The Vintage Computer Festival Midwest Experience of 2021
[upbeat jazz tunes] [computery sounds] Greetings and welcome to an LGR Thing, where we are once again going conventioning, which is something that is not quite as conventional as a Thrifts episode necessarily, but eh, somewhat of a similar format I've done before. Where I'm just going to be going to an event, or a show, or whatever you want to call it, and see what it's like. Touring the place, lookin' at the stuff that's available and just conveying the overall experience as best I can through video form.
So my brother and I went up there to record this, and it was taking place at Elmhurst, Illinois. It's the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest is the event. Have I said that yet? I have now. That's what it is, VCFMW. I've been there once before, 2019, and it was awesome, but I just went as a person [chuckle] visiting and I didn't have a table or anything. Well, now I do.
I got an exhibit of LGR Things. This is the first time doing something like that, so that'll be an experience. And yeah, let's just dive right into the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest experience in 2021. Okay, so before we get to the actual show floor itself, what exactly is Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 16? Well, as you can see by this delightfully mid-90s Geocities-esque looking website, it is a show that happens in Elmhurst, Illinois and it's been goin' on for 16 iterations of it. Yeah, 16 is the number of shows, not the year, a little confusing. If you look through the timeline it gets even more confusing cuz 2020 was the 15th show but it was virtual only not physical, so I don't know why that counts but anyway.
It's been going on for a while and I just started attending in 2019 as a random visitor. Just showin' up, seeing what it was like and it was awesome. So I decided to come back this time as a featured I don't know, person, guest, whatever, hanging out with my own table and an LGR things exhibit. First time I've ever done that so it's pretty exciting but there are a ton of different cool people and awesome devices and bits of computer hardware that gets set up at the show and shown off, traded, sold, whatever. Which I don't think exactly works the same way at some of the other VCFs around the country. I haven't been to those yet, but VCF Midwest is one that you can do all of that and it's, I think, become one of the largest, if not the largest, of these VCFs at this point in terms of overall visitors which I think was a little over 1,000 or so this year despite the fact that yeah, it was a "masks required" show by order of the DuPage County Health and the host venue.
So everyone had to have their masks on all the time inside which was fine, I thought it worked out very well. And yeah, it happens on a Saturday and Sunday but my brother Luke and I, who was taken along with me to do pretty much all of this footage that you're seeing, just record all that and help setting things up, we left on a Thursday to drive up there from my area of North Carolina which took about 11 hours-ish to make it all the way up to the Chicagoland area and then west of that over into Elmhurst. And we ended up staying at the Clarion Inn which is right there connected to the Waterford Conference Center where the show takes place and [chuckles in retro decor] this is one of those classic conference centers that just hasn't been updated in decades.
It's hideous and I mean that in the best possible way. I think this is actually kind of a perfect venue for a vintage computer festival. And yeah, it all takes place just in this area and in the hallways surrounding it and it's just gonna be all cleared out and filled up with exhibitors here soon. And yeah, that's all we were doing on this first pre-day of the show. Just getting familiar with the venue itself, saying hi to folks and then just setting up all of the tables, including mine here on this eight foot by four foot table, which I promptly covered with a woodgrain paneling tablecloth because those do exist apparently. And I was set up with some other content creator types.
Computer Clan right there and 8-bit Guy with Texelec. And yeah, they just shoved all of us weird Youtuber-y people over in a corner and it's like "y'know what? Stay there." And yeah, after getting things generally laid out on the tables, it was all about testing stuff out and seeing what broke along the journey getting here. Because this old stuff, without fail, something goes wrong. And yeah, thankfully for me it was only like three or four little things. Loose cards and connections and some driver issues and something else didn't work with the sound, but I got it all sorted eventually into the evening.
And it was kind of comforting that literally everyone else here is in the same boat. Just everybody setting up their tables, many of them much larger than mine, and then trying to get everything functioning as much as possible before the doors actually open to the general public in the morning. There's so many things that can go wrong with stuff this age and that's just how it goes. I was quite pleased with my little LGR table over in the corner here.
