When the organizers of the VCF SoCal announced in the summer of 2024 that a second edition would be held the following February, former CMA staff decided it made sense to build on the success of the previous year’s exhibit and again host a table. For 2025, we openly petitioned to be again placed next to the Paul Gray PC Museum – which the organizers did. And we expanded from two tables to three.
For the 2025 exhibit at VCF, we again displayed the Tandy Model 102 (with batteries and working!), the Atari SuperPONG (although it stopped working halfway through day 1), old CMA and San Diego Computer Society newsletters and flyers, CMA t-shirts from the old gift shop, and other assorted vintage items. The two most popular exhibits for us were a downscaled slideshow streaming from a DVD played on a hidden Sony Playstation 2 to a Commodore 1702 monitor, and the Atari XEGS with the “Hardball” game. (We chose “Hardball” because it is shown on-screen in the opening scenes of the movie “The Princess Bride,” and the Paul Gray PC Museum was exhibiting a small history of computers in Hollywood!).
A fun treat this year was having Lee Felsenstein swing by during Friday night setup. Part of the slideshow was a series of photos from the 1998 Computer Hall of Fame installation dinner – including inductee Lee Felsenstein.
As he was looking at a photo of himself and likely wondering where on earth that came from, I introduced myself. He then went next door to the Paul Gray PC Museum and explained to their team pretty much most of the design decisions that went into the Osborne I computer – which they had on exhibit. Really wish someone had recorded that.
Once again, former CMA acquisitions manager Jim Trageser was invited to speak on a panel at VCF SoCal 2025, this time on the topic of restoring vintage software vs. emulating that software.