I'll be making a spirited attempt to be at this year's Vintage Computing Festival Berlin (VCFB) on Saturday - see https://www.vcfb.de/2018/ for details, link to English version seems broken. That's Berlin, Germany, which I realize might be a bit of a trip for some people here. I'm the guy wearing the EA 80 FD t-shirt, which hopefully will not lead to discussions about punk music this time (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3267).

As far as I can tell from Das Programm for the day (the actual German word) at https://www.vcfb.de/2018/Programm_VCFB_2018.pdf, the Steckschwein, a 6502 computer built by Thomas Woinke and Marko Lauke (https://steckschwein.de/), will be on display, and there will be a talk about it on Saturday. Doesn't say which language, but I'm assuming German; also not clear if any of this will be on YouTube later.

(Note that there will be Z80 people present, but I'm assuming security details from the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) as well as the state and federal Verfassungsschutz will be keeping an eye on them. You know, just in case.)

Anybody else coming?

Dang! And here I thought it was in Berlin, Illinois, which is a 110 MPH train ride from my place.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I gather there are good things to see at the Deutsches Technikmuseum, including much about Zuse and his machines.

The DDR museum and the espionage museum might be worth a look too. One day, I might go to Berlin!

I'm tempted but at least 3h by car

Perhaps Saturday ... I haven't quite decided yet.

Three hours by car is much better than 10 hours by air and all that red tape at the airport.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Oddly, I traveled internationally (extensively) for 25+ years, literally hundreds of times to Germany, airports including Berlin, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Munich and some others too. Never any red tape... very trivial indeed. Of course living there for a while required a proper Visa and such, but that was quite easy as well.

I find Canada more of an issue... as I've always gotten the "3rd degree" about why I coming it, what I'm going to do, etc." They (immigration officers) always try and trip you up and suggest that you're coming in to work... aka, taking a job that should be for a Canadian. Just attending a 1-day business meeting is a ridiculous conversation, who knew. I do like Canada and the people are very nice, but their immigration officers are anything but... I'm just saying!

_________________
Regards, KM
https://github.com/floobydust

I went to Moscow once (I'm from the US) and when I arrived at the airport, I noticed there were two lines going through customs. One was VERY long (the one I was in) and the other had 4 people in it. Turns out, that line was for Russian citizens.

I was quite young and stupid at the time, so I thought...why not? What's the worse they can do?

So I went to the small Russian citizens line.. Woman asked me (in English) what I was doing there. I said tourism. And she let me on through! I couldn't believe I got away with that.

Very doubtful if I would try that again.

_________________
Cat; the other white meat.

We get the same thing going to the US by air. Not such an issue by car though.

_________________
Bill

Yeah, Canada is great - not only by its size

My son and his girlfriend just off school are on "work & travel" tour there. It takes >1/2 year to get the papers (when they started to ask for, they were both 17y old so the parents were involved as well). Now they face another "problem": in Vancouver / British Columbia you need to be 19y old to be "adult" whereas in Alberta where they first arrived and bought a car 18y are sufficient . Difficult to get a job - but driving a car and renting an apartment is (so far) not a problem


Regards,
Arne

Why am I not surprised Driving up from South Florida just isn't happening however... but I have several friends that come over from Europe and they usually have a difficult time with (USA) immigration/customs upon entering... especially if coming over for business meetings and/or conferences.

As far as I can remember, I've never had any issues in any western European country, or eastern Europe... just trivial to get in... show my passport, tell them I'm there on a business trip (being with IBM probably helped) and they just ask a few routine questions, stamp my passport and I'm in. Middle East is bit different... and then there's Asia Pacific countries... but no real issues.

Even Russia was fine, but they remove the visa from passport when you leave... Drats!

_________________
Regards, KM
https://github.com/floobydust

So I was able to spend about three hours at the VCFB this year -- my eleven-year-old's patience understandably wore thin at some point, though he valiantly sat through the presentation of the Steckswine with me. Let the record show that I am still better at Pong and Galaxian, though I think I should probably quit reaction-based games now while I'm still ahead. Time to switch to NetHack.

Anyway - the festival was lots of fun, and I really enjoyed meeting the Steckschwein duo. Horrible cheap phone picture of their exhibit: That's not my coffee cup right next to the computers, BTW, it's theirs. The stuff on display of interest to us ranged from Apple I to the Apple GS II. (65816). There was a brief power failure at the GS II's table just when I wanted to take a closer look, because the gods of electricity hate me. I went over and drooled over the NeXT instead. Still beautiful after all these years.

Best name of those involved was the "Abteilung für Redundanz Abteilung" ("Department for Redundancy Department", https://afra-berlin.de/dokuwiki/doku.php), whose symbol is a penguin with six wings. I couldn't find out if double membership is mandatory ...

There are streams of the events at https://www.vcfb.de/2018/stream.html for those interested. I'll definitely try to go again next year.

Thank you for being there!
I am right now sitting at our exhibit trying to figure out how to build TaliForth 2 for the Steckschwein.
And yes, that's my coffee cup there. I left the table with the cup on it unattended for quite some time and nobody spilled anything which tells a lot about the crowd or our exhibit. Unable to decide.

Did you see any Commodore computers?

C64 all over the place -- but not one single VIC20, my first 6502 love. Sigh.

Oh, and I should mention that the Z80 crowd was very polite and most helpful. I briefly considered showing them the error of their ways, but then my son got hungry. Guess the preaching will have to wait till next year .

Oh, I dunno if they're wrong... The Z80's seperate IO space looks like it'd make for a really clean memory map, and it's reset vector being the beginning of the memory space would make it far cleaner to extend.
I think a 65816 with just that second trait would be really nice. The direct page and stack page defaults would probably need rethinking for such a device, though.