I don't know, I've just never done anything like this so it was wild seeing this stuff that I normally just show in videos out in the open for anybody to come up and check out and get their hands on and talk about, or whatever man. And of course, there's always an item or two that you could use that you forgot about. And thankfully, this place has a Micro Center nearby which I don't get to go to very often.
I just don't have anything close by to where I live that's like this and yeah, they carry all kinds of old cables and adapters and cards and extension thingies and stuff for computers going back to the 80s and 90s. Seriously, they have just a little bit of everything. So I picked up a couple of cables and adapters and I went over in this section here and I was like, oh man, actually still have parallel port cards and Compact Flash adapters and all kinds of little useful things. And I actually ended up picking up this 5.25-inch drive bay storage box because [chuckles] why not? Another goofy yet useful drive bay add-on? Yeah, I can always take one of those. After this, a whole bunch of people ended up going to Aurelio's Pizza for an evening exhibitor supper of sorts.
I didn't get any footage or photos there, whatever, but it was really good. Got a little sleep overnight and then first thing next morning got some breakfast and the show was kickin' off. 9:00 AM the first thing you do when you get here is just walk inside the entrance and grab yourself a badge. And yeah, this is a free event so you don't have to pay for anything if you don't want to, but yeah. They just request that you get a badge so that we know you're a person with a name, I guess. And yeah, that's that.
And immediately the energy is starting to rise. The buzz is buzzing [chuckles] and even over at the table, there are already one or two people ready to go and start asking questions about LGR things. But yeah, just got everything all powered back on and running again. Hopefully it's still working since last night. I don't know, hopefully nobody touched it overnight. Who knows? I don't know, usually people are nice about that but I dunno, never done anything like this so I didn't know what to expect.
Everything was great though and still working, so yeah. Got started manning the LGR Things table. And yeah, this right here, this is where I was for the next two days pretty much. I just about never left here unless it was for something else I was committed to doing. But my brother was there doing all kinds of recording of footage so before we take a tour of the floor, let's enjoy a little bit of ambiance from Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 16. - [Loudspeaker] VCF Midwest radio is back on the air.
Welcome, we are officially open for two days of fun. Thank you all for coming. [crowd applauding] [Doom music blaring] [Unreal Tournament sound effects] [crowd noise] [chiptune music] [fans whirring] [general noises of human interaction] - [Clint] Oh yeah. These are my people. I have missed this, augh.
I don't know about you but these kind of events really just make me feel alive and connected to the kind of work that I do. It's so easy to just get caught up in the routine of troubleshooting and recording and editing and writing and scripting and emails and everything else that comes along with being a whatever I am, I don't know. Retro YouTuber/person/thing. And getting to these kind of shows, seeing the actual people that watch this stuff and getting to meet everyone and see all of their cool things? And just engage in that energy, and the hubbub, and the excitement and seeing things I've never seen before or only in photos or coming across something that I haven't seen in 25-30 years or whatever. It's fantastic.
And this is just the outer hallway. We haven't even gone inside the main area of the convention center to look at all those tables. So yeah, I'm just gonna let some of this footage play, comment along the way I guess and let's just enjoy the ride. Honestly, I'm seeing a lot of this for the first time right along you here 'cause I was back there at that table. Which I was very happy to do, but I was back there the entire time basically, just meeting a bunch of y'all and selling merch, signing things, taking hundreds of selfies, and just generally chatting about whatever, man.
Hangin' out. That's exactly why I come to this show and I was more than happy to do that. But just kind of still also wish that I was able to more freely explore. I got a little bit of time to explore while I was there but you know, it's one of those things where it's hard to do that.
Yeah, ah man, there was so much cool stuff here at the show. There always is, but this year in particular I was really thrilled to see a wider variety of objects that I had not seen at the previous one. For instance, this entire table or really a whole corner of a few tables, dedicated to UK computers. All kinds of stuff from Sinclair, Acorn, Amstrad and so on. A few of these I'd never seen. I'd never seen an Archimedes before in person, I really want to get one and cover it someday.
