#vcfs

[commodorez]

Start Me Up: 30 years of Windows 95 - @commodorez and @ms-dos5

30 years ago, Microsoft introduced Windows 95 and set the standard for graphical user interfaces that is still in use today. We will be displaying all major versions of 95, from one of the Chicago Beta releases, through the final update from 1997, on a wide variety of hardware from a number of prominent manufacturers. Come experience what made Windows 95 a household name, play some games, and see what made computing accessible and easy for everyone.

MS-DOS5 and I started planning this one in 2023, because we knew the anniversary was coming up and we wanted to give such a significant milestone in computing history the credit and spotlight it deserved. Computers and software come from both of our collections, with the exception of one desktop on loan from the Glitchworks. All of the 90s CRTs were on loan from our friends Sark, RadRacer203, and CJ.

The result was 18 feet worth of exhibit table, filled to the brim with copies of Windows 95, and associated software. We had computers running Chicago Beta 73g, RTM, OSR 1, OSR 2, and OSR 2.5 arranged in order to show the full life cycle of Windows 95 from 1993-1997. We also had companion software like Plus!, various versions of Microsoft Office (all from MS-DOS5's extensive collection), 95-specific games (from Microsoft and third parties alike), as well as training software. We included a number of important books about Windows 95, an era-appropriate network hub tying most machines together, a dot matrix printer, 90s mousepads, and even some big tractor-feed banners printed from one of the 95 machines.

All told, it was the most elaborate exhibit either of us have ever done, and the results were better than I could have imagined. That was a blast to put together, and super fun to show off at VCF East.

VCF East XX

[dinosaurspen]

I've gone and done it.

[slitherpunk]

i went to vintage computer festival midwest and saw so many yummy computers !! some pics below ...

[techav]

VCF Southwest 2025 was a tremendous success! Turnout was incredible and there were so many great exhibits. As event staff and an exhibitor, it was an absolutely exhausting weekend, but so much fun.

I am still mentally processing all the things I saw and the great conversations I had with both guests and fellow exhibitors. I have hundreds of photos I took that will take me hours to sort through.

For now, here are a couple quick pictures I took of my Wrap030 exhibit:

And a few of the main exhibit hall on Saturday:

I will be sharing more pictures from the show as I get them sorted.

If you weren't able to make it this year, video recordings of the presentations and discussions have already started going live on the VCFSW YouTube channel.

[agiraffewithacamera]

Be gentle

[piflnoso]

Have fun at VCFSW! Dont forget to take pictures.

I recommend checking out Usagi Electic, techav, Nybbles and Bytes, and Forgotten Machines' exhibits in particular. Tell 'em Z sent ya!

Thanks for the message! I didn't check Tumblr notifications again until now, but I did have a blast at VCF. I didn't get many pictures myself, but my husband got a bunch!

[ms-dos5]

You too could be at VCF East watching my computer shit itself for everyone’s entertainment

[photosbymajestic]

[pokespefangirl]

I need the ppl to understand that Green was made to be with Yellow in VCF, bcs he sees the kind of incredible/broken person is Yellow (overly brave and co-dependent issues and exaggerated moralism and all), and loves her anyway. On the other hand, those same traits clash with Red's which is why he always chose to not be with her. He finds Yellow endearing but can't love those parts of her, unlike Green who'd love them fully. That's why we must prepare our hearts for feeling shipping being the endgame in this fic I fear~

[toyboxdotcom]

Malar (he/it)

Vulture Conservation Foundation Bearded Vulture purchased from a Tourism Office

this silly guy got in a big mixup where i thought i got scammed, but turns out their system put my order message straight into the spam folder for no reason!

[arjorge1987]

Mi recorrido por la VCF 2025 en New Jersey!

A wild @commodorez at 18:50!

[commodorez]

We've been working on this for the past 2 years...

This weekend at Vintage Computer Festival East @ms-dos5 and I will be celebrating the 30th birthday of Windows 95 with the biggest, most elaborate exhibit either of us have ever done.

18 feet of table space featuring 9 computers running various versions of Windows 95 on a mix of laptops and desktops, with awhat slew of productivity software, games, and goodies to explore.

VCF East is April 4th-6th, at the InfoAge Science Center in Wall, NJ. Exhibits will be open on Saturday and Sunday.

We hope to see you there!

