Subject: Trenton Computer Festival

From: David Comley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue May 6 11:49:01 2003

>When and where is the Hamvention? 

Dayton, OH, and it's the weekend after next (Fri 16th
May through Sunday). The focus is ham radio equipment
but there was also a lot of computer gear and test
equipment last time I was there. As a ham as well as
a, er, whatever computer enthusiasts are called, it's
worth the drive for me !

Chris, thanks for the offer of help on the 68k apple
stuff. I didn't really have a specific model in mind.
I was just thinking wistfully about all those macs
stacked up at TCF and hoping they didn't get trashed.

Dave.
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue May 6 13:10:00 2003

--- David Comley <[email-masked]> wrote:
> equipment last time I was there.

There's always lots of everything there (except what you
are looking for ;-)  Several test equipment vendors show
up with bakery rack after bakery rack full of HP and Tektronix
gear - other vendors sell box after box of Tek manuals.  There's
lots of older computer _and_ radio gear, but there's a definite
window of opportunity in terms of age - kinda like the stuff you
see at the thrift store change over time.  Once, they were
loaded with Commodore and Atari gear.  Much less now.  It's a
case of identifying what's just become obsolete in the business
world and expecting to see piles of _that_.

When I first went (1982), DEC equipment was everywhere, PeeCee 
equipment was virtually nowhere, and there was plenty of people
selling Commodore VIC-20s and CW gear and other things of that
vintage.  Given what I've been seeing at the Ohio State surplus,
I'm expecting a bumper crop of pre-G3 PowerMac gear - stuff that
won't run OS X at all and won't go much past MacOS 8.6 without
a fight.  There should also be plenty of PeeCee parts from
machines that shouldn't run NT/2000/XP on a dare.

There will also be radio vendors, antenna vendors, battery vendors,
etc.  Mendelsson's will probably have their large tent with pallets
of slightly-crushed UPSes, ammo cans and other surplussy things.

I go, but I buy less and less each year - I'm not in it for the
mainstream stuff - for that, I go to the ComputerFest (same venue,
but all indoors) in March and August.

-ethan