Day two: off to VCF Midwest. The main reason I bought us plane tickets out to Chicago was to visit the 17th annual Vintage Computer Festival Midwest, or VCF MW 2022. As stated in the previous article I had seen LGR's video of VCF MW 2021 and I knew I just had to see this in person. We took an Uber to the Waterford Banquets in Elmherst where the convention was happening, and we actually got there a few minutes before the official start. My dad and I grabbed our badges but neither of us wrote our names on them, and we set off walking through the hallway used as the dealer's den. It was the only thing connecting the front of the convention center to the ballrooms, as the front doors to the main room where the panels were held were barricaded off.
To be completely honest, it was slightly underwhelming. Just a little bit, though. I think going to the Art Institute of Chicago the prior day spoiled my appetite, as the things on display there were a lot more... I don't know the word I'm looking for, but seeing all of these old computers in one spot kind of had the same effect on me that many people who went to Computer Reset also felt: you start getting into a mindset of "Oh, of course that's here." where things that would normally amaze you don't seem all too interesting. My dad was actually the first to point out something that jumped out as being amazing, that being the Macintosh Quadra 950 which he remembered from college. He recalls them and the Performa 7300 (Also saw one close by) being top of line in their day and super expensive, and somewhat of a status symbol when he was in college. And of course, there were several of Quadras for sale throughout the dealer's den, so by the fifth one I was thinking, "Oh, well there's another one."
And here's where the real fun of VCF MW was. Talking to people with the same interests as me. The Art Institute was fantastic and was a much more memorable experience, but this was the first time I was able to speak with people about old computers and actually have a conversation instead of me just giving a lecture. The first guy we talked to was Ethan Dicks, who had his PDP-8 on display. Now, my biggest regret about VCF MW was not recording the conversations I had with the older folk about computers, because my dad was pretty amazed by what Dicks had to say on the computer. My memory for fine details is terrible, but I recall pointing out to my dad it was a minicomputer, meaning it has no microprocessor, at which point Dicks went into detail about the multiple cards that collectively served as the processor, and how the PDP-8 and PDP-11 were used for pretty much everything in their day. I recall Dicks listing off industrial machinery controllers, and schools, but I was honestly not paying attention as I was getting distracted by things further down the table. ADHD, folks. I think I taught Dicks something he didn't know, and that would be the existence of the Sound stream digital audio recorder, which was introduced in 1977 and used a PDP-11 for the mastering process. Like he said, it was used for everything in its day. Something else I learned is apparently the PDP-8 was one of the first computers where you could drop the cards in anywhere, so that's something I didn't know.
While making my way around the tables I caught Clint Basinger out of the corner of my eye, which really caught me off guard as I had never seen anyone you could call a celebrity in real life before. Granted he is a YouTuber, but he has millions of subscribers and more interestingly I have been watching him since 2013. Recalling the day out of order, I stopped by to say hello before people really started flooding his table, and afterwards I came back a second time to tell him about the 1983 computer lecture @ UNL I have on my website. I quickly regretted this as I think it sounded like I was schilling my website, and even worse I thought I would warn him about the Compaq Portable 1 video I did which was partly an homage to his early videos from 2009 to 10. I figured some people would be upset with having someone parody them, so I somehow thought I should tell him about it? I have no idea what I was thinking. Clint, if you're reading this it was all in good faith and it was not meant to be a parody - it was supposed to be a tribute/homage. A small exception would be the Computer Chronicles bit where I poked fun at the show not having nearly as big of a time slot as it needed :P
There were a lot of other cool things that happened at VCF MW, I got my picture taken with Clint, David Murray of the8bitguy fame, and an Apple 1 computer, which I believe is the most expensive object by size or weight I have ever been photographed with, though that is technically rivaled by the stuff I saw at the art gallery. My dad had a good talk with a man who was showing off the computer he built as a teenager in the 1970s, and my dad was actually genuinely amazed when the owner showed him how to program it one byte at a time through the toggle switches. I didn't remember the man's face, name or table number as I was too preoccupied trying to keep track of what he was doing with the computer, but after doing some Google-fu I found the computer was an Ohio Scientific (OSI) 300 in a custom acrylic case with new switches, which at the moment there aren't any results on Google Images for an OSI 300 with acrylic case. If the owner of that computer is reading this, shoot me an E-Mail.
