VCF Midwest 2025

[coonsgm]

Another year another VCF Midwest. Great to see a lot of familiar and new faces and talk vintage computing with some great folks!

@Darklord I'll need to get a table near you guys next year! I need someone to trade off watching the displays with. With how big the show is getting, it's hard to get around and see everything AND keep an eye on a display.

Video below...there will be better more all inclusive ones by other folks. I expect to see a really amazing one by "Jeremy's Retro Bar" as he had some amazing camera equipment with him.



Long live Atari!

[Darklord]

Hey, thanks for including me and my STacy in your video.

Indeed, the Fuji lives...!

[mrbombermillzy]

This looks amazing.

I was always under the assumption that Atari and Commodore didnt really sell much over in the U.S. (despite being American companies) and there would be barely any of this retro goodness over there.

However, after watching a few of these VCF vids, I can see that the sheer volume and range certainly rivals anything we have over here!

Just...WOW!

Great vid @coonsgm

Also, good to see @Darklord unmasked for once! Thats an awesome STacy BTW!

[Steve]

I wonder why we don't have anything big like this in the UK? Surely our population density should *increase* the likelihood that we could have events like these.

[stephen_usher]

There was a UK VCF in 2010 at Bletchley Park but internal politics and other issues killed it.

There's the embryonic Retro Computing Festival at STEAM in Swindon in May/June but next year the space isn't any larger than this year's event.

I imagine that it's the cost of venues and insurance which is the biggest issue, and the lack of any decent mid-sized event spaces to grow into. They seem to be either smallish business conference spaces or the NEC sized.

[WDB]

This looks amazing.

I was always under the assumption that Atari and Commodore didnt really sell much over in the U.S. (despite being American companies) and there would be barely any of this retro goodness over there.

However, after watching a few of these VCF vids, I can see that the sheer volume and range certainly rivals anything we have over here!

Just...WOW!

Great vid @coonsgm

Also, good to see @Darklord unmasked for once! Thats an awesome STacy BTW!

I live in Southern California and this area had quite a few Atari dealers, we also had some Awesome Atari only shows in Glendale California and Anaheim, Glendale is part of the Los Angeles Metro area and Anaheim is the home of Disneyland. The Anaheim show was at the Disneyland Hotel.

These VCF shows kind of remind me of the big computer swap meets we used to have in this area, they were huge and you could find a huge variety of computers, hardware and software. VCF has a Southern California show now, I need to try and make there next year, as big as computers were in this area I am surprised we didn't get one until a couple of years ago. I used to be able to walk to Kingston Technology from my place.

[mrbombermillzy]

@WDB sounds like heaven to me.

[exxos]

I wonder why we don't have anything big like this in the UK? Surely our population density should *increase* the likelihood that we could have events like these.

The only big events was the computer and radio rallies of like 20 plus years ago. I'm not aware of any huge computer events since then really..

[mrbombermillzy]

Yeah. I never went to any (unfortunately), but back in the day there used to be big shows like The Commodore Show at the Novatel in London.

Not quite the swap meets we are seeing here (as the stuff was current/new then, I guess!), but big, in any case.

[Darklord]

Here are some pictures from VCF Midwest 2025 which I attended. I had an absolute blast! Enjoy.

(Click on "See More", then open up the first picture in each post - from there you can just cycle through the pictures)

https://www.southernamis.com/group/gene ... discussion

PS Here's a "teaser" picture!

Atari BBS Gurus Table19.JPG (232.78 KiB) Viewed 133 times