![[VCFMW 10 hall]](vcfvm_kyle_wide.jpg)
Last updated Sept 10 2015. Edited by Herb Johnson, (c) Herb Johnson, with content provided by Lee Hart, Kyle Owen, and others.
VCF-MW 2015, Vintage Computer Festival - Midwest for 2015, was held near Chicago in August 2015. Caption photo above by Kyle Owen, used with permission. This Web page describes the appearance of Lee Hart and his colleagues as they demonstrated the 1802 Membership Card and kit. Lee Hart's 1802 Membership Card kits are based on the RCA COSMAC 1802 processor. "For those just tuning in, the Membership Card is a reproduction of the original Popular Electronics COSMAC Elf computer, but shrunk to fit in an Altoids tin! It works the same, and runs the same software." - Lee Hart, developer. See the home page for more information and how to order.
![[Lee at VCFMW 10]](vcfvm_kyle_lee1.jpg)
Where's Lee? The photo on left is a closeup from the caption photo above. Photos courtesy Kyle Owen.
Lee Hart: I just returned from VCF-Midwest, where I exhibited both the 1802 and Z80 Membership Cards. There was definitely a much stronger interest in the Z80 version. It's a little hard to tell which one *sells* better, as I sold all I had of both! I was hindered by part supply problems [and did not bring as many Membership Card kits to sell]. [See Lee Hart's kit product Web page, for the products he showed and sold at VCF-MW.]
It was amazing to see how much "old iron" was there; both the real stuff itself, and many MANY reproductions and emulators. There was an original Apple-I, numerous DEC machines, a MITS 680, SWTP 6800 system, my RCA VIP, and many more than I can remember. There were reproductions of the Apple-I, KIM, Atari, Amiga, Commodore, and of course my 1802 Elf Membership Card. Josh had his Mark-8 there and working (fitfully), as well as his S-100 8080 board and [N8VEM] IMSAI front panel [work-alike]. The oldest emulator was of a Burroughs B220 emulator (a vacuum tube mainframe computer).
[The event] had a real MITS Altair 680 running on a Teletype at the show. They were using it to print people's name (or whatever other text they typed) on paper tape, as a give-away. It was kept busy much of the weekend.
![[Lee at VCFMW 10]](vcfvm_kyle_lee2.jpg)
A guy at the show was intrigued by the 1802, learned its instruction set from the little fold-out card, and wrote a little program to "krell" the Q LED. This means sending pulses of different widths to the LED, so it gradually gets brighter, then fades back out, and repeats. The name comes from the old "Forbidden Planet" movie, where all the lights on the control panels did this." - Lee Hart
The "satellite dish" in front of Lee and on the table, is Lee's model of the Galileo spacecraft which flew to Jupiter. It contained many 1802 processors.
VCF-MW Past Event page has links to photos and videos. The home page will show info on the 2015 show until they update it for the next show. One set of 2015 images is from Kyle Owen, who kindly permitted me to use his photos here.
YouTube video by Chris537 "ECCC/VCF Show 2015". Lee Hart appears about 3:45 time-stamp for several seconds.
This page and edited content is copyright Herb Johnson (c) 2015. Contact Herb at www.retrotechnology.com, an email address is available on that page..