Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park

Last Saturday fellow geek Richard Tubb and I travelled down to Bletchley Park for the first ever Vintage Computer Festival here in the UK.

I’ve been to the National Computer Museum before but this was a far more interactive experience.

The mansion and various marquees around the site were filled with tons of retro systems that were all powered on and ready for use.

It was geek heaven!

Every possible system from my childhood from Acorn, Commodore, Amstrad and Sinclair was there and it’s amazing the things people are still doing with them!

For example, this is a compact flash card plugging into the back of a Spectrum!

I even found my first love

While the Spectrum +3 wasn’t the first computer that came into the Parkes household (there were lots!) it was the first that was actually mine.

This is the power supply from said computer.

It’s difficult to explain WHY I took this picture but if you’re a bit of a geek you’ll get it

As well as the equipment on show there were various speakers and we sat in on Christine Finn’s presentation which talked about how “organised” computer collecting came about. She’s an archaeologist by trade which gives her a different insight into how and why we should keep old technology other than the reasons someone like me would have! She gave a really good presentation about her experiences in Silicon Valley during the dot-boom in the 90’s and it’s subsequent bust.

She wrote a piece in the Guardian a few years ago which is worth checking out.

She also has a book on the subject called Artifacts: An Archaeologist’s Year in Silicon Valley which Richard purchased and had signed!

In addition to the computers on display a large chunk of the mansion was taken over by the Retro Computer Museum.

This organisation keep old computer systems alive for the purposes of gaming! This was also one of the other lectures we took in. They were raising awareness of what they do and it was interesting to see the difference in body language when moving from the actual presentation to the Q&A session. Their enthusiasm really jumped out and they very much of the attitude that the old systems should continue to be used for their purpose and not locked away in a box.

Due to funding they don’t have a permanent site so hold an open day twice a year. The next one is at that the end of October so I’ll be certainly be visiting! There is also a much larger event going on later in the year but there is a full post to follow on that

So the games itself.

Every possible system you could think of was there to play with

From the Atari 2600 to Commodore Plus 4 to Amiga 1200 to Neo Geo, to Playstation 3. If you can think of it, it was there.

Richard and I played Battle Chess on an Amiga 1200 and Sensible Soccer on an Amiga CD32!

Also, one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen .

Guitar Hero on the Commodore 64.

Picture courtesy of Richard Tubbs Flickr Account

Someone created an adapter to plug a Playstation guitar into the machine and coded a game for it! The 8-bit beeps were amazing though we both sucked at the game itself.

 Picture courtesy of Richard Tubbs Flickr Account

As mentioned above there were a couple of marquee tents on site. One of them was entirely dedicated to the Amiga and were were there when they announced the launch of a new Amiga – the X100.

I can’t really tell you anything about it though as they didn’t bother to give the speakers microphones so didn’t hear a word they said! I think this site may have some more information over the coming months.

We ended our day at the Spectrum tent.

While the coolest thing I saw was Guitar Hero the geekiest think I did has to be this,

Picture courtesy of Richard Tubbs Flickr Account

Tweeting from a Spectrum!

I came across a video of this on YouTube recently (and shared it via Facebook and Twitter of course) so it was great to actually see it in action.

As I’ve already mentioned there is still an awful lot of things going on with some of these “old” systems. We even saw a recently developed game, complete with modern packaging. It looked amazing.

Richard couldn’t resist much more and came away with a couple of purchases. Just as he was making his mind up he realised he didn’t have a tape deck to load programs from. A gentleman stood next to us said that an MP3 would work just find and proceeded to pull out his iPhone and played the sound Galaxians would make during loading.

It’s common sense when you think of it but all the same ingenious!

I picked up a book called Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age and even managed to get it signed by the author Mike Hally

We had a really great time and the event was actually run on Saturday and Sunday. Next time I’ll definitely be there for both days!

Bletchley Park Funding

I’ve blogged a couple of times about Bletchley Park

It’s no secret in the UK that funding for the site is hard to come by

For some reason it’s not eligible for lottery funding or any of the government funding that goes into museums and galleries so relies on admissions fees and donations(IBM and PGP were some of the big names who recently donated)

So a while back I saw a petition on the governments e-petitions site 

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to save Bletchley Park.”

Details of Petition:

“As has been reported elsewhere, Bletchley Park “have two to three more years of survival”. The Bletchley Park Trust receives no external funding. It has been deemed ineligible for funding by the National Lottery, and turned down by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Please do not allow this crucial piece of both British and World culture to disappear. If ever an example were needed of Britain leading the world, this surely would be it. To allow it to fall into the hands of developers would be simply unconscionable.”

You can see the full petition here: (do a search for “Andy Parkes”   )

I’ll be honest I’d forgotten I’d signed up for this (the deadline was in May) but I got an email today to let me know that the government had responded

 

Thank you for your e-petition.

The Government agrees that the buildings on the Bletchley Park site are of significant historic importance and, although recognising the excellent work being carried out there, at present it has no plans, nor the resources, to extend its sponsorship of museums and galleries beyond the present number.

