Dayton Computer Festival

The Dayton Computerfest was held on August 27th and 28th. This event serves as a yearly gathering place for the North American Timex Sinclair community. It is held at The Hara Arena in the adjacent Convention Center.

This event is similar to the Computer Shows at Timonium and Gaithersburg, MD. There are a few differences. The entire event, even the flea market, is held indoors. This is convenient but it has one drawback. The building is air conditioned, but the sheer number of people overwhelm the air conditioning. It is also held on one of the warmer weekends of the year.

The other difference is the TS people and the availability of Tirnex, Sinclair and Cambridge items to buy. At most shows there are no QL, Z88 or 2068 items. Occasionally you will see some TS 1000s for sale at Hamfests.

I arrived in Dayton about 11 AM. I had flown in this year. (I was bumped off a flight this past winter and had a free round-trip ticket.) I rented a car at the Airport, then stopped for some lunch before going to the Hara Arena. I arrived at the arena about noon. After being in the show a short while I went out to the car and changed into some shorts because of the heat. I was there a couple hours, and I was there when the show opened the next day for about an hour. It was much cooler then.

There are two areas of booths in the show. One consists of vendors selling mostly new IBM items. The other consists of a flea market selling items for almost any computer. User Group tables were in various locations throughout the flea market area. The air conditioning seems to work best in the area selling mostly new IBM items, although it was quite warm there as well.

When you go in the main entrance the Sinclair area is directly behind the wall to the rear of the IBM area. The Sinclair people are always in the same spot. I saw Frank and Carol Davis and Paul Holmgren representing Update! and Mechanical Affinity. Don Lambert was there for ZXir QLive Alive!/TSNUG. The Milwaukee Group had a couple tables. CATS did not have a table. But I saw Ruth Fegley throughout the Sinclair area. And of course I was there. I walked through the entire show stopping at the Sinclair area several times to talk and buy a few items trom Mechanical Affinity.

In another section of the flea market was the Computer Museum manned by Gary Ganger and CATS former Newsletter Editor Tim Swenson. This had a large variety of Computers on shelves. Most of these were 8 bit machines. All of the Sinclair models were represented. There were machines on tables which were running various programs. A couple of these were even running Messy Dos!

Tim is living in the Dayton area working for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, having transferred there from the Pentagon a couple years ago. Tim also sponsored a barbecue at his house. There were printed directions in the Sinclair area and at the Computer Museum.

The barbecue was held in Tims’s back yard. There were 2 circle of chairs set up. The main course was grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. By 7:30 most of the people had arrived. There was Bob Swoger and his wife from Chicago. There were a couple people from Detroit. Ruth was there. Frank and Carol Davis. Don Lambert. Paul Holmgren. A bunch of people I did not recognize. There was someone who drove from Tucson, Arizona. Dean King from Western PA. And numerous other people. Sorry if I did not list your name.

People sat in the chairs to eat and chat with those nearby. After a while it broke up into small groups of people. By about 9:30 people started leaving. Many of the people were tired. Some had been in the Hara Arena all day or had taken long drives from home. Tim and his wife put on a nice barbecue.
This is the third time I had gone to Dayton. When I was there before we had dinner in a Ponderosa Restaurant near the hotels. The waitresses were always giving us funny looks to get us to leave. But the barbecue was much better. Thanks Tim for putting on a great event.