Ah, and then all these monitors, all these 50Hz PAL monitors, it was neat. Along with a fantastic display just dedicated to Sinclair Research and Sir Clive Sinclair's array of legendary machines. Rest in peace sir, he passed away shortly after this show which I found rather poignant.
And yeah, it just goes from table to table of things that you'll recognize but have been equipped in some way with fantastically cool additions. The whole world of home brew add-ons and user-made products and boards and expansions and new chassis and 3D printed things. There was so much of that there it was genuinely hard to even pick out certain things from the crowd because every table was jam packed full of some interesting product I have been interested in or I've never heard of, most likely. Cuz a lot of this stuff is for platforms that I just don't have a ton of intimate familiarity with. I mostly stick to IBM PCs and compatibles and I'm always thrilled to go to a show like this and you see the occasional PC but really, my table? At least in the main convention area, was one of the few that was dedicated to PC stuff.
Everything else was some other architecture, some other operating system. A lot of things that were way older than I've ever used before to any real degree, or things that I have used in some other form but I've never actually seen it in this form. Like this delightful little Altair 8800 clone.
I have a full sized clone of one of these but this one was really sharp looking. Nice and small and compact. I didn't know that this was a thing and now I'm really interested. And then just all of the vendor tables with, say, big box PC games for days, it seemed like.
I did stop at a few of these. I meant to pick a few things up but by the time I had the time to go back and get over there, most of it was gone but that's no surprise. A lot of the things that are here, the best stuff ends up selling within the first two to three hours.
By lunch time that first day, a good quarter of the inventory of all the best stuff is long gone and that's just how it is but there's so much still hangin' around that you're gonna find cool stuff all the way up until the end of the day on Sunday. And the vast majority of this, I'm always happy to see is very fairly priced. A lot of the supposed value of all these things have shot up, especially over the past couple of years, in particular, but most folks at the show they're not here to make an absolute killing. I'm sure some of them do, but even the things that you know would sell for a good chunk more if they were plopped on eBay for a 'Buy It Now' price, yeah, they're usually not priced that high here.
Plus, you don't have to pay for shipping. You don't have to worry about packaging and things getting destroyed. It is especially a fantastic spot to go to for brittle, old plastic machines.
A lot of the Apples and Commodores and things that tend to break a lot during shipment if they're not well packaged, as well as CRTs. Tons and tons of CRTs of all kinds. I saw nice VGA CRT monitors for sale all day on each day for like $10 apiece. PVMs and BVMs for like $200 something. $200-300 or even less, depending on what kind of model it is.
Obviously, there was some really, really high dollar things too, and there is an auction that happens at one point. Yeah, that's one way that they recoup some of the cost of putting on the show since it's free and whatnot. Not only that, but there's also the 'Free Table' or tables, this was shot before the show fully opened but once it is going, you just get all of these tables filled with stuff that people brought and they don't want.
Anyway, let's move back to just walking around a bit and ah man, look at this, a lovely Amdek 310A monitor amber screen I've covered on LGR before and it's paired with an IBM PC XT with an LGR case badge. The ones that I had last VCF Midwest. So they must've kept one and stuck it on there, nice. And yeah, just this entire wing or room in the conference center was one of my favorites. If you look on the map that they made up for the show, they refer to it as the Big Iron & Cool Stuff room. It definitely is that.
You got all kinds of IBM, VAX, DEC, SGI, Televideo, Entrex and who knows what else. Just old school minis and micros and peripherals and expansion interfaces and all kinds of good stuff stuffed into this one room. So much of which, that I wish that I had more time to go check out in person or do a more detailed video on. But ah, let's just take a look at a few of these things because the more time goes on, for whatever reason, I find myself drawn more and more to the older, more obscure, more unobtainable nonsense that was well before my time but intrigues the crap out of me just because I don't understand so much of what it does and it brings me back to that initial spark of what got me into retro computing in the first place.
