[Coco] VCF 2.0 Southwest: A quick review

[Boisy G. Pitre]

All,

We just got back this afternoon from VCF 2.0 Southwest in Arlington, Texas (along with a brand new Mercedes-Benz that the wife got for her birthday while there -- but that's another story :).  Here's a quick summary:

Our road trip started out Thursday.  We spent that night at a B&B, then drove on into Texas the next day, arriving hotel in Arlington Friday afternoon.  From there, we went to our rendezvous point, Texas Land and Cattle restaurant, where we met Mark, Sandy, Aaron, Gary and his wife.

With the ladies off to Dallas to do shopping, we setup and worked our tables at the event Saturday. The location was the University of Texas Arlington's E.H. Hereford University Center and I have to say, it was quite nice.  The room was large and there were a lot of tables spread around.   Around the corner and down the hall was the university commons with a cafeteria that was open for lunch on both Saturday and Sunday.  We got to eat in the same place where students eat every day.  Very cool.

Attendance was probably 30-40, I would guess, at the peak.  Gil, the organizer, indicated that it was better attended this year than last, and he seemed really happy with the overall turnout.

There was certainly a wide range of exhibitors.  Not only vintage Apple, Commodore, Timex, and Radio shack computers were there, but also older, rarer systems such as the SOL 20.   There was a table manned by a gentleman named Skip which contained numerous slide rules and older calculators.  Another table had a Vectrex up and running. Still another vendor showed off his collection of "portable" computers from the 80s.  There was a table of robots as well, from the Houston Computer Museum.

We had the pleasure of meeting Brendan Donahe, who turned out to be a Cloud-9 customer from long ago.  He was exhibiting a very impressive FPGA project that used a Xilinx board to emulate a 6847 VDG chip on a CoCo 1 and output to a VGA monitor.  We had dinner with Brendan Saturday night, and really enjoyed hanging out with him.

Here's what I came away with after attending this event:

1. The VCF event was diverse, and in that environment, the CoCo held its own.  We got lots of interest at our tables, and people loved watching DriveWire running a CoCo with full Internet services.  the SuperIDE and the CoCo3FPGA were also heavily inquired about.
2. Having events on college campuses:  this is a great idea.  I know Glenside has had the CoCo Fests at the hotel for years, but I would recommend they look into a university campus as a place for hosting the fest.  According to Gil, the organizer, they got use of the room for free.

In summary, we had a great time and enjoyed meeting all of the folks who were there.  I would definitely consider going back next year.

Boisy