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BitBuilt @ VCF Midwest 2024

CrashBash

No emulation, real hardware
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Conventions and meetings with BitBuilt members are fun! MGC, where a lot of us meet up, only happens once a year though. This year though, we had a few members attend Open Sauce and now VCF Midwest! This is the thread for said... festival? convention? Whatever you want to call it we were there, there were tons of awesome computers & hardware, and everything for sale was (unlike MGC) KIND OF CHEAP!

@DoctorDalek rep'd his software, LanCommander
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The place had a PBX system, just in case you wanted to place a call to somewhere else...
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LOTS of IBM hardware including a system/36 and, of all things, an AS400 (Yes, OS/400 running on an actual AS400). Check out the hard disk on the system/36.
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system36-drive.jpg

as400-1.jpg
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I call this section "Warp Zone" as there was so much OS/2 stuff (mainly warp). I actually didn't know there were Asian-language releases of OS/2. I frankly really want to install Warp on a laptop and rock that on vacations for fun.
WarpZone.jpg


Tons of SGI hardware laying around. This one picture doesn't do it justice.
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AFTER DARK. There were at least a dozen monitors lined up displaying "Flying Toasters". Also this mac has a few hard drives.
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Magnetic core memory is neat, always wild to think people made this by hand for a while.
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There was a surprising amount (not much, but I didn't expect any) of "Internet culture" stuff there. Talking about "OS-Tan" with someone was not on my weekend list, nor was seeing (of course) a ball pit.
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I was also on the look out (but not expecting to find) for PC-98s and to my surprise someone had 4 set up for playing games! Mainly Puyo Puyo and the classic Touhou games were set up. I spent a few minutes playing as Reimu in Mystic Square and hit the high score board without really trying or using bombs (everyone else used continues? wtf).
I don't think there were any for sale (that I saw) and if there were, it'd probably be more than what I'd want to spend. I also wanted to loop back and play Lotus Land story so I could get to Elly and have the original Bad Apple! song play, but didn't get around to it (and I think that PC-98 died partway through lol).
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Share your pics from VCF, if you went, here! I'll have to loop back with whatever I picked up from vendors later.
 
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Another shot of my table. It was the only floating table because I wanted to basically have the same setup I had at Open Sauce.

After UT from Crash's pic we switched over to 6 player SM64 co-op with the decompilation PC port. It was chaos and we had some slide races. Then this dude Jacob sat down and played for a bit. As I was doomscrolling I realized that he did a BLJ and beat the third Bowser. What a champ. The game is not intuitive with KB/M.
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I was over in the corner by the arcades, soldering area (they were teaching people how to solder by assembling blinkies), and another LAN party:
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All P4's and under I believe. Most of them were Shuttles, which was really cool to see. The same guy who put this LAN together also had a Shuttle in the auction. I have no idea how much it went for, but boy was it pretty. I'm going to have to pick up one of these... and maybe another to do a little LAN build for myself. God, I miss this era.

I spotted this microscope I had as a kid in box. Super early-00's design that's really charming. I still have mine so I didn't pick this up.
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Just your standard SGI affair. Gorgeous.
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I picked up a Sony Mavica to add to my small, but novelty camera collection
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Also grabbed this DVD duplicator. I plan on stripping out all but one of the drives to make a giant Swiss army knife tower of media reading goodness. DVD burner, 5.25" floppy, 3.5" floppy, 3.5" bay memory card reader, 3.5" & 2.5" SATA dock, and I don't know what else. Probably a drawer and then that cigarette adapter / cup holder combo unit. Maybe stuff a NUC into it and expose it all over SMB. No clue!
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They had The Weather Channel system out again this year
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Oh look a scrambler! Imagine, we went from this to, er, "private content" on the internet in just a few years
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Annnnnd, the video wall. Y2K will have more info in his post!
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Overall, a good show. This was my first VCFMW and I'll probably be back next year in some capacity. I might not exhibit LANCommander again, depends on if I make a launcher that supports 9x or XP. I've got some late 90's equipment for scanning and recording onto film that would be fun to set up an exhibit for, so I might do that. Might also just hang out with the duders. No more cons until MGC for me. It's almost LAN party season!
 

CrashBash

No emulation, real hardware
Staff member
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Joined
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Messages
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Location
MGC, Wisconsin, USA
Waiting for @Y2K 's post intensifies.
 
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