A number of things are being done to help Bletchley Park.
English Heritage, Milton Keynes Council and English Partnerships have worked jointly with the Trust that runs the Park to prepare a Conservation Management Plan for the site.   English Partnerships has acquired some parts of the site and will ensure that any development of these areas is planned and delivered in a way that reflects the important historical nature of the Park.  English Partnerships has also invested in the core site and contributed funds towards an emergency repair programme on Block D, the largest derelict wartime building in Britain, and is planning to undertake further substantial works to sensitively refurbish this important listed building. 
The Heritage Lottery Fund’s regional development team, along with the DCMS sponsored  Museums, Libraries and Archives Council in the South East have been in regular contact with the Bletchley Park Trust, offering advice and guidance on how best to put together a robust application for funding.   In addition, the Trust has now made a further application to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In November 2008 English Heritage announced the award of a grant of £330,000 to Bletchley Park to cover urgently needed repairs to the roof, and in March of this year it was announced that Milton Keynes Council, in partnership with English Heritage, will provide a further £600,000 for critical restoration work.

I’m not sure if this good or bad??

As far as I can see the government recognises it’s an important part of British heritage but don’t want to specifically put any money into it. Most of the funding has become the responsibility of Milton Keynes council (if it’s a site of national importance shouldn’t we all be paying for it?) and that everyone else will “advise” on how to apply for more funding!

If you interpret this differently to me please do comment below

It really would be a massive shame if the site disappeared. The grounds are amazing and the story of the place is fantastic, especially if you’re a geek –they have a working version of the worlds first programmable computer!!

If your like to spare a few pounds you can donate from the home page www.bletchleypark.org.uk

The National Computer Museum at Bletchley Park

I posted a little while back about the good news Bletchley Park received and said that I’d like to visit and take a look around the National Computer Museum

Well as a bit of a weird coincidence I’d completely forgotten that we’d arranged a visit to Milton Keynes on the Saturday immediately after the post

Said friends actually live in the Bletchley area which made things even easier so I dragged one of my friends along

First up we had a quick look around the mansion which was a fantastic looking building 

In here there were details of the history of some of the famous names such Alan Turing (wikiepedia entry here)

After that we had a quick look through the huts where all the code breaking took place

Listening station – she didn’t say much Alan Turing’s office

After that we jumped onto the end of one of the tours and heard all about “bombes” that were used to break the Enigma Machine

I won’t try to explain how the bombes worked!

Then it was onto the part I’d been waiting for and the National computer museum where we got to see the Colossus rebuild project 

 Colossus was the world’s first programmable computer.

It had no storage though and all output was directly to a typewriter

Calculations were performed using valves and the black valve on the left of this picture is an original valve used during the war! Apparently they have about 10 years worth of spare valves so if you have any old gadgets lying around that have valves they welcome donations

The rebuild project has been led for the last 14 years (!) by the legend that is Tony Sale. Most of the documentation was restored and whole project started from just 8 1945 photographs and some fragments of circuit diagrams some of the original engineers had been keeping illegally (good job geeks are hoarders!)

Me with Tony Sale

It was onto the museum proper after that and I was in my element!

Calculators and PDA’s! I had one of the Psion’s in this picture!

BBC Micro! I actually owned one of these CUB monitors as well. My dad hacked it up so when it was plugged into our spectrum we had sound and volume control. What a mod!

  Radar!

Punch cards!

The very first PC we owned had one of these in. Along with 8MB of RAM, a 50MB hard disk and a quad speed CD-ROM

Legend!

  An Apple Mac!

Had both of these. An Atari ST and a Amiga 500

The first two computers I have any memory of! Look at the rubber keys!

Why is the screen the wrong way round? Because it’s trying to look like a sheet of paper. This system was just a word processor. Look at the size of it!

  I want a desk like this in my office!

I’ll stop there….as you have probably guessed I took a ton of photo’s which I then spent the next week boring friends and family with

I had a great time with my only “criticism” (not really the right word) was I was expecting to see more hardware as there appears to be lots of gaps in the time periods (Other than a PET I didn’t see much commodore kit for example). But I do understand it’s still pretty new and things are being added all the time and they are running on a shoestring (donate!!) as the museum itself is free! It’s Bletchely Park you have to pay to get in

If you have any interest in computer history do something to support our computing heritage!

Other resources:

The National Museum of Computing (they have newsletters too)

Bletchley Park

Codes And Ciphers

Bletchley Park given a boost

Just saw this on this BBC news site

Bletchley gets £50,000 donation

The article is pretty comprehensive so I won’t reproduce too much of it here

I’m planning on making a trip to check out the National Museum of Computing soon so was pleased to hear this news today

The donations made by IBM and PGP are made with the idea it will help get some more funding to help keep the site up and running (another BBC article on the “neglect of Bletchley park” is here)

I was given this book Colossus- Bletchley Park’s Greatest Secret as birthday present which recommend if you have any interest in computer history (it’s huge though!)

Massive geek mode off

UK computer history gets new home

Just having a look on the BBC to website to find the National Muesum of Computing is moving to Bletchley Park

So if your into computer and codes they is only one place to go this summer (fun for all the family!:-))

I do have a bit of a softspot for any codes/cipher related

The Code Book by Simon Singh is an excellent read

I’m actually in Bletchley this weekend (coincidence!) visiting friends so it’s probably a little early for me to go take a look as my inner geek is dying to have a nose around 

Sorry for being random! I just thought i was interesting