WOzFest S7,D2 Recap

Sydney put on a glorious spring day for WOzFest S7,D2 attendees recently.

For enthusiasts who had not been able to make it to Oz KFest 2017, it was the last opportunity to catch Tony Diaz before he flew back to the States.

The previous week, Adrian had hosted us at his office and showed off parts of his massive Apple-related retrocomputer collection, and Tony also attended that gathering – there were some enthusiasts who could only make one or the other gathering, so it was good we were able to cater to schedules in that way.

Similar to what later became known as WOzFest-1, Tony showed attendees the rare and interesting items he had brought with him and told the stories about them. Tony’s talks and items are real eye-openers, and if you ever get the chance to catch one of them, I highly recommend it. A sense of them will be gained when the videos from Oz KFest 2017 are released.

Breaking with recent tradition, and in light of the “late notice” nature of this gathering, I didn’t organise any Skype calls for this WOzFest – but I think being able to discuss Apple ][ and retrocomputer topics with Tony in person more than made up for this “shortcoming”.

Two traditions which were fulfilled were: at least one attendee travelled from interstate (Tim from Canberra); and we had pizza for dinner (of course!).

As sometimes happens, some non-Apple retrocomputing technology made an appearance, in this case Murray brought his recently-acquired Hitachi Peach (at least it’s a fruit!), a machine I’d never seen, although I was at least vaguely aware they existed.

It was interesting seeing it in operation, and I found small details intriguing, like it reporting different amounts of free memory depending on whether it was started in 40 or 80 column mode (as more memory had to be dedicated to screen memory to hold the extra characters). For some reason, what I found most fascinating was that it had three separate “?” keys!

The A2Heaven FASTChip //e which had been eagerly played with at Oz KFest also came along and WOzFest attendees who hadn’t seen it were as blown away as it seems everyone is upon seeing it in operation.

A few attendees stayed till after midnight, which was well past my bed time, but it’s nice to be able to provide a venue for such things. As always, photos from the event (and one from Adrian’s) are available in a separate Photo Galleries post.

Because this recap is so delayed, I don’t have to say “I can’t wait for the next WOzFest”, as WOzFest 8-bit has already been held, and I’m publishing its recap at the same time as this one – I’ll see you “there”!