Retro Computer Festival 2024 - Saturday 9th November
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Description : We've sold out on Saturday and Sunday for pre-booked tickets. We hope to have some walk-in tickets available both days, but once the museum is full we're very sorry, we can't let anyone in until someone leaves. We thank you for your understanding.Click here for information on SundayWe're very happy to announce our 2024 Retro Computer Festival - our biggest yet, with more exhibitors than ever before. We'll be dedicating another entire weekend to the Retro Computing Community. The Centre for Computing History will be opening its doors on the 9th and 10th November 2024 and welcoming enthusiasts to exhibit their personal collections, retro computing mods and state of the art hacks. The event will be free to exhibitors and entry for visitors is just standard museum entry. Exhibitors This isn't the complete list and new exhibitors will added when we get their details - keep checking back! The Big Red Arrow Club The Big Red Arrow Club is a group of like-minded YouTubers (that is to say they’re all a bit weird) who enjoy tinkering and expressing their love of vintage hardware and software. They’ll be bringing along interesting examples from their own personal collections, as well as handing out stickers and QR codes to anyone that ventures too close to their table. Roland Perry - Amstrad Having done the 40th Anniversary of the CPC464, it's time now to move onto the CPC664. On display will be a prototype computer and some associated printed material. By Roland, the eponymous project co-ordinator for the CPC series and several video games. John Newcombe - @glasstty John will be celebrating some of the many 'self build' systems available during the 1970s and early 80s. Come and see the genuine, non-original, 44 year Acorn System 3 and 6809 machines that were built last year, the 47 year old Newbear machine that will be built next year, and a very cute unfinished Microtan 65 started 4 decades ago. There'll also be a KIM1 and a replica to compare it with. If that wasn't enough why not stop for a moment and marvel at a wire wrapped COSMAC Elf flashing an LED and if that fails to impress then come along and check out a ZX81 doing something really useful. John Brown - @jcrowly Unix, the operating system most normal people think they have never used. While it now runs almost every smart phone, smart TV, tablet, washing machine, and the Internet, Having been with us since the 70s, it means there is a huge variety of machines that ran it, many strange an exotic, and some more familiar you would not expect. Jonathan Pallant Jonathan is bringing “Backwards Compatible” - a selection of machines that worked really hard at being backwards compatible with their predecessor and consequently suffered with having much less native software than they deserved. The display includes a Commodore 128D, and a BBC Master Stephen Usher The Sinclair QL is forty years old. Tony Jewell - @herebedragons3 So green, so very very green. The Dragon may have some of the greenest games out there, and this year Tony is going to celebrate the reason why - the Motorola MC6847. This low budget graphics chip is actually found in a surprising number of machines, and he’s going to see how many of them he can fit on one table. Bring sunglasses. Eduard Garanskij Eduard will showcase programmable calculators from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, including the Soviet Elektronika MK series. Ed will demonstrate how to program these vintage devices and show you how to play games on them! Wi-FI Sheep - Tom Williamson This years RetroFest will mark the final in a series Tom's been running on Youtube called 'Going GUI!', showcasing early and pioneering 'point and click' graphical users interfaces and operating systems from the 8 and 16-bit home computing eras. Come and play with Windows 3.x on 16-bit PC, GEOS for the 8-bit Commodore 64 and AMX Desk, the little known GUI for the original Acorn BBC Micro Model B! Nic Chester Nic will be taking us on a journey through home computing from around '85 to the turn of the century, along with the experience of going online for the first time, be it through dialup internet or a BBS. Stephen Clemmet - Cambridge Micrologic Development kits microprocessor-based architecture on a microcontroller, designed for machine learning and sensor integration, programmable with MicroPython. Discover hands-on projects and the iconic 1984 SP0256 allophone speech synthesiser in action! Spencer Owen - RC2014 A selection of RC2014 retro computer kits based on the Z80, which will be demonstrating some of