jackrubin
Veteran Member
I was able to attend the Berlin edition of Vintage Computer Festival earlier this month. I flew out of Chicago to Munich where I reconnected with Hans Franke, organizer of VCF-Europa and godfather of VCF-Berlin. Hans took me to the Munich Computer Museum where a major exhibit space is being prepared. Reinhard Heuberger (active here as PDP11GY) wasn't there, but his "Special Edition" PDP 11/23 was -
From Munich, Hans and I drove north to Berlin. In spite of it's reputation for fast travel, the Autobahn was often choked with traffice and we had to stop completely three times to wait while accidents were cleared from the highway. We arrived in Berlin late Friday night, did a little setup work and then retired to the bar across the street to enjoy the warm autumn weather and cold German beer.
Next day was the show - unfortunately my German wasn't good enough to enjoy the talks and seminars but there was still plenty to see and many people able and willing to describe their work in fluent English. Most of my photos from the show are here: http://tinyurl.com/vcfb-2015, but I've included a few snaps below of people familiar from the forums, most of whom I had never met before.
Here are Hans Franke (on the left) and Oscar Vermeulen, Mr. PiDP-8 -
And here I am (gray beard) with Philipp Hachtmann (not gray beard):
I am not interested in arm wrestling with Philipp.
Joerg Hoppe took the picture above. Here he is (foreground) with his very impressive collection of (mostly) DEC front panels running in full blinken-light glory off SIMH on captive Beagle Bone controllers. Angelo (behind him) is a student of Indo-European languages with a penchant for programming. He's written a PDP-10 Forth that was running on Joerg's simulator.
Joerg's VCF-Berlin photos can be seen at ftp://jhoppe.ddns.net/vcfb2105/index.html.
After a few days in Berlin, I flew to Stockholm and then grabbed a train to Uppsala. I spent several hours with Pontus Pihlgren, first at the Update Computer Club (sponsored by Uppsala University), then visiting his private collection and finally traveling down to the Dalby Datormuseum near Stockholm.
Pontus Pihlgren _almost_ getting the Update PDP-12 to boot. It worked the last time it was used. :>)
[I'm limited to five photos per post, so Part Two follows]
From Munich, Hans and I drove north to Berlin. In spite of it's reputation for fast travel, the Autobahn was often choked with traffice and we had to stop completely three times to wait while accidents were cleared from the highway. We arrived in Berlin late Friday night, did a little setup work and then retired to the bar across the street to enjoy the warm autumn weather and cold German beer.
Next day was the show - unfortunately my German wasn't good enough to enjoy the talks and seminars but there was still plenty to see and many people able and willing to describe their work in fluent English. Most of my photos from the show are here: http://tinyurl.com/vcfb-2015, but I've included a few snaps below of people familiar from the forums, most of whom I had never met before.
Here are Hans Franke (on the left) and Oscar Vermeulen, Mr. PiDP-8 -
And here I am (gray beard) with Philipp Hachtmann (not gray beard):
I am not interested in arm wrestling with Philipp.
Joerg Hoppe took the picture above. Here he is (foreground) with his very impressive collection of (mostly) DEC front panels running in full blinken-light glory off SIMH on captive Beagle Bone controllers. Angelo (behind him) is a student of Indo-European languages with a penchant for programming. He's written a PDP-10 Forth that was running on Joerg's simulator.
Joerg's VCF-Berlin photos can be seen at ftp://jhoppe.ddns.net/vcfb2105/index.html.
After a few days in Berlin, I flew to Stockholm and then grabbed a train to Uppsala. I spent several hours with Pontus Pihlgren, first at the Update Computer Club (sponsored by Uppsala University), then visiting his private collection and finally traveling down to the Dalby Datormuseum near Stockholm.
Pontus Pihlgren _almost_ getting the Update PDP-12 to boot. It worked the last time it was used. :>)
[I'm limited to five photos per post, so Part Two follows]
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