Sept 13, 2026: Vintage Computer Fest!!

Today my friend  Kat  and I are going to the Vintage Computer Fest Midwest, along with some of their other friends. I think I've met one or two of them but some of the other names didn't sound familiar, but always the more the merrier!

At the moment I don't have much to show off in terms of vintage computers. Both of my laptops are within the last decade (even if the Let's Note has a frutiger aero style to it), same with the 3d printer, and my oldest gaming device is a DS which I don't think counts as vintage just yet (despite what the kids these days try to say!!). BUT! I do have a CAT branded Aqua Mouse, with a little bulldozer and construction hat floating amongst gravel. Its optical sensor is actually misaligned, and I'm too scared to fix it myself, so I'm gonna bring a screwdriver and see if Kat or one of their friends can help me out.

~~~ Post-Event ~~~

So!! I did not end up getting my aqua mouse fixed, just didn't have the time or space to do it. But I scored a lot of sick finds!! And all I spent was One Dollar.

Okay I wrote that last line around 2:30 pm. It is now 7:39 pm. I've spent the last several hours trying to get the scanner I got to scan. First its software only works on Windows 95 or 98, no sweat because I have a Win95 virtual machine. I passed the CD to the VM and installed it, but then the USB wasn't being recognized. So I look it up and people say you gotta install the 95 USB driver. I download a file of it, learn how to make a virtual floppy drive, copy the file to it and pass it to the VM but it doesn't work, download different "95 usb driver" and do the same, then it works but says I need to upgrade to Windows 95 Revision B before installing the driver. Download Revision B, it won't install even though I'm clicking Yes, I would like to upgrade my version of Windows 95, so I find a tutorial to use the original setup file and halt the setup wizard with ctrl+esc and editing setup.exe as a text file, then resuming, but then when I get to the product key screen, NONE of the several keys I tried worked. Then I gave up.

Then I remembered I have an orgo exam tomorrow. But then I think, I've been angry for several hours, I deserve some fun, non-frustrating time on the computer. I'll get to ALL the things I got at VCF later but one of the things I got was a CD called WebCandy, and it's a bunch of stock photos, animations, and sounds. Here's one of them (originally a FLC file but I converted it to GIF for the sake of HTML:

Also I just realized I could skip the entire USB headache by just making a VM of 98 instead of 95. Doing that now.

Again, I'll get to the other things I got later, but I got a huge sentimental item: childhood VCR home videos. As I mentioned in the morning that I thought I didn't have any vintage computing stuff, when I went down to Kat's car and they showed me their old cameras, I remembered I had a compact-VCR camcorder, my dad's, that he had given to me. The battery was dead and without it I wasn't able to use it or even eject the tape that was in it. I ran back up to grab it, in hopes I could find someone selling a replacement battery.

There was only one of that battery in the entire convention, and the guy said it wasn't for sale because it was for his own personal device. But he did mention that they're readily available on Ebay. Kat also showed me something I hadn't realized: aside from the battery charger, there was another cable that, when plugged into the back of the battery charger, could also plug in to the camcorder itself behind where the battery should have been. As soon as I got home I did exactly that, and saw videos that were previously thought to have been lost. My sisters playing in the yard of the house we bought when I was 3, Christmas when I was 8, one of my sisters practicing her Animal Symbolism in Macbeth presentation, my other sister and I playing around filming ourselves. Everything else I got at the fest doesn't compare to this, and it's been sitting in my closet this entire time.

The thing that I actually spent the dollar on was a 128MB stick of RAM. Now to be frank, I don't have much experience in hardware or building computers, although it's been something I've wanted to do since I was in middle school. My forte has always been software, mostly because it's free if you're smart, and hardware has always had to be a "when I have disposable mooney" kind of thing (which never seems to happen unfortunately). I know an awful lot about software, from coding to emulating to downloading, playing IT for friends and family, etc. Nothing I've worked with can do anything with 128MB of RAM, though. I'm sure there are plenty of cool projects you can do with 128MB, but considering I couldn't build a computer capable of my software needs, and that the seller had it in a box labeled "$1 each," I had no qualms about using it for art. As I handed over the dollar he asked what I planned on doing with it, then looked visibly disappointed when I said "I'm going to break it in half and make earrings." It took 23 minutes to make and I'm wearing them right now.

Sorry for being a lesbian. I can't help but make earrings out of everything.

Other than the flatbed scanner and RAM, I also scored 7 blank DVDs, a 35mm film scanning adapter for a flatbed scanner, a Pentax 35mm film camera (which I plan on giving to my sister), a barcode scanner, a printer and a blu-ray player (last two courtesy of Kat).