the things you can do with CP/M, BASIC and Z80 assembly code, along with a few kits for sale so you can build your own Z80 computer from scratch! Tim Gilberts - @timbucus Heathkit (a major American supplier of electronics kits) was very active in the UK and brought over their microprocessor trainer in 1977, computer kits like the H8 in 1978 and then the iconic all in one H89 for winter 1979. Come and see all three along with contemporary catalogues and price lists. The H89 will be running CPM which is 50 years old this year! Pete Golding - Short Circuit Pete will be showcasing some of the early home computing machines people made when they had a lot of talent but little money, when a simple circuit board truly became a piece of art! DosFox An orchard of not Apples - after successfully cloning the Apple Lisa last year, DosFox is back with yet another reverse engineered Apple computer - the Macintosh Plus. DosFox will also be showing off their other handmade Apple clones - including the Apple Lisa clone from last year, as well as a cloned Apple ii rev 0. Roy Templeman - @loudscotsbloke From Toggle to Keyboard. Roy will be bringing a number of 70s and early 80s machine's from his extensive collection of underdogs and oddballs. Showing the transition from toggle switches to hex pads to keyboards. Showing how various manufactures progressed on the journey from development kits to full-blown computers. Come and see how we get from the Titus Mark-8 to the NEC-8001. John Metcalf To celebrate 40 years of Core War, John will host the 40th-anniversary tournament on his collection of modern retro SBCs. Core War is a programming game played between two or more programs in the memory of a virtual computer. Alongside the tournament, expect a demo of genetic programming, optimization techniques, and related programming games. Pixel Addict Pixel Addict and Amiga Addict, Britain’s best selling magazines for classic computer users will be at the show selling all of their back catalogue and related merchandise. Chris Oddy Chris will be bringing along his original Acorn System 1 and 2 computers built in the early 80’s together with more recent replica System 3,4, & 5 and Atom's. Also his SC/MP related collection of replica Sinclair MK14s and SOFTY PROM Programmers. Dean Belfield - Break Into Program Dean, aka Break Into Program, is bringing some Z80 development systems, old and new, including a Tatung Einstein based ZX Spectrum development system, along with a selection of original source disks donated by the Follin brothers. This system was used by a handful of Manchester based software houses in the late 80s including Ocean, Binary Design, Icon Design, A&F and Software Creations, where Dean worked. Flamelily Retro Store New stuff for your old tech. If you love modern hardware for old systems you will know about the Raspberry Pi Pico. We are the UK reseller for a few Pico devices, the BlueSCSI, the PicoGUS and the PicoMEM. We have wallet friendly kits and fully assembled units for purchase. Come and see all these in action at our table. Get your SCSI Hard drives and 100MB Zip disks imaged for free at our table. Bring these with you and we will image "while you wait" Neal Crook Neal will be demonstrating his 1980-era Nascom 2 (which he built as a teenager) along with his Nascom 1 and "Nascom 4" (an FPGA-based Nascom-that-never-was) along with various cassette-tape and floppy-disk replacement storage systems. Quazar - Colin Piggot - @QuazarSamCoupe Colin is a veteran developer for the SAM Coupé doing everything possible to keep this quirky 8-bit British computer alive! For over the last 30 years he's been designing hardware, writing games and producing SAM Revival magazine to support the system. Being demonstrated on the the SAM Coupé will be a range of the software and hardware marvels he's released over the years, including the latest revision of his Quazar Surround soundcard giving SAM advanced sound capabilities, plus prototypes of some of the new hardware that he is in the pipeline including an eZ80 co-processor, which forms part of the work towards his own new SAM system codenamed: Pandemonium. Colin also produces some hardware goodies for the ZX Spectrum and RC2014 systems and compatibles, these will also be on show to check out too. A selection of all the products will be available to purchase during the show, along with copies of SAM Revival magazine including a revamped back issue focused on audio and computer music on the SAM Coupé which was produced for the 'Synthesized' show earlier this year. Dolo - @6502Nerd Dolo (6502Nerd) is once again bringing a curious mix of actual retro and retro-homage. He will show