If you live in Silicon Valley, we’ve got your weekend planned for you. You’ll want to attend the 11th Vintage Computer Festival West at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. This is the first such festival in the Bay Area in nine years, and it features a lot of great content the old school computing fans among you will simply love.
We reported on the event last time it was held (in 2007) in the days before the Computer History Museum had even opened its permanent exhibition space. It’s always been a hotbed of interesting retro discussions, from the time Xerox Altos were hooked up and networked to play Maze War, to the year when Woz discussed the Apple II.
(Related: SFMOMA elevates software to art)
This year, perhaps in honor of the newly released bits of Gary Kildall’s memoirs, Bob Zeidman will be discussing the results of his autopsies of DOS and CP/M. He seeks to determine once and for all whether or not DOS was stolen from CP/M, a question likely still hot in everyone’s minds to this day.
Along with gaming pioneers Al Alcorn, Steve Russell and Don Woods being on hand to discuss early computer gaming, there will also be live demonstrations of the PDP-1 and the IBM 1401! Truly a weekend to drive your children to the brink of consciousness!
For us old-timers, though, VCF West XI marks the return of a festival that not only celebrates our digital heritage, it also unites us in our love of obsolete platforms.
If you’re not in the Bay Area, fret not: There is are VCF Midwest and a VCF East coming up later this year and early next year!