Something about this era that's way too fun to look at. Like this Digital Equipment PDP-11, or at least the chassis for one, and a few related devices and peripherals. A fantastic VT100 terminal up there, ah. As well an ADAC Corporation System 1000, I love that "recalibrate" label. I didn't know what this was, apparently it's a peripheral extender for the PDP-11. And then right next to that just the classic Lear Siegler terminal ADM-3A running the one and only Colossal Cave Adventure.
So cool, man. Always wanted one of these terminals. And then this, I was super happy to see, this is a Topo robot. One of those little servant, personal robot attendant kind of things. You could program it with an Apple II.
Kind of similar to the Hero-1 by Heathkit but yeah, this was its own thing and I've never seen one in person, it was a little bigger than I thought. Really wish I could've seen it in action or at least hear it talk but you know, just awesome to see it. And of course, in the SGI corner here, you had to have File System Navigator running on at least one of 'em. FSN. Yeah "it's a Unix system, I know this." [Jurassic Park chuckle] Lovely 3D interface, and just so many beautiful machines from SGI just hanging out.
Every time I see one of these it's just, you gotta stop and look. They have an amazing aura about them inside and out. And then in the very back, there was an assortment of IBM stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of footage of this but yeah, look at that amazing display and keyboard. An IBM System/34 or at least part of it, along with some attached drives and peripherals.
I wish I had more to show. And then this whole area here. I was delighted to see this Televideo section.
So if you don't know anything about this company, I was actually planning to do an LGR Tech Tales about it years ago, started a script, never finished it. But they did these 900-series terminals that are just legendary, a bunch of CP/M machines. And they did indeed try their hand at PC clones starting in 1983 with some pretty ballsy advertising saying that this is what it should've been from the beginning in terms of a PC. And yeah, it was just really cool to see so many of these in one spot with all their different displays and varying types of green monochrome.
There were just all sorts of different slight hue differences, it was pretty neat seeing so many of these CP/M machines or weird PC compatibles and other stuff, in one spot, hangin' out, being cool. And I don't know what this guy was doing, single step binary programming maybe, but it looked engaging and I hope that he had good luck making whatever he was trying to work, work. Right behind that though, this table or set of tables was another fantastic standout for me.
Just an overwhelming row of HP machines from way back. Stuff, a lot of it I'd never seen before in person like the phenomenal 2100 with the 2627A color graphics terminal attached. What a beast. And I love that brown around the keyboard
and the display, reminds me of some of their calculators. And right beside it, this amazing example. A 2647A graphics terminal with chess playing. Feel like I need a glass of J&B scotch whiskey to go beside of it. Very much reminds me of 'The Thing,' even though that's not the same machine, but still.
And the HP stuff just continued with one incredible looking example of a machine or peripheral or add on or something after another, dude, ah. This gigantic 21MX Computer series machine. Something about the way that these look have always appealed to me. I would have absolutely no idea what to do with 'em but they look amazing. I mean look at this display! It was so sharp, so crisp on this 2645A.
Ah, just good stuff. There was even some Honeywell hardware hangin' around here and there, which is always a treat due to the rarity of it. And this too, this Panasonic Senior Partner, another early example of an IBM PC-compatible luggable which has a thermal printer built into the top of it. So cool. And oh man, this entire back corner, dude. Yeah, spent a little bit over here talking to the guy running it.
Apparently a lot of this was featured on Knight Rider. Yeah man, amazing-looking Entrex data terminals. Just incredible to look at with fantastic keyboards. I love all the colors on the keys and just the overall sci-fi design.
The first one lookin' a little more '2001,' the second one a little more 'Star Wars.' It's just phenomenal 70s design, in my opinion. Look at this Singer Electronic Perforator here ready to stick some holes in your tape! Wish I could have seen that in action. What a beastly thing. And then some of the tables just down from there reminded me of thrifting in Silicon Valley in the late 80s, early 90s or something.
Just all kinds of gigantic old hardware randomly tossed around. Huge hard drive platters and oscilloscopes. Test equipment, typewriters, vacuum tubes. Even a daggum Intel Intellec MCS8. Just hanging out. I believe all of this was for sale, or at least a good chunk of it seemed to be.