[dinosaurspen]

With a heavy heart I must say bye to the vintage computers & go home

[slitherpunk]

i appreciate that vintage computer festival had a "ballpit" because it was at the same convention center where dashcon happened. i took a picture of it with my gameboy camera.

[techav]

On Major Milestones

I left off previously with init immediately crashing when trying to run NetBSD on Wrap030, my 68030 homebrew computer. I was completely lost and didn't know where to start looking. The error code it gave, 11, didn't tell me much.

Until now, most error codes I've gotten have been defined in kernel errno.h, which has 11 defined as:

EDEADLK 11 /* Resource deadlock avoided */

That … also isn't helpful. I'm still not entirely sure what that means, but since this is process 1 we're dealing with, I didn't think it was relevant.

Finally, I was able to find someone who had encountered the same error six years ago. Helpful soul [Martin] explained the exact cause of the error, how to fix it, and why the kernel errno didn't line up:

I'm running a NetBSD live disk on a laptop as a test host, so I mounted my disk on it and spent some time with mknod adding the essential device nodes, referencing the "majors" file for my arch. Sure enough, on next boot it skipped right past the point it had been panicking. It worked for a bit then finally printed on the console:

Enter pathname o

Enter pathname of what? The machine appeared frozen. Nothing further printed, and it responded to no input.

I was afraid this would happen. That string is 16 characters. The 16C55x UART chips I'm using have a 16-byte buffer. The system is hung up waiting for the UART to interrupt to indicate it has finished transmitting everything in its buffer.

There's just one problem — I don't have any serial interrupts wired.

I have a confession to make. Until a few weeks ago when I got my timer working, I hadn't really worked with hardware interrupts before. So between a limited understanding of how to use them effectively and limited board space, I had omitted the interrupt signals from my 8-port serial card. This was now a Problem, and I was going to have to find a solution.

I had a few options:

Force the com driver to 8250 mode so it doesn't try to use the buffers

Use my timer interrupt to check status bits on the UARTs and fake the interrupts

Deadbug an interrupt handler onto my serial card

Respin the serial card

Option 4 would've been expensive and risked passing my deadline. I wasn't sure option 1 would even help. And option 3 would have been difficult and error-prone. I decided option 2 would be the way to go so I set about researching how to accomplish it

I spent a few hours digging through the com driver. In the process I found softintr(9), a native NetBSD software interrupt process that looked like just the thing I needed. Digging in a little deeper, I realized that the com driver was already using softintr. And then I realized all it needed to do polled mode serial ports instead of interrupt-driven was to set a single variable, sc_poll_ticks, before initializing the driver. It's such a simple thing, but it's not really documented anywhere I could find, so the only way to know it was even an option was to spend hours studying the code.

With that in place, I recompiled my kernel and tried again.

It was asking for a shell. This is promising. I accepted the default shell, /bin/sh, and waited a moment. It printed a single #.

I had a shell prompt.

I typed in the first thing that came to mind, echo "hellorld" (thanks, [Usagi]). It responded:

hellorld

and printed another # prompt.

I had a working shell.

This is a major milestone. I have a modern operating system kernel loaded and running on my homebrew computer, and I have a functional root shell. I can navigate disk directories and run commands and programs.

But only as root, and only on this one console. I have seven other serial ports I want terminals on, and I certainly don't want them all running as root.

What it's running here is single-user mode. It is just the kernel and a few core services, somewhat analogous to Safe Mode in Windows. It's a fall-back for setting up or repairing a system. It's not quite the full operating system just yet.

Getting the rest of the operating system up and running is going to be a significant task, on par with getting just the kernel running. Setting up a working Unix system from scratch is not easy. It requires a lot of detailed knowledge of the various programs and libraries and config files scattered across the disk. For a sense of scale, the AT&T Unix System V manual was over 1100 pages, plus an 800 page programmer's guide and a handful of other manuals … and that was 40 years ago. That's a lot of specialized knowledge that I don't really have.

But still, this is something I've wanted to do for years and after countless hours of work, I finally have a glimpse of what it can look like. I have a lot to learn and a lot of work to do yet, but I'm certain I can figure it out.

I'm still hoping I can get this running multi-user on all those terminals in time for VCF Southwest in June. The show is just a few weeks away and I have a lot of work to do.

[agiraffewithacamera]

not on the lan :(