Towards the end of us being there I caught Luke Basinger at the end of the dealer's den hall next to the Computer Reset burn-in monitor (Which was just sitting there on the floor, I don't think many people noticed it.) so I got the chance to tell him the funny story about the IRC link to his video. He seemed amused, so that was nice.
I lost count of how many people complimented me on my shirt, and I had at least one person that I know of take a picture of me. The first words out of Clint and David's mouths were "Nice shirt!" and Clint was one of only a handful of people to mention the tie as well. During the time I spent there I saw two, maybe three people walk past me with varying types of cameras on gambles, which got me wondering if anyone online would have pictures with me in it. Searching YouTube and Twitter, I have only found one picture and a short video with my terrible wardrobe visible in the background, but maybe there'll be more coming after I post these articles.
There was a lot of cool stuff for sale that I had never seen before. The first thing that really jumped out at me at the convention was an Altair 8800 with two 8" floppy disk drives for sale. Another regret was not taking a picture of the Altair, because while I knew someone else was bound to get it I don't know if anyone wrote down the price it wads going for. Way, WAY out of my budget, each of the units was more than $1,000, and it also had a dumb terminal for actually using the thing which I didn't take note of price for at all. Shortly before we left I saw some kid poking his finger through the dust door of one of the drives, which, yeah. Kids will be kids, but I have no idea if "you break it, you buy it" would apply to potential Cheetos dust on the heads, or to what varying extent. The Altair was defiantly a sight to behold, but so was the Apple Lisa for sale. I don't know if anyone bought that, but dang. It's hard to imagine Anthony Michael Hall pile driving this thing into the desk after seeing the asking price! Also interesting, somebody brought a Protogen head to their table. He said he only had the head, which was understandable, but he did have a model figure of his full fursona on the table next to it. I asked him what the name of the Protogen was and I think he said "Mr. Smart". I can't find any furry social media with that name, and while I'm okay-ish at telling apart candid fursonas and fursuits, I'm terrible at finding any unique feature of any other species, but Protogens in particular all look the same to me. I know a little bit of the lore behind the species, and from what I can tell them all looking the same is probably intentional, which sucks for people like me. It's a nice head, whoever you are.
I did buy one thing, as a matter of fact. My Compaq Portable 1 has Windows 1.01 installed and I was looking for a good serial mouse, so I could use it as Bill Gates intended. By the way, somebody brought a TRS-80 Model 100 owned by Bill Gates in the mid 1980s, complete with "PROPERTY OF MICROSOFT" label on the bottom. That was not for sale, but was certainly a cool sight, especially when paired with the photo of Bill Gates holding it. Anyway, Windows 1.x predates the PS/2 port as well as the IBM PS/2 line as a whole, and since computer mice were not an everyday accessory until the PS/2 was well-established (Or rather, was dissected by the clone manufacturers) serial mice are rather hard to find nowadays. I don't know who I bought it from (Sorry!) but he had a Microsoft serial mouse from the Windows 2.x days for $10. The bottom of the mouse actually says "PS/2 compatible" and the baggie the mouse came in actually says on the label "Microsoft Serial-PS/2 Mouse (no PS/2 adapter) $10" so I guess it being a serial mouse was more of an afterthought, both in the 80s and in the 20s.
