There's at least one dedicated Twitter about it.
https://twitter.com/CompStoreVisual

leileilol wrote on 2022-02-05, 00:00:

There's at least one dedicated Twitter about it.
https://twitter.com/CompStoreVisual

Ah yes, this is exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Thanks for sharing! ☺️

But I'm also curious about memories that fellow Vogoners have to share about similar events that they themselves attended back in the day.

Pictures and videos they made themselves, perhaps with a personal story to add to it.

digger wrote on 2022-02-04, 23:55:

I saw a similar thread dedicated to this topic in the Dutch GoT forum, and after seeing HanJammer post some cool pictures of out […]
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I saw a similar thread dedicated to this topic in the Dutch GoT forum, and after seeing HanJammer post some cool pictures of outdoor computer markets in Poland in the '90s in the `Bought these (retro) hardware today` thread, I figured this stuff deserved of a topic of its own here on Vogons as well.

Don't you all agree?

Do you have any such deliciously nostalgic retro computer throwbacks to share?

Visits to computer fairs?

Pictures of a much younger you visiting a nearby computer store that has long since disappeared?

A Video8 camera recording from a demo scene party you attended?

Anything else special that takes us all back for a bit? Just written stories are fine too.

It's all good. Post away, and take us along for a ride, revisiting those glorious days when home computing was still magical. ☺️

Thanks for opening this thread.

To reply for your last post in the another thread:

digger wrote on 2022-02-04, 23:56:

Thanks for sharing those pictures!

It must have felt like a golden age in those years. I mean, it was just a few years after computer technology from the west became so widely available there, right? It looks like a vibrant user-base sprung out of that almost overnight.

Yes. Although we had 8-bit computers in the 80s (and this place started back then as flea market created by the computer magazine "Bajtek") it was the 90s when it had it's "Golden Age" with all the PC and Amiga stuff becoming available to the public and people having enough money to purchase or trade hardware. I remember bringing my used computer parts there (motherboards, RAM modules, graphics and sound cards) to exchange them for brand new parts (with some additional payment of course). Interesting thing is guys never tested the parts when taking them from me and I wasn't sure I'm buying a working part (but never had any problems with something that wasn't working correctly).

I have a small archive of the pictures from Warsaw flea market ("Gielda komputerowa na Grzybowskiej") here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EO2rr … B0WnCLUZqYEYzOK

There is also extensive article available there (not mine, just found in the internet).

In Poland every major city had it's own computer flea market. There is a professional video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSb-PPQEU7k
(and addendum materials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC4DiSezxb4)
Sadly for an odd reason I can't understand it doesn't feature subtitles at all so it's of limited interest to non-Polish speakers (or in fact for Polish-speakers with a hearing disability as well).

That's okay. I don't object to non-English content being shared here, as long as it's on-topic. The nostalgia and zeitgeist can still be experienced, even when you don't understand the language.

For instance, there is a Dutch tech journalist and entrepeneur named Luc Sala who shared some of is old video reports from computer fairs and such from the '90s on his YouTube channel.

Here is one about the PC Dump Dag, which he himself organized, and used to be held every 2 months in the RAI convention center in Amsterdam: https://youtu.be/dnoH1bcbCYY

And here is one he made about the (multi-day) HCC Dagen, which used to be organized by the Dutch country-wide "Hobby Computer Club", and took place every year in the Jaarbeurs convention center in Utrecht: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddgDiGucunI

Both in Dutch, but nonetheless entertaining. 🙂

@HanJammer I know it wasn't intentional, but something went wrong with the quote tags in your reply above, making it seem like your response starting with "Yes. Although we had 8-bit computers in the 80s" was a quote from me. I get it. Those quote tags can get a little confusing once they start getting nested after each reply. I've messed them up once or twice in replies of my own as well. But you might want to correct it. 😉

Minho Campus Party 2002, Guimarães, Portugal. This was a big Lan Party that lasted 5 days and had some competitions in between. If I'm not mistaken this was the second one (although the first one I attended) and was super cool because we would get download speeds of 100mbit/s and no limits instead of the usual 56K modem speeds. At this time it was very rare for someone to have a broadband connection over here.

It's actually me on the bottom right with the long hair trying out the recently released Xbox console:

Look at all those beige towers and CRTs:

That looks like a lot of fun. And yeah, download speeds of 100 mbit/s, that must have felt surreal back in 2002. Most households don't get speeds that high even now, 20 years later. Campus broadband was a pretty sweet thing, for those who had access to it.

Who knows. If you take the power of nostalgia, combined with the matter in which so much of our lives are spent on-line these days, and then add a 2-year pandemic to that... I wouldn't be surprised if large-scale LAN parties, old school retro tech events and conventions will be making a huge comeback in the near future. I can't be the only person longing to travel to new places again, meeting new people whom I share common interests with, right?

Indeed. If there was a lan party like that again I'd definitely go, but only for the games this time, since everyone has 100mb connections now 😁