Retro Computer Festival 2018 - 15th & 16th September

Following the success of last years event, we'll be dedicating another entire weekend to the Retro Computing Community. The Centre for Computing History will be opening its doors on the 15th & 16th September 2018 and welcoming enthusiasts to exhibit their personal collections, retro computing mods and hacks.

The event will be free to exhibitors and entry for visitors is just standard museum entry.

Exhibitors can exhibit for 1 day or both. If required exhibitors can set-up on the Friday evening too.

Call for exhibitors ...

Would you like to come and show off for the weekend? Please do get in touch!
tony@computinghistory.org.uk

Confirmed Exhibitors:

Retro Computer Museum

Andy Spencer and the team from Retro Computer Museum will be joining us for the whole weekend. They're bringing some exciting kit that will definitely be worth seeing!

[Saturday & Sunday]

Binary Dinosaurs

Adrian Graham will be showing that real enthusiasts build their own cases with his collection of British single board computers. Expect Nascoms, UK101s and lots of amateur carpentry. Plus he'll have a selection of oddities and curiosities from his extensive collection.

[Saturday & Sunday]

David Williams

David has very kindly built a replica Apple 1 computer and donated it to the museum. He'll be demonstrating this beautiful creation and possibly some other exciting projects too!

[Saturday & Sunday]

Andy Taylor

Andy is well known in the retro computing community and will be bringing along a selection of his more unusual machines and his current construction project ...

[Saturday & Sunday]

Here be Dragons!

Tony Jewell will be showing that there's life in the old underdog yet. His expanded Dragon systems will show off both modern and period upgrades - from VGA support to running multi-user Unix! There'll also be a collection of unusual 6809 systems and a few other curiosities.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Vintage Computer Club

Sean Billings of the Vintage Computer Club will be bringing along a collection of computers from the 80's and 90's and helping anyone that would like to try to learn about programming on them. The Club's mission is about bringing together a community of people who enjoy our computer technology past, it is about educating, but more than that it is about fun.

[Saturday & Sunday]

ARITH-MATIC

ARITH-MATIC is a British computational hardware project and micro startup. They craft a range of DIY hardware kits which beautifully dissect the complex mechanisms of computation, and will be exclusively showcasing their latest products.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Newbrains, Newbrains, Newbrains!

We at the Centre think it's time this spiritual ancestor of the Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum got some love. With help from Adrian Graham and Tony Jewell, we'll be showing off highlights from our collection and their collections too - this will probably be the largest and most complete collection of Newbrains, prototypes and peripherals ever exhibited!

[Saturday & Sunday]

Chris Carter

Chris will be bringing his Newbear 77-68s - hopefully we'll have three working examples of this rare kit computer that's arguably the first ever British home computer. He'll also be bringing one of the very first (if not, again, the first) 16bit desktop computer, the Oliveti M20.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Jonathan Pallant

Jonathan will be demonstrating the Monotron - his reimagining of an 80s home computer based on the Stellaris Launchpad microcontroller. He'll also be talking to us about Embedded Rust in general.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Jon Hales - Intel industrial computers of late 1970s and early 1980s

Jon will be exhibiting a 1978 Intel Series II 8085/8080 PC, a 1984 286-based PC and an EPROM programmer. He'll also talk about a couple of earlier systems in the museum's collection.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Spencer Owen - RC2014

Spencer will be showing off his RC2014 range of Z80 based retro computers, with various demos running, some new products to see, and a small supply of kits for sale if anyone wants to buy one on the day.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Dave Pleasance - Commodore The Inside Story

Come and meet David Pleasance, Marketing Director of Commodore UK. He will be doing book signings for his new book : Commodore The Inside Story.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Neal Crook

Neal will demonstrate his FPGA-based 6809 computer running Forth, FLEX, Nitr-OS9, Fuzix and more. Neal will also be showing his NASCOM-2 running PolyDos from a solid-state disc

[Sunday ONLY]

Darren Blaxcell - Rakits

Darren will be showing off his Rakits - 'noisy electronic kits' - fun, noisy electronic kit projects at affordable prices for a range of ages and skill levels.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Richard Oliver - LogicaTronics Limited

LogicaTronics has created a new Single Board Computer based on a classic microprocessor design with modern conveniences. Known as the "Yorkshire-Pud", in line with the amusing trend for electronic products named after foodstuffs, we hope it to become popular with your lovely support and interest. Richard will be on hand to respond to your questions.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Roy Templeman

Roy will be be bringing a few machines from his collection to show us his favourite 8 bit machines from his youth. He'll also be demonstrating how we can keep these machines running and easy to use with the addition of modern SD card storage, tape emulation and composite mods that allow them to work with modern TVs.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Marcel van Kervinck - Gigatron

Marcel will be bringing his Gigatron TTL kit computer. A single-board computer based on simple 7400-series logic, yet powerful enough to play video games and run BASIC. Marcel will demonstrate a new feature: the ability to run 6502 programs, such as Microchess from 1976. All without a microprocessor on board, let alone a 6502!

[Saturday & Sunday]

As a fundraising event for the museum, all proceeds will be used to help us run our educational services and inspire another generation in to a career in computing.

Some of the exhibits from 2017 ...