[vcf-midatlantic] VCF @ Brickfair NJ report

[John Heritage]

Very interesting on the Lego --> Vintage connection..  Great info Evan!

On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:26 PM Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> Friday I gave a lecture at Brickfair on the history of Lego robotics from
> before Mindstorms (1980-1997). Only 5 people attended, but they were all
> enthusiastic about the subject. One guy knew about VCF. Another said he
> came to Brickfair solely because he heard about my topic. So that's cool.
> IMO the event management did a terrible job of advertising their Friday
> sessions.
>
> Saturday I demo'd my favorite of the various pre-Mindstorms sets, #9700,
> using the Apple II platform. I didn't bring the IBM version. The demo
> worked well until about 4pm. I troubleshooted it as best I could while also
> talking to visitors. Some of the basic diagnostics between the computer and
> the interface box stopped working. I know it's not the computer, so this
> will take more fixing than I can do. I will bring it to the workshop next
> Saturday.
>
> I told the show managers there was no point in me coming back today without
> having a working demo. My table was in an island of its own, so they
> understand and said it's fine.
>
> The show traffic Saturday was pretty good. I had a steady stream of
> visitors all day, most of which liked what I had to show them.
>
> Lego is an excellent gateway drug to vintage computing. :) Tons of parents
> my age (40s) came over to reminisce about 8-bit computers. Only one person
> ever heard of Laser. A lot of people came over and told their kids it's a
> "Mac II". I enlightened them...
>
> I found out there are several dozen Lego shows nationwide. They experts
> said Chicago and DC (Northern Virginia next summer) are the biggest. I'll
> look into Virginia next year. My goal is to have a schematic of the
> interface box done by then (Nevell agreed to do it) and a working replica
> made in time.
>