40 days until the July 28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo

[RobertB]

The 2012 Commodore Vegas Expo v8, a.k.a. CommVEx, is coming July 28-29 to the Las Vegas Club Hotel, 18 Fremont St., Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.. Once again we are looking forward to a good show with an international group of attendees enjoying the Commodores and Amiga computers that will be exhibited. Members of the Fresno Commodore User Group, Clark County Commodore Computer Club (of Las Vegas), the Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network, and the Portland Commodore User Group (PDXCUG.org) will be swarming in.

For more information, go to

http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

or

http://www.commodore.ca/forum and click on ComVEX

We'll have a number of raffle prizes, everybody has a chance for door prizes, we'll have a sales tables, and there is the freebie table. We'll have the games competition for cash and more. And we'll be busy with presentations of old and new software and old and new hardware. That's right... new hardware which will be premiering at the show.

For example, Jim Drew, creator of more 60 commercial products for Commodore and Amiga computers in the 1980's and 1990's and CBM educational/support representative for Oregon from 1983 to 1985, will be telling stories of those days. He may also be introducing his new product, SuperCard Pro. Jim will have an exhibit table, showing off a development C128 from CBM engineer Dave Haynie, various PETs, 1541 disk drives with digital track displays, an A500 with the digital track display built-in, and other oddball C64's and Amigas that Jim used for development. In addition, Jim will have a vendor's table in order to sell products, like stacks of parameter disks, disk notchers, Hesmon carts, EMPLANT boards, etc...

Another example... Mike "Bitfixer" Hill, developer of PETdisk, PETvet, and PETpix, will exhibit a PET 4032 and more, including a video-related PET project.

If our event is not enough to whet your show appetite, you can also wander off to Def Con ( http://www.defcon.org ) and get into really subversive hacking or to RollerCon ( http://www.rollercon.net ) and attend classes and watch the roller girls race around the track.

See you at CommVEx!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

 

[barythrin]

Neat! Is this mainly vintage gear convention or does this also have folks showing off the new Amigas (What is it the x1000?) and OS from Amiga Inc? I'm seeing lots of C64s in the shots so is this mainly Commodore (vintage) community?

 

[RobertB]

Is this mainly vintage gear convention or does this also have folks showing off the new Amigas (What is it the x1000?) and OS from Amiga Inc? I'm seeing lots of C64s in the shots so is this mainly Commodore (vintage) community?

It is mainly vintage gear with a few newer machines, like an AmigaOne G4 and perhaps even a SAM 440/460 running OS 4.1. Right now CommVEx is about 75% Commodore and 25% Amiga.

See you at CommVEx!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

 

[LeslieJohnson]

Are there any other similar vintage conventions in the USA, or is this the best one? I have heard about a vintage arcade game convention, but I am looking for other vintage computer conventions. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[barythrin]

Leslie, I'm gonna bite but if you're a spammer and not real grr ;-) Yes there are actually quite a few great conventions around the US. Practicality though, it depends where you're located and what systems you're interested in to know what events would be best that we could point you to.

There's pretty good coverage and computer museums helping host "Vintage Computer Festival"'s (VCF) around several regions of the US. The first VCF Southeast is coming up early next year. The VCF East (New Jersey area) I hear is quite well established and sounds awesome. VCF Midwest has been around for quite some time and is hosted in the Chicago area. VCF South(Southwest) has been in Arlington/Dallas, TX the last few years. It's been fun but is still growing. The original VCF in San Jose was awesome and huge but Sellam's been taking a sabbatical break from putting that all together by himself for the 10 years it went on. Vintage Computer Festival's are general interest and general collections. They don't focus on any particular vendor but sometimes do like to point out systems or companies that had historical significance in that region.

There's AppleFest which is in Kansas.. fairly obvious from the title which vendor they celebrate and hack on during that event.

Multiple Commodore/Amiga events I believe still occur but I'm not sure which are vintage vs current.

You do bring a good point though. There should be a wiki page or something somewhere perhaps to help folks identify events, when they are/were and where they were located.