Vintage Computer Festival -VCF West
VFC West Circa 2024
I have never attended a Vintage Computer Festival, but I have a collection of Retro Atari Computers. I'm looking forward to it.
The Atari 8bit Computers of the 80's run based on a 6502 Processor. The ad phrase was "Power without the price." Most computers were not aware of date and time. Geting on line meant having a telephone device called a modem dial out to another computer in a 1 to 1 relationship or a service like Compuserve.
In the year 2000 there was a scare that the worlds PC's would implode because they didn't know how to deal with the date. I knew all of the data I kept on the Atari was fine because it operated without the need for date and time. It could compute in the moment, where all timing was relative to it's internal clock.
Adding time and date in the 80's was a separate device. The device of choice for me was a Hayes Chronograph. A RS232 commutation line to the clock was used to request time and date functions.
Over 50 years, the Atari has gotten some modernization in the Fujinet a modern way to access BBSs and use disk images over the internet.
I will follow up wiith thoughts after the event.
Resources -
- Service Status: CompuServe is ending its dial-up internet service component, with final termination scheduled for September 30, 2025, for many legacy plans.