More awesome Hewlett Packard stuff. Ah, HP86, yes! Also this lovely thing. We got a DEC PDP 11/70, or a Raspberry Pi-powered slightly miniaturized version, I believe. It looked amazing, and of course all the blinkenlights. It's just pure modern art.
And I was also happy to see an increasing number of late 90s-early 2000s machines mostly from Apple which kind of makes sense due to the, I don't know, recognizability and collectability, but just fascinating to see what's slowly becoming considered retro. Like original iPods and those clear Harmon Kardon speakers and Cubes and yeah. It makes sense, but still weird. Time marches on.
And there was also the arcade area which wasn't always functioning. A couple of these seem to be continually breaking down but yeah, when they were working, it was great to hear them and see them doing their thing. I wish I'd gotten more time to play a couple of these but I didn't. Still. Tempest, Missile Command, Asteroids, and Mr. Do,
can't go wrong. And then back around over here to our tables in the corner. You can see Texelec has an assortment of wonderful add-ons.
They got so much good stuff. I recently covered the 'Snark Barker' Sound Blaster clone for Microchannel over at my Blerbs channel, check that out. A lot of good things for sale through Texelec and of course, 8-Bit Guy's games. Commander X16, whatever iteration it is, just hangin' out.
And a number of delightful machines from The Computer Clan. Yeah, check out Ken's videos if you haven't. There's a lot of good stuff here. Next Cube that he picked out at the last show, I believe, as well as the 20th Anniversary Mac. Always hoping to see one of these at a show and well, he had the one here this year.
There was actually an Apple I somebody brought earlier too, I totally missed it unfortunately, but yeah, apparently someone actually brought an original Apple I in an armored case for just part of the day on one of the days. However, Steve from the YouTube channel Mac 84 did get some footage and he was kind enough to offer it for me to use here. So yeah, look at this thing. Absolutely beautiful. No touching, obviously, and they did not let it out of their sight for even a second. Easily the most valuable thing at this entire show, only there for a brief period of time.
Hopefully I'll get to see it if they happen to bring it again next year, if that happens. Anyway, back to our tables and beside the TAM, there was the Mod Book which is like an Apple MacBook crammed into a tablet. Super weird thing, again, check out his video. People loved coming by to mess around with this and it really made me wish like dang it, I almost brought a couple of interesting tablet-style touchscreen old devices for people to mess around with but I ended up not doing it for whatever reason. I'll have to bring some next time if I think about it. And yeah, that's kind of the general vibe of the show for a visitor.
For me, of course, I was just back there in the corner hanging out with whoever came by, which was constant. Chatting and hanging out and talking about whatever, signing things, taking selfies and gettin' some merch sold and playing around with the LGR things that I brought. A ton of fun.
Yeah, I had the dot matrix printer there as well to print out whatever anybody wanted on Print Shop Deluxe or whatever else. It only jammed like five or six times, which was [chuckles in dot matrix] less than I thought. And yeah, I also did a panel in there somewhere with other vintage tech YouTubers. - [Jim] Clint, I have to put you on the spot and ask you as well, is there any project you've thought was gonna go great and for some reason it just didn't? - [Clint] Nope. [audience laughs, claps] So that couldn't be further from the truth but I couldn't resist. Anyway, I did actually try to make some thoughtful responses as well.
Do check out the entire video. I think it was like an hour and a half or something, pretty long but yeah, I thought it was fun. Came together well, people seemed to like it. Sort of a lengthy Q&A session. And well, yeah, that's about it. Overall, for the show, it's just really a couple of days of hangin' out, having fun with other like-minded folks, buying and selling things if you want or just going and checkin' out stuff that you may never see again in your life.
It's a fantastic show, highly recommend it. I'm glad as many people showed up as they did but I'm also kind of glad it wasn't too overwhelming either. This was fewer people than last year, or 2019. Makes sense, I know I heard from a bunch of folks that said they weren't willing to make the trip or attend it because of the concerns about health and all of that, which is totally fine, completely understandable. We'll see how it goes next year but I'm glad that everything seemed to go over okay with the local mask mandates and whatnot.
