Category: WOzFest

Posts related to WOzFest.

Time flies…

I’m not getting to post here as frequently as I’d like to – real life really does get in the way. Looking for and starting a new job, having an 11yo living with us now, renovations, shopping for a new car (so many EV considerations!)…it all adds up so quickly!

That said, later this month (22 July), I will be hosting WOzFest 30! It’s hard to believe we’re up to 30+ gatherings (some minor ones between mainline ones) over the last 8+ years.

Attendee numbers have waxed and waned, but my enthusiasm has not – it’s still a lot of fun to just dedicate a day to not just my Apple ][‘s, but those of attendees (and virtual attendees – Steve in Brisbane is again simulcasting QFest on the same day) several times a year.

I recently scored four (yes, four!) europlus lids on eBay, which I’ll be allocating to my machines on the day, not sure what other work I’ll get to, but I’m sure we’ll have a ball.

We’ll also be trying to setup a video hookup with KFest 2023.

I retrospectively (is doing something on the day retrospective?) dubbed WOzFest 28 (held on 1 April) “WOzFest 28 Apple Fool’s Day“, and WOzFest 29 was held on 20 May 2023 – we had a good time mucking around with our gear, as always, and enjoyed the cider and pizza.

I had the pleasure of meeting (and hosting for a mini gathering after WOzFest 28) Ken Gagne, editor of Juiced.GS (amongst many other accolades) when he visited downunder. As my son is wont to say of good kids everywhere, “he’s a good kid”, and it really was a pleasure to shoot the breeze with him and show him some local sights.

I’m also excited that late October 2023 will see the return of Oz Kfest – the first one in 6 years.

The plan is to gather at the old Portland School of Arts just west of the Blue Mountains. The old SoA is the future site of local Apple über-enthusiast Adrian’s Apple museum. Adrian is also President of the Australian Computer Museum Society (see June 2023 Juiced.GS), which I volunteer for (as do many WOzFest attendees).

The last Oz Kfest, Oz Kfest 2017, still feels so recent in so many ways – it’s going to be great to catch up with some of my old Apple ][ friends who haven’t been able to get to WOzFests over the last few years.

But I do have to say, it won’t be the same without Tony, who attended Oz Kfests 2015 and 2017 and a few WOzFests (including WOzFest-1 in April 2015 immediately after Oz Kfest 2015). Gonna miss ya, mate.

But life relentlessly moves on, and I know Oz Kfest attendees are going to have a blast, just as Tony would want it to be.

WOzFest 23 Announcement (and 24, 25, 26, and 27!)

Wow, life sure is moving fast.

We now have frequent WOzFest attendee Dylan living with us (restarting Tween parenting in mid-late 50’s is proving…interesting), I have had to look for a job, and I found and started a new job – it’s just “Go! Go! Go!” here.

And, in two weeks I’ll have 2022’s first WOzFest, WOzFest 23 – start time is midday Sydney time (UTC+11), 2 April 2022. QFest 2022/1 will be held on the same day.

For the first time, I can actually announce the proposed schedule for all of a year’s WOzFests – after 2 April, the rest will be on the fourth Saturday of the odd months from May to November

This means the full scheduled looks like this:

WOzFest 281 April 2023
WOzFest 2920 May 2023
WOzFest 3022 July 2023
WOzFest 3123 September 2023
WOzFest 3225 November 2023

WOzFest 23 was going follow the “fourth Saturday of an odd month” scheme in March, but my son’s engagement party (!) is on 27 March, and we’re in voluntary pseudo-lockdown for the two weeks leading up to that to try and avoid being in isolation on the big day.

This means WOzFest 25 will align with KansasFest 2022, as has been the case with the July WOzFest for several years. In fact, this alignment is what I’m intending to use to determine the schedule moving forward for the 5 WOzFests I’m hoping to hold each year (which means, technically, I can announce the next year’s WOzFest schedule as soon as the next year’s KansasFest is announced).

I’ve not set a theme for any of 2022’s WOzFests yet – in the first instance, WOzFest 23 will just be a celebration of allowing attendees again into WOzFest HQ.

I will likely try to pick up some of my RetroChallenge 2021/10 projects, but may just be too caught up trying to catch up with my Apple ][ friends in person.

