Classic Macintosh fans, don’t miss your chance to revisit the halcyon days of Hypercard, desk accessories, and flying toasters! Mactoberfest Meetup is coming to the San Francisco Bay Area on Saturday October 14, hosted by Big Mess o’ Wires in Belmont California. Bring your classic Macintosh collection, your 1993 issues of MacUser magazine, your LocalTalk cables, and your test and repair tools. If you’ve got Newtons, Lisas, or other vintage equipment, bring them too. I’ve rented an old church building for the day, with enough space for about 50 to 100 of the Macintosh faithful. Come join the fun! And if you don’t live in California, steal a car and drive here. If you’re in jail, break out! You don’t want to miss this.
This is a meetup, so the main activities will be meeting other classic Macintosh fans and showing off pieces of your collection – hardware, media, collectibles, or anything else. If you feel that you don’t have anything special enough to be worth showing – don’t worry! A common Macintosh running an old popular game can make for great conversation. My biggest fear is that everyone will leave their gear at home and show up to look at everybody else’s collection, and we’ll have lots of people but nothing to see. If in doubt, err on the side of bringing more items to the meetup rather than less.
What you’ll definitely find at Mactoberfest:
- Rooms full of vintage Macintosh fanatics and crusty old computers
- Enough display tables and chairs to show everything and seat everyone
- Flea market – Items can be offered for sale at display tables or in the “marketplace corner”. Label your for-sale items with your name and phone number so that interested buyers can text you if you’re away from the table.
- Freebies table – Got anything you can give away for free? Leave your unwanted extra disk drives, cables, adapters, and peripheral cards here. See something you like? Take it!
- Workshop table – Stocked with soldering irons, tools, a multimeter, and maybe an oscilloscope or logic analyzer. Troubleshoot your broken computers here, or build a kit.
- Kits – I’m donating some ATX PSU conversion kits that are easy to assemble with simple soldering. These kits can adapt a standard ATX power supply for use with the Macintosh IIcx, IIci, IIsi, IIvx, IIvi, Performa 600, Centris/Quadra 650, Quadra 800, or PowerMac 7100.
- Tetris Max high score competition – Best score by the end of the day wins fabulous prizes.
- BMOW products – Buy any BMOW vintage computer product at Mactoberfest, and get it at the meetup.
What you’ll hopefully find at Mactoberfest:
- A knowledgeable person at the workshop table to advise and assist with repairs or kit assembly
- Retrobright station – Paint it onto your yellowed plastic computer case, leave it outside in the sun, and it’ll be good as new after a few hours
- LAN game competition – I nominate Bolo at 3:00 PM. Start practicing now!
Please bear in mind there’s no “staff” for this meetup, and you’ll pay no admission fee. There’s only me and my desire to enjoy a fun day with other Macintosh nuts, but I definitely can’t do it all by myself. I need help from you! I’m happy to pay the building rental fee and other costs, but I need you to bring Mac-stuff to show, and to help coordinate some of the activities, and to chill out when things don’t go as planned. Set your expectations for a boisterous ad-hoc get-together, rather than a polished trade show experience, and we’ll get along just fine.
What you should bring:
- Vintage computer hardware, media, and collectibles – Ideally everybody will have 1-3 systems to show off.
- Extension cords and power strips – I definitely won’t have enough for everybody.
- Items to sell in the flea market.
- Soldering irons and tools like tweezers, cutters, and magnifiers. Multimeters and test equipment. Capacitors and components for common repairs.
- Odds-and-ends to donate for the Freebies Table – How many old SCSI drives and spare motherboards do you really need? Stop hoarding.
- Kits and DIY stuff – Can you donate anything that ‘just needs assembly’, like a microcontroller kit or a set of replacement floppy drive gears? I’ll have the ATX conversion kits, but it would be fantastic to have other DIY stuff too.
- Cool stuff you can donate as prizes for the Tetris Max competition.
- Snacks, water, or drinks – Donations will be very appreciated.
How you can help:
Can you help pull together what’s needed for the retrobright station? Can you take a turn for an hour at the workshop table, helping somebody to recap a motherboard or investigate a Sad Mac error code? How about organizing the LAN tournament? Or if you have another idea for a fun activity, great! Your willingness to help is the critical ingredient for the meetup’s success.
Details
MACTOBERFEST
Bay Area Classic Macintosh Meetup / Demo / Workshop / Swap-Meet / Tournament / Whatever
Hosted by Big Mess o’ Wires
Saturday October 14, 11:00am to 5:00pm
Belmont, California
(event address is on the RSVP form)
Please don’t forget to RSVP if you’re if you’re maybe, probably, or definitely planning to attend. This will help me keep track of who’s bringing what items, and the likely overall attendance level. The street address in Belmont is on the RSVP form.
You’ve got Mactoberfest questions! I will try to answer them below. See you in a few weeks.