox" Commodore 64! The C-64... part of the Smithsonian collection! I whip out my camera and snap a picture as it lays proudly on its display stand. Fast forward to 1997...I'm cruising through comp.sys.cbm on the Internet, and an October announcement attracts my attention . The first annual Vintage Computer Festival will be at the Alameda County fairgrounds in Pleasanton in a few days. Not only will there be a flea market and historical exhibition but also guest speakers talking about hardware and software preservation, bulletin board systems, older operating systems, and computer history here on the West Coast. There is not much lead time. Though the emphasis at the festival this time is to be on Apple II's, I reason that Commodore users should be a presence. I e-mail the organizer, asking that if there is second annual festival, he should consider an emphasis on Commodore computers. I telephone the presidents of the Commodore Hayward Users Group (CHUG) and the Fremont-Union City-Newark, Hayward User Group (FUNHUG). I only get the answering machine of FUNHUG president, Ed Hart; I leave a message telling of the festival but never receive a call back. CHUG president, George Palmer, is at home, but he reasons that his members won't have the time to make it there. O.K., if the Bay Area groups can't make it there, then I as a representative of FCUG will attend. After a Friday night at my parent's house in Stockton, I drive off to Pleasanton, a little more than an hour away. I arrive in the area and circle the fairgrounds, looking for the correct entrance. Finally, I find the entrance and head for the buildings. I'm surprised; the festival has rented two large buildings-- one for the exhibit/flea market and the other for the guest speakers. Another surprise--though the building for the guest speakers has seats for hundreds of audience members, I count at most 50 people wandering around the festival. I pay my $10 to attend all activities, and I walk into the exhibit/flea market building. There is plenty to see; as mentioned in the VCF web page, "all items will be a minimum of 10 years old. No modern PC clones here...just good old classic computers." A few tables down I see my friend, Larry Anderson, and his wife, Diane Hare. Larry runs the Silicon Realms BBS (209 754-1363), a board devoted to Commodore. He shows me around the room, his table, and the computers on exhibit. There are quite a few; from the Commodore viewpoint, VIC-20, various PET's, SX-64, C-128, Amiga 500, and Amiga 1000 systems are on display. Oh, yes, there are Apples, Ataris, Bally, Callan, Compaqs, CompuPros, and other well-known and unknown platforms. I buy some Commodore software from Larry and another gentleman, but the guest speakers are the most interesting. James Willing speaks about how he began one of the first BBS's, Marvin Johnston tells about Santa Barbara and the microcomputer revolution of the 1970's, Bill Fernandez relates the birth of Apple, and Edwin El-Kareh talks about his organization, the Computer History Association of California (CHAC). Edwin is especially fervent in furthering the "excavation, conservation, preservation, renovation, and fenestration" of vintage computers. He bemoans the fact that society doesn't value older technology, that the history of individuals and companies in the computer industry is being forgotten. He says that California has no central museum, no central repository to hold these computers, these stories, these memories. Right now CHAC has several buildings which hold historical computing hardware, but they are not climate-controlled. He does have a few tips for us individuals--archive your items in those large, "tupperware-style" boxes, and remove the paper packaging (such packaging promotes infestation). What is the connection between Commodore at the Smithsonian Institution and Commodore at the Vintage Computer Festival? It's the matter of perspective. We Commodore users can be considered collectors in the hobby of classic computer collecting. We Commodore users can be considered preservationists who retain the history of the past computer generation. When we use our Commodores, we are using historical items. Our Commodores have a history, from the early days when Commodore made business machines through the successful, heady days of the 1980's to the grass-roots efforts of nowadays. It would be a shame to destroy history by dumping our machines into a wastebin. It would be a shame to forget our computer heritage by trashing our Commodores. I for one have no intention in forgetting my heritage; this year marks my fifteenth year in using Commodores...and I will use them for many more to come. From The Interface, newsletter of Fresno Commodore User Group, via the Commodore Information Center, http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html