It’s highly unlikely there’ll be any government restrictions imposed between now and 2 April – however, if I get COVID before then and am isolating, I’ll have to postpone. There’s just no way I’m going to miss it!

Please note: even without a government stipulation on the vax status of visitors, I’ll be requiring WOzFest attendees to be double-vaxxed for the foreseeable future (don’t @ me).

WOzFest 23 or 24 will be the last WOzFest to use Google Meet to stream what I’m up to as Google is deprecating their free legacy edition I’ve been relying on – let me know if you’d like the link so you can connect up with us. I’ll be looking for an alternative as the year progresses.

I won’t be able to prepare the day before as I’ve not yet built up enough leave to do so, so for the moment I can just commit to the Saturdays being from 12:00 to 22:00 local time (if I can last that long) – UTC+11 for WOzFests 23 and 27 and UTC+10 for WOzFests 24-26.

As always, I’m continuing to raise funds via Ko-Fi. This allows small (or large!) donations to be made – check out my intro post there for the lowdown, and feel free to drop anything you can in the can to help me to run WOzFest moving forward.

Remembering Tony Diaz

Mid-afternoon during WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻, frequent attendee Andrew, who had dialled into the Google Meet, announced in a shocked voice he’d just discovered Tony Diaz had passed away earlier in the week.

To say Andrew, Michael, and I were bewildered is an understatement. A real jolt, not only because Tony was only 54, but also because some of us had been in communication with him about a week before his passing.

Between then and now I’ve had time-consuming work and family matters to attend to, hence the delay in this post, but I was given the opportunity to contribute to the memorial for Tony published in the current issue of Juiced.GS, which can be found as a free download on the mag’s Samples page.

I’ve said much of what I felt I needed/wanted to say in that piece, so I’ll keep this short.

Tony was anti-exclusionary, loved to share his knowledge, and revelled in being around people who were enthusiastic about retro Apples and flying, his two great loves (actually, should extend that to three to include In-N-Out!).

I feel lucky to have met and known him, and to have seen him share his rare prototypes and knowledge, including at WOzFest-1 and WOzFest S7,D2.

He’ll be sorely missed at the next Oz KFest, and I’ll miss his virtual and occasional in-person WOzFest drop-ins. Take care, mate.

RetroChallenge 2021/10 Endgame, WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 Report.

What a month October was – while not a complete wash out, I certainly did not complete as much of my projects as I’d like (please put that on my gravestone). And I was subsequently swamped with work and family matters through into the New Year (Happy New Year, by the way!).

I’d pretty well done nothing between my last report and WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻, so there are no missing updates to catch up on.

But progress is progress, so let’s get the lowdown on what progress there was last weekend…

  • europlus Refurbapalooza Resurrection – No progress. Work was just too busy to get to this one. I’ll have to save this Resurrection for another day (RetroChallenge 2022/04?!).
  • Lockdown WOzFests – Completed! Well, this was a sort of a cheat one, but I did get to chat with some people, which was especially comforting at WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 (see below).
  • Pirated software manual scans – Incomplete. The progress I made on this project was to finish removing all the hundreds of rusty staples holding each manual together. Now it’s just sheet feed scanning to follow – a pretty simple, if lengthy (there is a 13cm pile of paper to scan!), task.
  • Applesaucing – Incomplete. I did do some imaging at WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 for Call-A.P.P.L.E. of some of their original disks I had in one of my multitude of boxes which Bill Martens (a virtual attendee) suggested they didn’t have copies of, so at least what progress I did make on this was pretty targeted!
  • Citizen Science – No (effective) progress. I now have a funky magnetic field display film which I can use in conjunction with flux images of disks to get a sense of how the physical layout of magnets on modern devices relates to disk damage. When I get to work on this one, there’ll be some cool graphics to include in the findings.

WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻, held on Saturday 30 October, was meant to see me get more done than staple removal and imaging 15 or so disks.

In my defence, the day was severely marred by the news received mid-afternoon that my friend, Tony Diaz, had passed away in America earlier that week.

I’ll leave my thoughts on Tony and his passing to a separate post, but sharing grief with other enthusiasts both locally and internationally was indeed comforting.

I had elected to keep WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 as (almost completely) virtual-only as my wife and I are keeping ourselves in an almost-lockdown for some time to come – only Michael from RCR was in attendance as he is in similar almost-lockdown circumstances at the moment, and he had a delivery for me. Sharing a 42m² room with one person who’s pretty well not seeing others seemed OK.

