Interesting weekend

[Erik S. Klein]

I got an email on Wednesday from someone at Microsoft asking me if I could help them with an event this weekend. They found me through my vintage computer website and wanted some old machines for a history of computing display at the Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. (http://www.makerfaire.com/)

The Maker Faire is really kind of hard to describe. The basic premise is making things, as the name implies, and the fair on the whole is the most impressive and most eclectic collection of creative genius I've ever been witness to.

They had just about everything there from bicycle powered carnival rides to a bigger-than-life version of the Mousetrap game's Rube Goldberg machine (it used bowling balls instead of marbles and a 2 ton safe dropped 4 stories to "catch" the "mouse.")

They had robots including a full blown setup for robot wars, just like the TV show, including some of the more famous contestants, a 15 foot tall mechanical giraffe that responded to touch and sound as well as dozens of others big and small.



They had craftspeople of all kinds making everything you could think of from rockets to quilts and from art to cupcake shaped scooters. . . which I guess you could call art if you wanted to.

One of my favorites was a guy who created his own homebrew suction molding gear using a 4 burner stovetop and a shop vac. Here's one of the costumes he created with that setup.



Amongst the most exciting stuff were the different flame-throwers, and they had several.

One group converted a couple of fire trucks - reversing their function in dramatic fashion.



Another guy made a small tank that shot flames.



There were even aliens there. Animatronic ones, anyway. I'm pretty sure I saw at least a few people who brought out their halloween displays a bit early.



And, of course, there were lots of cars. Some were just weird like the car covered in wood blocks to make it look like a city seen from space, another covered in pens and another covered in dolls. Then there was the 1950s sedan filled with enough electronics to keep NASA in business until 2065. There was also this fun looking little speedster. . .



Oh, yeah, I set up a couple of old boxes in the MS area so that people could stop by and see what computing was like 25-30 years ago. Here's what I came up with (the left half is mine, the right half is Microsoft's):



Anyway, to make this somewhat Corvette related I saw a RFE Z06 on the way home.

[XLR8]

Cool!! Sounds like a good weekend, Erik. All I did was party.













No, not that kind of partying, this was all family stuff.
Jane Ann

[ROCKETBLOCK]

Very interesting. I would've enjoyed that event. Thanx for sharing!

[jrose7004]

That looks interesting!

[82ColEd]

Neat that they asked you to bring your gear..


So how many dumbfounded kids did you encounter that didnt know..

[KOPBET]

Is that Atari yours?

IBM PC (color, no less), Apple //, other cool stuff!!! Good job.

[Erik S. Klein]

Originally Posted by 82ColEd

So how many dumbfounded kids did you encounter that didnt know..

Most of the kids knew, but they were still dumbfounded and amused. I can't count the number of older people who came by saying "Ooh, I had one of those" or "I remember that" and the number of younger ones who talked about the "old school" gear.

One of the reasons I'm into older computers and computer history is because of the dramatic changes that have occurred over just my lifetime. When I was born in the mid 1960s the idea of a personal computer was a pipe dream. By the time I was in high-school I had one and it was a second or third generation machine.

My kids will grow up unable to understand what life could have been like before computers and a worldwide network capable of showing them video of events that just happened five minutes ago ten thousand miles away.

[Erik S. Klein]

Originally Posted by KOPBET

Is that Atari yours?

IBM PC (color, no less), Apple //, other cool stuff!!! Good job.

The Atari and IBM PC were mine. The Apple ][+ was from the Microsoft Museum as were the Pet, TRS-80 and Altair.

It was hard to choose what to bring. I've got at least 100 old (pre-1985) computers, most of which work. I settled on the Atari and IBM because those brands weren't represented in what MS brought but I could have just as easily brought machines to match what they did for people to play with.

Maybe next year.

[jhecox]

Originally Posted by Erik S. Klein

The Atari and IBM PC were mine. The Apple ][+ was from the Microsoft Museum as were the Pet, TRS-80 and Altair.

It was hard to choose what to bring. I've got at least 100 old (pre-1985) computers, most of which work. I settled on the Atari and IBM because those brands weren't represented in what MS brought...

That's kool Erik,

As I am just a little older than you, all we had were slide rules in high school. But I had my own PC at home in the early 80's. My PC was a Texas Instruments 99Ti. I also worked on Trash-80's and Apple's, but I liked my TI the best. I even wrote a couple of computer games from scratch. Lots of fun.

I would have loved attending the show you went to, but I'm just a little too far away.

Hecox