photos from VCF UK etc

[Jules Richardson]

Philip Pemberton wrote:
> The BP fleamarket seemed to be all BBC Model Bs, Sinclair Spectrums and 
> ZX81s. Starting prices around the £50 mark..... yeesh. 

I raised that same viewpoint on the NMoC mailing list a few weeks ago; it's 
just too much for something that can regularly be found [in the UK] for zero 
cost with just a little effort.

 > As I understand
> it, it was all extras from the TNMoC collection, not a bring-and-buy.

I believe so, yes. I'm not quite sure how "we know we'll never need this in 
the future" was arrived at.

> I'd have expected to see a 3" drive or two

They never had many when I was there on site, at least - the odd +3 speccy, 
Tatung Einstein etc. with them built-in, of course, but there wasn't really a 
spares stock and certainly no surplus.

> I suspect the threat of The Wrath of The Ambulance-Chaser has put paid 
> to most of these. The organisers are just too scared that someone will 
> buy (say) a BBC Master, plug it in and the PSU will go "pop" and dump a 
> ton of smoke into the room. The "hapless and unfortunate victim" then 
> proceeds to sue the event organisers because everything "should have 
> been safety-tested" and the device was "obviously unsafe"...

There was some mention of it, but buggered if I can find it in the archives 
now :-(

>> 'I wanted to change the world, but they wouldn't give me the source code'
> 
> OK, I'm going to say two things about that:
>   1) LOL!

Plus there's no backup ;)

cheers

Jules