I made a quick run to the front desk of the hotel to ask where the ATM is, which they said was broken. Crap! But just because I had to, I checked my wallet for any spare cash. Now, I always carry around a black Guess wallet with my Driver's License and debit cards, but I have had that wallet since 2019 and it's been though a lot. I knew there would be an improbable, but possible chance of getting pick pocketed in downtown Chicago, so I put my old teenaged-self's VOIDed driver's license in the black wallet and put my current driver's license in my unused, backup brown Guess wallet. Same trifold design, but a different color and with a different Guess badge on the front. And guess what I actually had the foresight to do before I left the house for the airport? I transferred all the spare cash out of my old wallet to the new one, and hidden between two ones was a frail $10 Jefferson. ATM not required!
My dad and I left around 4PM with nothing left to see that was of interest, though when I got back to our house in Lincoln I quickly began to regret not buying some 360k 5.25" floppy disks at the dealer's den, because I didn't count on having to reinstall Windows 1.0 to get the mouse working and I only have eight 360k disks. At the time of me writing this I've still got to add all my old programs back to the disks I formatted. Ugh. Anyways, we got stranded at the Blue Line station in Rosemont because we were orignally going to take an Uber from there to the hotel, but there was something wrong with the app where nothing was getting through. We were stuck there for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and while I was waiting I decided to take a video of the elevator since it doesn't look like anything we have back home. As soon as I got my video I instantly regretted pressing the buttons with anything other than my knuckles, because as cheapie warned me about elevators in more urban areas, the whole thing stank of piss. Finally we decided to suck it up and buy another ticket for the Blue Line to take the extra mile back to O'Hare when we could have stayed on for free, just so we could take a Lyft right back in the direction from which we came to get back to the hotel. The driver pulled up in a 2021 Tesla, which was cool to ride in, though the driver and my dad talked Cryptocurrency the whole ride back which didn't particularly interest me. If this article is still around in 20 years I'm sure that last sentence will be hilariously dated.
We checked back into the hotel room, got some sleep and got up at 5AM the next day to go back to O'Hare, again. Our flight was delayed due to thunderstorms, and while I was waiting I went wandering around the concourse, and ended up striking up a brief conversation with a random guy over us both taking pictures of the empty payphone banks. It was pretty neat talking to him because I brought up how the only payphone near my house back home has a dial tone, but can't be used because the coin slot is jammed, and even if it wasn't the keypad is broken. When I brought up that technically if the coin slot still worked you could dial a number by playing the tones into the microphone with a microcassette recorder or in modern times a smartphone, he said something I can't quite remember that made me realize this man knew a thing or two about phone phreaking, which makes me wonder how much of that he did back in the day. He was a bit older, so who knows? I did not see a single payphone during my trip, and that empty bank was the only sign of payphones ever being in O'Hare. I think I got the last flicker of a bygone era.
When I was a little kid I thought I would always be afraid of airplanes, but as an adult I wasn't afraid for a moment on the way to Chicago. The way back however, genuinely freaked me out. We started our descent to Lincoln in Iowa, which I found very interesting as I never realized how much ground you have to cover to ascend and descend at a safe pace. And as the descent started my ears began to pop. The pressure started to rise, and rise, and it never went down. Swallowing didn't help, yawning didn't help, sticking my fingers in my ears made it worse, and it was quickly getting painful, like, really painful. By the time we were over Omaha I was completely deaf and couldn't even hear instructions from my dad or the passenger behind me on what else to do. So, that was terrifying. And in fact when I got back to the house I immediately continued work on writing article 29 (I had started on the plane to pass the time and quit when the descent started) and for about an hour afterwards every keystroke on my Model M caused my head to resonate. I have no idea what the hell happened there.
And that was my trip to Chicago. Very fun time, but a very short trip unfortunately. I may have been a little bit disappointed, but at least I would say it was worth the money of me paying for it myself... even if I only broke even on the experience. But hey, at least I have plenty of good stories to last for a long time.
Argot
Page created: Sunday, Sep. 11th, 2022
Page last modifed: Friday, Dec. 23rd, 2022 (Added additonal stories about being stranded at Rosemont Station, and payphone conversation. Also fixed typos.