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VCF 7.0: BBS Bonanza in Bay Area 95

Posted by timothy from the just-time-to-walk dept.
RaD Man [ACiD] writes "Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 will be taking place November 6-7th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California! In addition to the tours of antiquities and computer history galore, VCF 7.0 will be hosting a unique Retro Video Game Programming Challenge and presenting a number of interesting seminar speakers, such as the inventor of FidoNet, Tom Jennings. The VCF founder will also be appearing on G4TechTV's "The Screen Savers" this Tuesday, October 19th, to demonstrate some of his favorite artifacts."
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VCF 7.0: BBS Bonanza in Bay Area More

VCF 7.0: BBS Bonanza in Bay Area

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  • How about designing pong on one of the original 'computers'? Something you can play pong on, and ping pong inside of! And what about vintage overclocking?

    • vintage overclocking? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nels_tomlinson ( 106413 ) on Monday October 18, 2004 @01:42AM (#10554300) Homepage
      Yes, overclocking is nothing new.

      A friend of mine had a Kaypro Four which he overclocked. It had originally had (if I'm remembering correctly) a 4MHz 8085, which he replaced with an 8MHz Z80 (and a new crystal). He had to replace a few of the other big chips on the board, as I recall. When he was done, he had a machine that was way faster then the IBM PC with its measly 4.77MHZ 8088.

      This was in about 1981. He was doing freelance programming, using SBasic, and claimed speeding up the compiles was worth the few bucks to took to do the work.

      Them was the good old days.

      • Re:vintage overclocking? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Ah, the Kaypro 4. It originally shipped with a 2Mhz Z80 in the 4-83. The 4-84 had a 4Mhz Z80. If it was closer to '81, maybe your friend had a Kaypro II with its zippy 2Mhz Z80?

        There were all kinds of speed up kits, hacks, and mods out there for the Kaypros. Now, mix the 8Mhz speed up kit with the SWP 8088 coprocessor board and use the 256Kb of memory for a ram disk and you are cooking!

        It is pretty amazing to think that you could get the Kaypros to run at 2-4X the speed for a reasonable price. I don't
        • I agree.

          Overclocking these days is nowhere close to the kind it was. There was another reason for it, too - back then the tech was a lot simpler, and easier to hack up without causing damage.

          Although I've not worked on Kaypro, I remember working on the Osbourne 1. It used the Z-80 too, but the 4 MHz version. I had a cousin who used to do stuff like overclocking and coding on it, and he had got one a lot later to hack it up.
          I remember that as being one of my earliest inspirations.

          I think the Z-80 was prob
          • Actually, they [zilog.com] are still making some pretty cool Z-80 related chips.
          • Zilog did come up with a next generation chip. It was the Z-80000 it was a very fast chip for it's day but they had some problems with early versions (bugs) It was used in a few workstations/supermicros/mini computers. Commodore was working on a system that used a Unix like OS that used it. Like most of the other CPU of the time it was knocked out to the "Micro computer" market by Intel and Motorala. It used to be that you used an Intel chip if it "Had" to be PC compatible and you used the 68k family if you
      • Also remember that 4-8mhz increase back in the day meant nearly 50% increase in speed on everything. Nowadays much of the work is done without the use of the processor. This is the concept behind DMA hard drives the AGP bus and a score of other technology that take the stress of simply how many mhz your cpu is. An example is games. Back in the day if you didn;t have enough cpu to run a game that was real time it just wouldn't run. Now its almost entirely up to the video card to run a game but originall
      • The first computer I ever did an upgrade was to an old 4.77mhz 8088 (I think an Epson) that I had. Just popped in an NEC V20 chip. I think it just was a more efficient chip though, I believe my clock speed was the same.

        Not quite as cool as the upgrades you mention. :)
      • That's NOT overclocking. Overclocking is running a CPU faster than the manufacturer rated it. There have been all sorts of speed hacks over the years. I was kind of fond of the V-series CPUs as replacements for the 8088. Cheers.

  • Sweet! Bring it on back =) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Vthornheart ( 745224 ) on Monday October 18, 2004 @01:37AM (#10554291)
    I loved the BBS era.... wish I could go to see it! I wonder if Seth Able will be there (the inventor of Legend of the Red Dragon).

    For those who don't remember the BBS era (all you youngins =) ), I'll fill you in on LORD. Basically, every modern MMORPG owes its existence, in my opinion, to LoRD. Created by Seth Able, it was the first popular "Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game". Granted, it wasn't very massive (I think it allowed up to 200 people max), and the number of people that could be on at once was limited to the incoming phone lines at the BBS, but it was still the first popularized game (perhaps the first period? I'm not positive, but it's the first I knew of) that featured MMORPG-type gameplay. It was decades ahead of its time.

