| Chicago | |||
| Classic | |||
| Computing | |||
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Chicago Classic Computing (or "ChiClassicComp") began as a Yahoo! mailing list in November, 2006, started by Silent700 to help bring together fellow hobbyists he met while giving away computers on Craigslist. List membership grew slowly over time but the same informal organizing structure remains today. Besides bringing collectors together via the mailing list and Facebook group, the ChiClassicComp crew organizes the yearly Vintage Computer Festival Midwest, a late-summer gathering of vintage computing exhibits, vendors, presentations and more. As of 2023, VCFMW is in its 18th year as a free show. List members' interests vary widely, from the 8-bit computers some grew up with, back to the "Big Iron" that predates the home computer revolution, forward to Windows PCs of the 1990s. But we all share a passion for preserving history and celebrating the hardware and software that changed our worlds. Besides collecting computers, the vintage computing hobby also encompasses software preservation, developing new products and accessories for old hardware, software and document archiving and sharing our personal experiences in computing history with others. |