VCF West exhibition this past weekend was a success

VINTAGE COMPUTER FESTIVAL EXHIBITION AFTERMATH

The exhibit at VCF West became one ASR 33 working and a broken one open on the table for inspection, two model 15 wired together to allow attendees to chat, and my model 15 printing the Reuters news feed. Near the end, we had a partially working model 28 join the other machines, as one of the team at our booth bought it from the show consignment room.

One of two model 15 teletypes linked together for chatting

My temporary fix for the line feed on the ASR 33 was erratic, but I had received a replacement bracket from a memory of the teletype oriented Greenkeys mailing list. I swapped that part into the machine, made a few adjustments and the line feed problem was fixed for the remainder of the show.

My print cylinder on the ASR 33 became more and more clogged with ink over the course of the show. I will need to remove it, soak it and get it cleaned up. This is the first of the after-show tasks on my list.

ASR 33 working with Altair 8800 clone

I noticed from reviewing the news stories on my model 15 that the letter Z was only partially printing and raised like a superscript above the print line. I looked closely and could see that the typebar for that letter was bent out of position a bit. Fixing this is the second after-show task on my list.

Model 15 printing Reuters news feed

My ASR 33 tends to print the first two columns crowded together, which I believe is due to a misadjustment for the carrier return mechanism. Adjusting this properly will be the third after-show task on the growing list.

I was lucky to have quite a few friends who worked the booth with me, engaging with show attendees and showing off the teletypes. In addition to the demonstrations I had planned, we added the game ZORK and had a few people trying out their BASIC skills on the Altair-duino and ASR 33.