    Some of you may know Seth Able but not that milestone achievement, since he is also a pioneer in the Independant game industry these days. Anyways, Seth Able is not only a great programmer in this time, he was an innovator back when a 1200 baud modem was reserved for only the most wealthy of computer users.

    Ah, old school memories... =)

    • off to Vthorn... Uhm, trying to remember the name of a game I used to play that I helped set up, was based on black ice, shadowrun theme stuff, multi, and their was also, well, mudding is a whole new genera.
    • Clearly you haven't played MUD which (as far as I can tell from research) predated LORD by over 10 years. LORD according to one site I checked started in the "early '90s" whereas MUD...

      > The history of MUDs all starts in the UK, about 1979. Roy Trubshaw, a student at Essex University, started writing MUD, a game written in BCPL on a DEC-10. Along with Richard Bartle, who tidied up the system and added a very crude database compiler for it, they produced a very good combat game for it.

      • Re:Sweet! Bring it on back =) (Score:4, Informative)

        by LardBrattish ( 703549 ) on Monday October 18, 2004 @02:14AM (#10554390) Homepage
        One other interesting fact about original MUD from the 1980s involving a VERY well known character:-

        One player of the Essex MUD was Alan Cox, also known as Anarchy. He wrote (with a bit of help) AberMUD, named after the University of Aberystwyth, Wales, which he attended at the time. It was originally implemented on a Honeywell mainframe running GCOS but was soon ported to UNIX. Its poor design and implementation (all game information was stored in a shared file, which meant that several processes were constantly accessing the disc) did not endear it to many system administrators. Nevertheless, it was the first MUD to gain widespread popularity. After the source code reached the United States, several people made enhancements and additions, notably Rich $alz. It now seems to have found a home at St. Olaf University, where a few dedicated hackers are keeping it alive despite its general grunginess.

        I believe he's still programming somewhere & has improved greatly... ;)
      • Let's also not forget CDC PLATO's multi-user dungeons, which pre-date BBSes.
      • In truth, I never realized that MUDs had been around that long. LORD came out in... 89 I think it was? Maybe as early as 87, I can't remember... I remember the MUD scene becoming pretty popular in the early 90's, but I had no idea that it had dated back that far. Consider me corrected.
    • Legend of the Green Dragon
      http://lotgd.net/ [lotgd.net]

      I really don't think Seth gave it the green light.
      It's (almost) the same. Perhaps better in some ways.

      And no, the JENNY codes do not work.
    • Yup, agreed.

      And nothing's better than a story on that being posted by someone with the name RaD Man [ACiD] =)

      _And_ his website is called DarkDomain.

      COOL!

      Now, all that's left is a link to VCL and some ASCII pr0n ;)
    • Lord was cool. I used to like laying the bone to Violet.

      But Usurper was my favorite.

      Pimp Wars was cool too.

      I used to wait until 12:01 to start calling BBSes to make sure I got my BRE, LORD, and Usurper turn in early.

      Damn I miss those days.

      LK
    • But Usurper [geocities.com] ruled the most !
    • "Basically, every modern MMORPG owes its existence, in my opinion, to LoRD."

      LoRD came out in 1988. By that time, there were already several MajorBBS games out which more closely paralleled the multiplayer experience seen in MMORPGS -- unlike LoRD, where players only saw each other during direct attacks or while both in the inn, MBBS games allowed players to see each other whenever they both were in the same room in the game world.

      Furthermore, LoRD was just an iterative improvement over several similar

    • Hey.. I remember LORD.. and always trying to score with Violet.. She.. always slapped me. It didn't stop me from trying again the next day.. Oh the good ol' days at the Inn..

      I liked it when the BBS sysops would let you try to score with her multiple times in one day..

      *re-reads his post* Wow.. I am a looser..
    • Im 18, I remember LORD, especially violet. How many hours I whiled away killing things and flirting with a digital barmaid :-p

  • VCF rocks -- highly recommended! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tgeller ( 10260 ) on Monday October 18, 2004 @01:46AM (#10554314) Homepage
    I've been going to the Vintage Computer Festival for years, and it's always a great time.The nostalgia factor alone is worth the cost of admission, PLUS you're sure to learn something new every time you go. Sam Ismail always does a great job.

