Somebody stop me! On Saturday October 14 from 11am to 5pm, Big Mess o’ Wires invites you to the 1st Annual San Francisco Bay Area Classic Macintosh Meetup / Mini-Expo / Repair Clinic / Swap Meet / Open House / LAN Party / Hangout. Bring your classic Macintosh collection, your tools, your extension cords, your Localtalk cables, and all your best nerd toys. If you want to bring some Apple II or other vintage computers too, I won’t stop you. I’ve rented a room for 5 to 50-ish people, furnished with tables and chairs, and the rest is up to you:
- Mingle and chat. Stump the crowd with Macintosh trivia. How many of the signatures on the inside of the Mac 128K’s case can you name?
- Hardware show and tell. Demo your interesting computers, peripherals, software, and vintage tech. I heard a rumor that some never-released classic Apple prototypes might be there.
- Repair broken equipment. Bring your soldering iron, multimeter, or scope. We’ll crowd-source some fixes.
- Beam some notes to other Newton users with IR. When else will you have a chance to do that?
- Play classic networked games like Bolo and Spaceword Ho!
- Buy, sell, trade, or donate vintage equipment. Find that one weird part you’ve searched for since 2008.
- Stock-up on BMOW’s vintage computer products. Yeah I’ll have stuff available for sale, but that’s not the point of this event.
- Debate whether the Newton was just ahead of its time, or was actually hot garbage.
This will be fun, but set your organizational expectations low. This is a large rented room with lots of tables and chairs, hosted by Big Mess o’ Wires. The rest is up to you. The photo above is from a computer festival in Europe, and is much better coordinated than the chaos we’ll probably have. Don’t expect a highly-polished and curated event with fancy exhibits, a speaker series, and mad prizes. Don’t expect to wander through museum displays without talking to anybody. This is a low-key participatory event built on your own involvement and whatever goodies you bring for show-and-tell.
Where
I’ve rented a large room near my home in Belmont, in the middle of the San Francisco peninsula. Belmont is near Highway 92 and is roughly equidistant from San Jose and the South Bay, San Francisco and points north, and Oakland, Berkeley and the East Bay. If these words mean nothing to you, then you’re not in California and you’re too far away, sorry.
What to Bring
Please don’t forget to bring your electric extension cords! I’m not the AV department and I won’t be providing any electric cords. The room will have plenty of 6 x 3 foot tables and chairs, and copious electric outlets, but the closest outlet might not be near your table. There’s a hardware store half a mile away, if you need more extension cords on the day of the event. Also bring your classic Macintosh and other vintage computers, items to sell or trade or repair, tools for making repairs, and networking equipment if you want to LAN play. Don’t forget to put your name on your power cords and all your equipment, so it doesn’t get confused with somebody else’s stuff.
Attendance
My current guess is we’ll have a couple of dozen people. If we have more than 50 who are interested, I’ll need to start tracking reservations and table assignments. If this event goes viral and 500 classic Macintosh fanatics show up, we’ll have a problem because there’s a hard maximum of 100 people for the room. Please RSVP here (in the comments below) or by email (the Contact BMOW link at page’s upper-right) if you’re probably or definitely going to attend. In case we do hit the maximum number, I’ll give entries to those who RSVP’d on a first-come first-served basis and others will be turned away at the door (so they can start a Classic Macintosh tailgate party in the parking lot).
1st Annual Bay Area Classic Macintosh Meetup / Expo / Clinic / Swap-Meet
Hosted by Big Mess o’ Wires
Saturday October 14, 11:00am to 5:00pm
Congregational Church of the Peninsula, Fireplace Room
751 Alameda de las Pulgas
Belmont CA 94002
U.S.A.
Entrance to the Fireplace Room is at the rear of the building, through the playground.
See you there, and don’t forget to RSVP!