I didn't even get the usual con flu, not even a sniffle, so that was nice. And hey, in the future, if the entire weekend seems like too much for you, I'd easily recommend even just the first day of the show. Both days are great, but the second day is more of the same as the first just with a lot less stuff out on the tables, fewer panels, not as much stuff to buy and sell. Depends on what you're coming for. If you want more relaxed, just kind of like yeah, fartin' around or whatever, the second day is probably the day to do that or like the latter half of the first day because people stay 'til like midnight.
So yeah, you get different aspects of the show depending on when you're at the show and what you're there to do and who you're hanging out with. And inevitably, it all just turns into kind of a retro game fest. Even though it's not really a "gaming show," but like, every single possible computer there that could run a game, had games on it or had games that could be loaded onto it and eventually, that's all anyone was doing. Screwing around playing some games.
Including me, I did get to play some multiplayer Duke 3D and Doom with some people that came by. Anybody that asked that wanted to play it, I had 'em serial connected up to play some multiplayer so that was a lot of fun. Haven't done that in an environment like this in [chuckles] ever, I guess? Usually it was just home LAN parties back in the day for me. And then around 2:30-3:00 on Sunday, that was that. The show wasn't entirely over but a lot of the visitors have left and a lot of the vendors and exhibitors start slowly packing up and about as soon as it all gets set up, it's all taken down which, I don't know, maybe it even takes longer to take down some of this stuff, good grief. Made me tired just watching these guys pack up some of those larger machines from the 70s and 80s.
I'm glad they brought this, but I'm even more glad it's not my problem. It's stressful enough even just hauling my little PCs, CRTs and the MIDI Mountain up 700 miles. And also well worth it. Ah, this was such a fun time and a great getaway for about a week, in my case. And that sums up the VCF Midwest experience in 2021 as I experienced it, at least. It was pretty weird having my own exhibitor table at first, I got to admit, but once I got into the groove of things, it was an awesome time.
I learned a lot, took plenty of notes on things I would do differently next time. I would like to return in 2022 and also check out some of the other Vintage Computer Fests when I can, but we'll see. Till then, I just want to give a huge thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi while we were there and it's awesome meeting viewers in person, putting a face to your screen names and simply chilling in an offline setting with like-minded computer people and non-computer people, really.
I talked to a bunch of you that were like, "I don't even know anything about this stuff," "I just wanted to hang out." And that was great too. Honestly, I probably had more conversations about non-computer stuff than I did anything else. Music, movies, cars, TV shows, comics, sneakers, aviation, audio gear and synthesizers, photography, video making, whatever man. There was even one guy, all we talked about was old telephone systems. So many of these hobbies intersect in one way or another at a show like this and usually some common ground in the Venn diagram of geekiness is found before long.
Oh, and thanks to y'all who brought donations too. There were a bunch of things dropped off at my table that I didn't plan for. I wish I had room for all of it just take it all back, but yeah, I definitely went home still with more than I drove up with. So that was a pleasant surprise.
And shoutout to Ken, David, and all of the other YouTubers that were there. Not even with tables, just hanging around. I wish we'd had more of a chance to just vibe and talk shop at some point away from all the hubbub, but so it goes at busy shows like this. And finally, credit to my brother Luke who filmed pretty much all of the footage that you've seen in this video. This is just one of those shows where I can't breathe without someone recognizing me so recording all the footage myself was not feasible. So check out his channel as well.
He's got his own video about the trip to VCF Midwest plus some of the time we spent after the show in Chicago proper, which that's a whole 'nother part of this. Any time I go up that way, I have to spend some time in the city because it's fantastic. But anyway, yeah. That's that! I hope that you enjoyed this look at the VCF experience. Let me know in the comments if you were there or if you've got any other similar shows you'd recommend that you've been to or plan to go to or whatever.
I'm always down to try somewhere new in the future. Speaking of which, I've got more traditional LGR Things in the works. So stay tuned for those videos or check out some of my previous episodes on conventions and retro stuff in general. And as always, thanks for watching!
2021-10-02 22:45
