In this episode I sit down and talk with Micki and Steve about VCF SoCal, a new Vintage Computer Festival! The event is taking place in Orange, California on Febuary 16th and 17th. VCFs are a wonderful time, and a great opportunity to meet up with other retro enthusiasts.

The weekend will be filled with exhibits and speakers, including myself! I will be in attendence, and talking about some super cool technology. Stick around until the end of the interview for the full details.

More information on VCF SoCal can be found at: https://www.vcfsocal.com/

The release of the IBM System/360 represents a major milestone in the history of computing. In 1964 IBM announced the 360 as the first family of compatible computers. Users could choose a system that was just the right size for their needs, mix and match peripherals, and have no fear of future upgrades. If you started on a low-end 360 you could move up to a top of the line model and keep all your software! Something like this had never been done before. Such a watershed moment resulted in interesting cascading effects. In this episode we will look at the 360 itself. In the coming weeks we will be examining how it shaped and dominated the market, how it led to a federal antitrust suit, and how a mysterious series of clone computers survived in uncertain times. Selected Sources: https://spectrum.ieee.org/building-the-system360-mainframe-nearly-destroyed-ibm https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2012/11/102658255-05-01-acc.pdf - Fred Brooks Oral History https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2017/11/102655529-05-01-acc.pdf - 14K Days

Released in 1982, the Jupiter Ace is a fascinating little computer. It's hardware isn't much to write home about. It's just an 8-bit microcomputer very much in line with other systems of the era. Where it shines is it's software. In a period when most home computer ran some version of BASIC the Ace was using Forth. On the surface that might sound like a trivial difference, but that one deviation from the norm made all the difference in the world. Selected Sources: https://www.theregister.com/2012/09/21/jupiter_cantab_jupiter_ace_is_30_years_old - The Register article on the Ace https://jupiter-ace.co.uk/documents_index.html - Every other Ace resource you could ever want

Tools are the most important programs in the world. Without quality tools it's impossible to write quality software. One of those most important of those tools, and the most hotly coveted, is the text editor. These programs offer us a window into the digital world. It's no wonder that programmers the world over basically live inside text editors. In this episode will discuss when exactly that digital window was opened. When did text editors first appear? What forms did they take? Selected Sources: https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/_media/pdf/DEC.pdp_1.1960.102650331.pdf - Colossal Typewriter Manual https://www.si.edu/media/NMAH/NMAH-AC1498_Transcript_StephenPiner.pdf - Piner Oral History https://opost.com/tenex/anhc-31-4-anec.pdf - The Beginnings of TECO

Most accounts of the early history of programming languages all share something in common. They all have a sentence or two explaining how there was great resistance to these new languages, but eventually all programmers were won over. Progress was made, despite the forces of counterrevolutionaries. What you won't find in most histories are the actual arguments these counterrevolutionaries made. This episode we are looking at those arguments. I've tracked down a handful of papers that argue against digital progress. Are these truly cursed articles, or is there something to be learned from arguments against programming? Selected Sources: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1455270.1455272 - Why Not Try A Plugboard? https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/367390.367404 - Comments from a FORTRAN User https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/320932.320939 - Methods of Simulating a Differential Analyzer on a Digital Computer

Have you ever opined for a simpler time? Have you ever wanted a computer that you can understand all the way down to the silicon? Then RCA's COSMAC might be the architecture for you! COSMAC was a simplified computer architecture designed in the early 70s. It's tiny, cheap, and built to be easy to understand. But is the chip actually useful? Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/manualzilla-id-5721710/page/26/mode/1up?view=theater - All the ELF articles in one place! https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/MC.1974.6323475 - A Simplified Microcomputer Architecture

This episode we are looking at a ghost of bygone days: batch processing! Before fancy terminals peppered computer rooms, before there was a microcomputer on every desk, there was the batch. In this non-interactive form of computing a user could wait hours, days, or even weeks to get a chance at computer time. Machines were kept well away from programmers, guarded by digital clerics. Why did such an arrangement exist? And did it ultimately help the programmer? Selected Sources: https://multicians.org/thvv/compatible-time-sharing-system.pdf - Compatible Timesharing System, 15th Anniversary https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/MAHC.1983.10026 - Rykman on GM-NAA I/O https://ethw.org/First-Hand:Operating_System_Roots - Operating System Roots

It's finally Spook Month here on Advent of Computing! To kick things off I'm tackling a bit of a mystery. Between 1972 and 1982 there is only one well documented virus. This period is book ended with plenty of sources and, yes, even viruses. But this decade long span of time has almost nothing! Was this era truly safe from the grips of malicious code? Or is there a secret history lurking just beneath the surface? Selected Sources: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/358453.358455 - Worms at Xerox PARC! https://archive.org/details/crimebycomputer0000park - Crime by Computer https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_05_201803/page/n89/mode/2up - Programming Pastimes and Pleasures

Byte has to be one of the most recognizable parts of the digital lexicon. It's an incantation that can be recognized by even the uninitiated. But where does the byte come from? Has it always existed, or did it more recently come into being? And, more specifically, why is a byte 8 bits? Is it some holdover from long ago, or is there some iron clad rule of 8's? Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n145/mode/1up?view=theater - Buchholz on the "byte" in BYTE! https://sci-hub.se/10.1049/pi-3.1949.0018 - A STORAGE SYSTEM FOR USE WITH BINARY-DIGITAL COMPUTING MACHINES https://ia600208.us.archive.org/32/items/firstdraftofrepo00vonn/firstdraftofrepo00vonn.pdf - The First Draft of a Report on EDVAC

It's finally time! In this episode we are looking at the Monte Carlo method, perhaps the first practical computer program that could outpace human capability. The best part: the method relies on a random walk to reach a statistically valid answer! Selected Sources: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/10596 - Igniting the Light Elements https://library.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/getfile?00326866.pdf - The Beginning of the Monte Carlo Method, Nick Metropolis