That meant I got to share pizza and ciders in real life, and remembrances of Tony in person and via Google Meet.

An additional project I took on for Saturday was setting up a 21″ iMac 2012 I’d been gifted the prior week – I have two 21″ iMacs I use for Applesaucing and scanning, and with the 2012 replacing a Mid-2010 machine, I was able to have the new one and the other one (2015) both set up for High Sierra and Catalina dual booting. This allows me to use 32-bit software (iWeb and scanner software) when needed, but also have more recent OSes on them.

Between OS installs and data and app migrations, that went on for much of Saturday, but the new machine is significantly lighter than the one it replaces, which makes puttering around in WOzFest HQ easier as I move things around for optimal placement when doing work.

I’m now trying to plan for this year’s five WOzFests – I think I have a schedule sorted, and will make an announcement as soon as I can.

RetroChallenge 2021/10 Days 2-3 Report: Progress, of sorts, and a WOzFest!

I’ll be honest – I didn’t get as much done during WOzFest RC 21/10 as I’d hoped – I did continue to set up WOzFest HQ for working on my projects, and I did get some Applesaucing done, but I hit a few roadblocks…

Firstly, I think one of my disk ][ drives with an Applesauce sync sensor is having issues, which I only fully appreciated after about 10 disks (with quite a few multiple attempts to capture some of them). At four plus minutes per attempt, well…

I put the “track 0 always coming up orange” as attributable to some sort of protection scheme Personal Software applied to the Visi* range of products, but I finally tried an unprotected disk and had similar issues.

Of course, that first unprotected disk I tried had actual track 0 issues when I tried a new drive, but fewer of them, and a second disk I tried worked first time.

And it wouldn’t be a RetroChallenge without further confounding issues – the first Visi* disk I went back to also had real issues on track 0! Gah!

Oh, and of course, in the mix was the drive’s head cable occasionally getting caught and making captures useless (the same data being captured as different tracks). Between all that, it took me a while to get in my groove!

Anyway, I was able to capture several disks, sometimes using multiple captures to create a single working image (a newer [and long desired] feature of the Applesauce software).

I still have a lot more disks to do, but am now feeling at least in a better position than mid-afternoon Saturday.

Today, I’ve just tided up a little and started to set up my second spare iMac so I can use my ScanSnap sheet feed scanner for the pirated software manuals. The scanner uses 32-bit software, so I’ve installed High Sierra and am just migrating the other spare iMac’s High Sierra apps and user so I don’t have to set everything up from scratch.

This will allow me to use either machine for Applesaucing or scanning, or a single machine for both in less busy times.

Google Meet worked OK once I installed and set up the “auto admit” extension – for some reason, even with the invite link, Google doesn’t allow attendees outside of the inviting domain to just enter the meeting. And the first “auto admit” extension I tried didn’t work. And you have to restart Chrome to make the settings stick.

For sharing my projects, I joined from the Applesauce-connected iMac to stream various windows as I captured disks, and from an iPhone above the disk ][ drive to watch the drive do its thing.

My first two attendees were international – RetroChallenge judge Eric and Josh “Get The Damn Batteries Out” Malone, both from the US, joined for a while at the start. We had a few Australians hooking in across the day and evening, and everyone just worked on their own projects or whatever and discussed whatever came to mind.

It was nice having the company throughout the day, and I can’t wait for WOzFest 22 when I’ll hopefully get a few updates on where everyone go to – and with the way our vaccine rollout is finally going, I’ll hopefully be allowed to have 10 attendees as well!

I also responded to a few posts on the Australian Computer Museum Society forums site in relation to our Team ACMS project – a AU$500 grant is up for grab for Australians who register an ACMS affiliation when entering RetroChallenge and post about their entry on the forum. There’s a large Aussie/ACMS contingent this RetroChallenge, which is great to see.

I can’t wait to get some more progress under my belt – the nice thing about the scanning especially is it’s pretty brainless for me to keep plugging away at (even during the week), while my other projects are more hands-on.

Catch up in a few days – will I be able to report useful progress?!

RetroChallenge 2021/10 Day 1 Report: Prep is all you need

Just spent the time after a morning work meeting prepping WOzFest HQ – mostly sorting and getting rid of rubbish.

