Party Like It's 1979

Bill Kendrick, SSU Alumnus, Davis, CA

Stevenson Hall 1300
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

Frustrated by his friends' and family's relative lack of interest in the toys of his past -- the Atari video game and computer systems that drew him into programming and Computer Science -- Bill Kendrick decided to throw a retro party and invite the public to come re-live the past. The "Atari Party" in Davis, first held in 2009 due to the lack of Vintage Computer Festival in the San Francisco Bay Area, is similar to other annual 'classic computing' events of various sizes held around the globe. It is a small, daylong event where the public is invited to come and experience multiple generations of classic Atari hardware and software, hands-on. Aside from the usual suspects (Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Pong), early speech synthesis software, art software (with drawing tablets and light pens!), and other software is exhibited. Together with 20-30 year old hardware and software, modern homebrew software and hardware are on display -- from SD memory-card alternatives to the traditional 5.25" or 3.5" floppy disk drives of the past, to real-time 3D retracing demos running on 1.79MHz CPUs and amazing video games written and released in the past few years. Bill will talk about and display some of his favorites of the new tricks that these old dog computers and game systems have been taught, and describe the logistics required to run his particular show.