VCFe 2011
The Vintage Computer Festival Europe (www.vcfe.org) is an event to show old computers (no PCs!), peripherals and selfmade hardware. In 2011 I had for the first time a booth showing a PC532 from a colleague and my PC532E. In Figure 1 you can see the small plastic box to the left which contains the PC532E. Unfortunately the PC532 was not functional. The PC532E runs all the time and draw some attention from the visitors regarding the ESD robustness of the plastic box. Of course I used an old CRT based terminal with a serial interface as Input/Output device.
Fig. 1. My booth at VCFe 2011.
VCFe 2014
I used a large photo of the NS32532 CPU die as an eye catcher at VCFe 2014. Other parts at the exhibition were the Opus board, the PC532E and the PLAYER, an FPGA development system based on Stratix II serving as an MP3 player. The system becomes ready shortly before the exhibition and I had only one song to play from the SD card. Of course the old CRT terminal was in use again.
Fig. 2. My booth at VCFe 2014.
VCFe 2015
In 2015 I could present my M32632 running NetBSD. Once again I used a plastic box as a case for the PC632M. Unfortunately I could not present the original PC532 as an eye catcher. Nevertheless I faced a lot of attention. This time the event took three days and because of bad weather it was well visited. The old CRT terminal is only used for the VCFe exhibitions. The photo is taken shortly after the opening.
Fig. 3. My booth at VCFe 2015.
VCFe 2018
In 2018 I presented my DB32016. Entering a demo program was a bit time consuming. The program counted seconds and let a LED blink. My old CRT terminal worked once again perfect. The photo is taken early after the opening.
Fig. 4. My booth at VCFe 2018.
VCFe 2024
The VCFe 23.0 took place on September 7th and 8th. I presented my Ceres-3 system in the TRIPUTER. Luckily another exhibitor brought his original Ceres-3 to the event, see it right of the monitor in the photo below. Unfortunately the machine was not functional. But this will change on the next VCFe.
Fig. 5. My booth at VCFe 2024. Surprisingly my exhibit took first place in the visitor and exhibitor favour 😊.
I like the VCFe very much. There is a great atmosphere. The exhibitors are helping each other. For example I forgot my PS2 keyboard on Saturday morning. Another team had one left over. On Sunday morning I changed my monitor for the rest of the day with someone who had a serious problem with his Sony monitor on an SGI Octane - problem solved.
VCFe 2026
The VCFe 25.0 took place on May 1st to May 3rd. I presented my new FLOPUTER. The idea was to show the BBC computer and the Ceres-3 running from floppy disks. Unfortunately the double-density mode used by the Ceres-3 was not ready at show time.
Fig. 6. My booth at VCFe 2026. This time visitors and exhibitors could not choose his or her favorite 🙁.
The BBC system is running since August 2025. All games played so far have no problems. In the afternoon of the second day of the VCFe the unthinkable happened: I installed a game that started properly as usual with the text pages. But when it switches into graphic mode the screen shows random pixels - see the next Figure.
Fig. 7. This screen image let my brain stand still - my hardware is not 100% compatible 🙁🙁🙁
The game is Asteroids. Its appearence on the screen of an original BBC (there was one at the VCFe) is very similar to the Arcade game. This game was one of the first I played and I like the physical behavior of it very much. I will contact the developer and ask him what feature he is using which I have not implemented in my FPGA version of the BBC system.
Update from 9 May 2026
Upon inquiry, the game developer gave me the crucial hint. The problem was that I hadn't anticipated people choosing settings other than 40 or 80 for the number of characters per line. I had only used bit 6 for setting the number of pixels in a line. At 32 characters, the flow control became completely messed up. Now I use the entire byte, and Asteroids looks as expected 😊.
This chapter was last modified on 9 May 2026. Next chapter: ISE Cable