Sellam Ismail works his butt off every year to organize the VCF. He did an awesome job this year, as always. This is as close to a still shot as anyone is likely to get during the event.

I brought 3 machines this year (mostly scraped together from stuff that didn't go into storage - long story. . . :) along with a number of manuals, magazines, newsletters and related artifacts. Here's me in the middle of my mess.

Here are the various manuals and newsletters associated with the Commodore Pet I brought.

Here are the Altair related materials including Vol. 1, No. 1 issues of Byte, SCCS Interface and ROM as well as a number of Computer Notes issues.

The LO*OP Center had a display this year with a number of interesting items including these documents and computerized toys.

They also brought along some older computer systems following the show's theme.

Most exciting to me, at least, were the rare Apple machines donated to the center. They include the first ever Apple I (serial number 1) and a very early Apple ][ (serial number 2, or is that 10. . .)

Liza Loop and David Gjerdrum of the LO*OP center.

Boris Debic had a great display showing the evolution of computer logic from tubes to microprocessors.

Jim Battle brought his very cool Wang 2200 and an emulated version of the same.

William Kendrick had an Atari 800XL and an Atari emulator running.

Tom Stall brought his Mark-8 computer to display.

Somehow there were two of these rare Mark-8s on display. This one belongs to Bryan Blackburn. It's fully functional and hooked up to an ASR-33.

Here's a picture of Bryan at his teletype in front of his amazing display. He upped the bar significantly this year.

Stan Sieler brought some very uncommon PA-RISC laptops.

Evan Koblentz brought a very complete collection of early PDAs.

Dale Luck brought a bunch of Amiga gear, mostly prototypes, to display.

A wall of Grid computers being shown by Rob Borsari.

Hans Franke doing his Supreme's "Stop In the Name of Love" imitation. When he wasn't dancing or running wild or buying everything in sight he was demonstrating an Apple IIgs with an AnyCard.

Wayne Smith brought these early (pre-PC) IBM machines to display.

Tim Lindner brought along an Intellivision console to show that games are still being developed for this venerable platform.

Larry Anderson brought his usual impressive collection of Commodore equipment.

Here's a better view of Larry's display, without all of the people blocking the machines!

Larry Pezzolo brought along his "baby Altair" - an Altair 680 along with a nifty optical paper tape reader.

Stephen Jones brought along an AT&T 3B2 and several terminals.

A special display was set up to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Xerox Alto. A timeline of Apple machines was part of the display. I'm still drooling over the Twiggy-based LISA.

The DigiBarn got into the act as well bringing a ton of older Xerox equipment to display.

More fun toys from the DigiBarn.

There were a number of lectures, most of which I couldn't attend. Christine Finn talked about "Collecting the Collectors."

Todd Fischer talked about the history of IMSAI and the computer industry in general from the beginning.

Dwight Elvey also spoke and demonstrated his code for booting a Heathkit from a PC.

Howard Harte and Todd Fischer brought IMSAI and IMSAI Series 2 machines for display (with the latter being for sale).

The SBC 6120 is a PDP-8 single-board computer being offered for sale by Spare Time Gizmos. Replica front panels were also for sale for the machine.

One of the many vendor areas -- this one from the Fresno Commodore User Group.

Marvin Johnson in his vendor area. He may have actually left with less then he came with this year! (Last year he sold a lot but bought a lot more)

More Mac gear then you can shake a stick (of RAM) at.

And another large booth full of unique and interesting machines and parts for sale.

Fred Cisin was selling lots of nice stuff, some of it by the armful. Towards the end of the show he gave me a copy of the first issue of the Northstar Newsletter which had been ignored by all of the attendees.

Anyone who puts chips in gumball machines (see extreme right) is all right with me!

Several people took advantage of the consignment area and offloaded equipment without having to worry about it.

Display judging returned this year after a brief hiatus. Here the judges are going over Jordan Rudderman's display with a fine-tooth-comb. The judging team consisted of Lee Felsenstein (left in gray shirt) Dag Spicer (center in VCF 6.0 shirt) and Alex Bochannek (right with clipboard).

Here are the ribbons laid out and ready to award.

And the awards being announced. . .

Larry Pezzolo won 3rd place with his Altair 680.

My Altair 8800 came in second in its class.

My Commodore Pet came in second in its class.

And, keeping the trend alive, my TRS-80 came in second in its class as well. As it turns out my Pet and TRS-80 should have been in the same class so the TRS-80 actually won 3rd place. The 2nd place ribbon from the TRS-80 really belonged to Wayne Smith's amazing IBM System/23. The judging results have been amended and awards sent to the appropriate folks.

The big winner was Bryan Blackburn with first place ribbons for each of his machines as well as special first place awards for other things including his amazing display. Congratulations Bryan, but watch out, we're all gunning for you next year!