off his owned-from-new Oric-1, a niche British computer that started it all for him in 1983. And, as a tribute to pioneers such as Wozniak, he will have his big mess-of-wires homebrew computer built from scratch on breadboards including all the software. Now that is nerdy! Dave Williams - @Devilish_Design Dave will be bringing some big blue machines. No, nothing to do with IBM. Just some big, blue S100 based systems from the late 1970s. There will be a full IMSAI setup running CP/M from 8" floppy drives along with a Processor Technology SOL-20. Tom Stepleton It's a PERQ --- can it WORQ? The PERQ computers --- unusual British-American graphical workstations from the early 1980s --- are among the trickiest single-user computers to restore to working order. In this exhibit, you may see a functioning PERQ 2T2, but it's more likely you'll find a live diorama of an aspiring restorer hard at work. Drop by throughout the show to see Tom's progress in troubleshooting one chip at a time --- the PERQ has around six hundred of them! Learn about the effort's mysteries, woes, and triumphs, and trade theories or offer suggestions if you like. Check out the tools of the diagnostician: logic analyser, oscilloscope, schematics, desoldering gun, and more, and maybe... just maybe... be there for a breakthrough! Ian Murray and Ian Reynolds SC/MP will be the central theme with items ranging from an original 1977 National Semiconductor Low Cost Development System (LCDS), complete with ultra rare "Telekit" handheld teletype, to the very latest non-volatile 3 chip SC/MP computers and MK14 expansion modules. RealView and PiView MK14 VDU cards will be in full use along with a web-server connected Fast Loader for program loading. Add to that a number of replica MK14s showcasing games, applications and hardware developed over the last 2 years. Stephen Clemmet - Cambridge Micrologic
Development kits microprocessor-based architecture on a microcontroller, designed for machine learning and sensor integration, programmable with MicroPython. Discover hands-on projects and the iconic 1984 SP0256 allophone speech synthesiser in action!. Also the BBC computer Kenneth Kendall recorded speech synthesiser for a clear listening experience.
[Saturday/Sunday]
Alex Brown - @thelastpsion@oldbytes.space Andy Collins Adrian Page-Mitchell Adrian will be bring you some curios from the world of Matsushita, he will be showing the National Jr 100 and 200, and then the Panasonic MSX2 machines, including the last in the line Turbo R - If he finds room, his Bally Computer System may make an appearance too :) Mark Nias Mark from DextersTechLab will be displaying an icon of 1990s video effects and post production which is the Quantel HAL Express. Launched in 1993 by the legendary British company Quantel as a more cost effective version of the Henry. HAL was designed as video animation suite but ended up being used throughout the broadcast industry to produce video graphics, video effects and compositing for TV stations, adverts, music videos and more. Adrian Graham - Binary Dinosaurs This year you can expect the unique, the weird, the wonderful one-offs created by people with a definite aim in mind. People who had a need but there were no solutions out there so they used whatever they had to hand. Mack Wharton - @MackJsy Back This year after suffering weather anomolies. Mack will be exhibiting all things Aquarius. This includes the Brand New (original) Aquarius, the Aquarius + Maxi, and the Aquarius + Mini - As well as showing off his Jetpac conversion Andy Toone of Feersum Technology (@lockFarm) Andy makes the MicroBeast Z80 computer kit and is developing VideoBeast - a new video 'chip' upgrade for 8 bit computers. He'll be bringing a number of Beasts, some new products and a few of the machines that inspired them. Owen Randle Owen will exhibit an original National Semiconductor SC/MP Introkit (that the SoC MK14 was based on), plus a Novus (Nat Semi) Calculator (that they used the same-style case as User Interface). And a Wireless World NanoComp 6802 Trainer - All to be shown running. Also a Newbear 77-68 recently-restored original 6800 CPU/RAM board and original Acorn PET + FIT diagnostic boards, Plus various other rare boards and recent SC/MP single-board systems re-creations
Spaces for these exciting hands-on events are limited, so booking is required to ensure your place. Payment is taken by PayPal immediately. Please print a copy of the receipt that is displayed at the end of the payment process and bring it with you as your e-ticket. Remember - All proceeds go to support our Computing Museum! |
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