    And when you're done playing with historical microcomputers at the VCF, walk down the hall to see the "heavy iron" that led to PCs at the Compter History Museum.

    This show kicks ass. Don't miss it.
    • At last an occasion to show my best picture around : I'm proud of this one [zboubi.com] ! Taken in august 79, when I was less than 3yo.
      I Guess I haven't changed that much, since I'm now a sysadmin.

  • VCF is awsome (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I went to the VCF last year when they celebrated the Alto, and it was an amazing event. Both myself and my wife had a blast. Lots of great people, lots of awsome gear, and plenty of people to brag "I've got one of those at home!" to that actually give a sh*t.

    Every bay area geek should find the time to stop by the event.

  • In a related story.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Bay Area newspapers are reporting the congregation of a record number of virgins in Mountain View......

  • BBS Documentary world premiere (Score:5, Informative)

    by radd0 ( 558899 ) <radman@NOspaM.acid.org> on Monday October 18, 2004 @02:11AM (#10554383) Homepage Journal
    Tying into the underlying BBS theme this year, VCF will be hosting the first and only public screening [vintage.org] of the long anticipated BBS Documentary [bbsdocumentary.com] which is due out on DVD late this year [bbsdocumentary.com].
    • Tying into the underlying BBS theme this year, VCF will be hosting the first and only public screening of the long anticipated BBS Documentary which is due out on DVD late this year.

      To be consistent with my experience of BBSing in the early 80s, couldn't I just spend three days downloading a copy of your documentary? Of course, there would have to be a a "Cracked by the OverLOrd" screen at the front, with an ad for OverLOrd's favorite bbs, probably without the area code.

      Seriously, thanks for the fl
  • Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 ...

    Has /. switched to the Wikipedia convention of bolding the title?

  • wohooo! (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinner0423 ( 687266 ) <sinner0423@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday October 18, 2004 @02:26AM (#10554418)
    In case you guys don't understand the significance of RaD Man posting this story, he leads the ACiD artwork group. ACiD was the biggest, and best, ansi art group back in the day. They had distro's all over the world at one point, and if you had original ACiD art on your board, you were leet.

    I miss the BBS days. There was something appealing to me about playing B.R.E, L.O.R.D, Barneysplat, posting FIDOnet messages, and trying to figure out ways to scam the upload/download credit system. Bulletin boards definately helped inspire some of the basic fundamental utilities we have on the internet today - message boards, games, file transfers, we had it all.

    It really was some of the best times i've ever had with a computer, period. I'm only 24 and this is literally part of my childhood. I urge any old sysops, or anyone who is curious to check out the BBS Documentary [bbsdocumentary.com] website for more nostalgia & information.

    708/312 repruhzent.

    • Re:wohooo! (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by ImaLamer ( 260199 )
      I'm only 24

      Me Too!

      Seriously, you brought up ACiD which reminds me of a story. Once I was "experimenting" with the drug by the same name and was fsck'n around with the computer. I found a chat (called #acid) which had a few of their members in there discussing some design stuff. Well, being fsck'd up I decided to mess with them because I didn't understand at the time that they didn't have anything to do with the drug scene.

      One person responded: "My face isa melting!"

      I couldn't stop laughing for at leas

  • I wish I could go there... (Score:3, Funny)

    by fireman sam ( 662213 ) on Monday October 18, 2004 @02:33AM (#10554436) Homepage Journal
    And take my classic Zenith Supersport 286e. It would seem modern to some of the computers that will be on display there.

  • BBS's are alive and well out there (Score:5, Informative)

    by arjovenzia ( 794122 ) on Monday October 18, 2004 @03:00AM (#10554493)
    I recently have had a look around some of the BBS's that are present on the 'net (via telnet), particularly those running Synchronet software http://www.synchro.net/sbbslist.html [synchro.net]. Being to young for BBS's (and the town i live in would have never had a local system), I have never experienced them, but lookin around a few, I love them. Yay for retrogeeks!

    i wish there was something like that remotely close to where I am, old computer systems are so cool. i think its a shame that there isn't something that we can do with all that old equipment

  • Is this in the same place that use to have the flight simulators? Seems on the map to be the same place. Either that, or it's next door.

  • From their "This Day in Computer History Page [computerhistory.org]":

    October 22, 1941
    Microprocessor Co-Inventor Mazor is Born

    October 28, 1937
    Microprocessor Co-Inventor Hoff is Born

    Odd isn't it? Although I didn't know who to credit with the invention of the microprocessor because Wikipedia tells me [wikipedia.org] that Federico Faggin invented it.

    Considering the page on Hoff says [wikipedia.org] he invented it (without any other credits) I'm not sure who to thank. Stanley Mazor doesn't even get a page. Which Slashdot nerd will help us at Wikipedia fix thi
  • i've toured the computer history museum a number of times. i did some advertising for them a couple years ago when they had just moved to their new facility (which used to be the sun micro building). "visible storage" is the area where they have all sorts of great vintage computing items. if you're a fan of computing history, you really should take a trip out there to see the facility. i don't work with them anymore, but everyone there is very nice and some of the old computing devices will amaze you and s
    • Ashtray? Wow, my computer only has a cup-holder :-( [Wonder what all those 48x/16x/ etc on the holder mean - sizes maybe] Regards, Shaitan
    • when they had just moved to their new facility (which used to be the sun micro building).

      Bzzzt! It used to be a Silicon Graphics building. It was their first funky-style building, actually. It was sold when they built 4 more buildings down the street closer to shoreline amphitheatre. Google now lives in those buildings, SGI now lives in a couple huge nondescript 4 story buildings a couple blocks further down the road, I think they built them a few years ago. Several other older buildings in the area also
  • I remember starting up a BBS early early on. Was 2nd or 3rd in my area code. Oh the days of 300baud. Started up on an Apple ][. Saving and saving money for a 1200baud modem. Oh that Applecat Smartcat is still in my closet somewhere. I still find links around the net listing my old BBS, brings back very found memories. When I finally shut it down it was 8 phone lines with USR V.Everything modems running with 4 386 pcs, 2 lines each under Desqview with a Novell Netware file server on a 486 for all th

  • nostalgia (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hb253 ( 764272 )
    Just the mention of vintage computers and BBS's brings out the nostalgic geezer in me. I remember playing Trek-73 on my high school's Teletype ASR33 in the late 70's. Later on we moved to Spacewar on the Apple II.

    In the mid-80's I played Tradewars online using my Tandy Coco and a 300 baud modem. I think the name of the BBS was Microfone in Secaucus NJ.

    I spent A LOT of money calling BBS's around the country looking for files and having interesting chats and message board discussions.

    It's almost all too
  • At ApacheCon 2001, I met a guy who claimed to have created fidonet back in the 80s with a friend of his , which they sold to a few universities. I can't remember his name though. Anyone know anything about this?
  • High Society of South florida was around for about 10 years, it's back now...hs.host.net
  • When did it move from Moffett Field?

    Anyone know just how many different locations the Museum has had?
  • What first drew me online and kept me excited for years was the sense of community that people had in the BBS scene before the rising popularity of the Web. Despite many attempts at creating this same feeling on the web from AIM [aim.com], to Craigslist [craigslist.com], Friendster [friendster.com], gMail [gmail.com] to even Slashdot [slashdot.com] or Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org], I have not been able to develop the same type of relationships. It seems almost bizarre to suggest that a global online community could have a BBQ or meet for dinner at a local fast food restaurant.
    People like Jom Jenni
  • Traded my Schwinn Stingray for a 1541 Drive for my C-64. + 300 baud to Rouge's Gallery BBS(My parents didn't care much for the $300 phone bills)

    poke 53280,0
    poke 53281,0
    (I liked it black, thought Green phosphor was cool, never liked Cyan :P )

  • VCF Needs Retro Coders! (Score:3, Informative)

    by JoeCommodore ( 567479 ) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Monday October 18, 2004 @03:02PM (#10558272) Homepage
    Two years ago it was three people on Commodores (PET, C64 and VIC-20), Last year VCF had C64, Apple II and Apple IIgs competitors. Are there no Atari 8-bit coding fiends left???

    C'mon crack open an old computer programming book, boot up an emulator (or for us collectors, dust off one of those micros you have stacked in the corner.) and practice writing your three-hour masterpiece.

    Resources for Retrocoders:

    Atari Archives bookshelf, includes many 6502/BASIC related books [atariarchives.org]

    Project 64's C64 Manuals & Programmer's Reference Guide [c64.org]

    Here's some Apple IIgs manuals. :-/ [callapple.org]

    Not much of any on-line accessible resources for Apple IIs, where are all the real Apple II fans!!???

    As a retrocode winner, I would sugest looking at the stuff in the Atari Archives (the BASIC Games books) to get ideas of the type of games that are doable in three hours (no, not Super Star Trek, the smaller ones!) But I wouldn't write any of 'em verbatim, you get points for making it more modern, flashier, and/or vintage computer related.

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