Bought some chips and some booze, even if I will have to be a martyr and consume them myself!

Ready for a proper day or retro tomorrow during WOzFest RC 21/10 – DM me on Twitter for the Google Meet link.

WOzFest RC21/10 & WOzFest 22 Announcement

UPDATE: See details of a new project for my RetroChallenge 2021/10 entry below.

Firstly, an apology for forgetting to announce WOzFest ]20 HOME : GOTO 20 – life got in the way, and I just didn’t get around to posting here

And although it’s not far away, I’m very happy to announce the date for the next WOzFest: WOzFest RC 21/10 will be held on Saturday 2 October 2021, starting at midday Sydney time (UTC+10:00).

And, to top off the year, I can also announce that WOzFest 22 will be held on Saturday 30 October 2021, starting at midday Sydney time (UTC+11:00).

Why two WOzFests in one month? Well the name for ’21 should give the clue – I’m entering RetroChallenge 21/10, and it seemed a good way to bookend my efforts for the month.

The theme for WOzFest RC 21/10 and WOzFest 22 is, obviously, “RetroChallenge” – drop in, check out what I’m up to, and let me know your plans at WOzFest RC 21/10 and how you went at WOzFest 22.

My entry for RetroChallenge 2021/10 has four five parts:

  1. europlus Refurbapalooza Resurrection – my Apple ][ europlus refurbishment project has edged along since my last Retrochallenge entries, but I’ve started to kick up the pace. Can I get all my boards tested by the end of Retrochallenge 2021/10?!
  2. Lockdown WOzFests – to celebrate Retrochallenge 2021/10, I will schedule the next two WOzFests for 2 October and 30 October. Retrochallengers from around the globe should drop in to detail their plans at WOzFest RC 21/10, then describe the pain of how it went all awry at WOzFest 22! Share the love, pain, frustration, and triumphs!
  3. Pirated software manual scans – I have a 13cm pile of photocopied Apple ][ software manuals from WOzFest attendee Neville to scan and upload to the Internet Archive.
  4. Applesaucing – Similarly, I have a metric buttload of disks to image with my Applesauce, gotta just get back to it.
  5. NEW: Citizen Science – Floppy disks vs Magnets: I’ve seen discussion of magnets affecting disks, I’ve done it myself, and I jokingly place bad disks on WOzFest HQ’s fridge with HD magnets. But magnets are all around us now, and those into software preservation have to be careful. Join me as I test the effects of the various common (and maybe not so common) magnets in our modern lives on the media we’re here to preserve. If you have equipment to flux image a disk, and some magnets laying around, add your data to the pool so we can spread the warning far and wide – disks and magnets are not BFFs!

Yes, four five projects is a crazy an extra-crazy load to take on, but I’m crazy! Aim for the stars and you’ll blow up on the launchpad, I always say!

I encourage Australian entrants to also sign up at the Australian Computer Museum Society forums and detail your entries and progress in the RetroChallenge 2021/10 category there – a $500 grant is being offered by the Society for Aussie entrants to try and drive local engagement in the retro scene. Just make sure you tick the Australian Computer Museum Society affiliation tick box when entering RetroChallenge!

In addition, regular WOzFest attendee Andrew told me HacktoberFest 2021 is happening in October, so be sure to sign up to an open source project, and let us know what you’ll be working on during the month when you drop by.

Sydney is still in COVID lockdown, and will not see any easing of restrictions in relation to visitors until the Monday after 70% of the population 16 and over are double-vaxxed. This is currently due to happen towards the end of the first week of October, so WOzFest RC 21/10 will be a stream/virtual event only.

Once we hit 70%, five double-vaxxed visitors can attend, so that will be the minimum allowed for WOzFest 22 – but we’ll probably have achieved 90% double-vaxxed by 30 October, so the restrictions may have eased even further. Please note: even without a government stipulation on the vax status of visitors, I’ll be requiring WOzFest attendees to be double-vaxxed for the foreseeable future (don’t @ me). QR check in will be mandatory, as well.

I’ll be using Google Meet to stream what I’m up to and who I’m chatting to – let me know if you’d like the link so you can connect up with us.

As per recent WOzFests, I’ll be preparing the day before – the Google Meet link will work for all four days. Runtimes are Fridays from 11:00 local time to 17:00 local time (roughly), Saturdays from 12:00 to 22:00 local time (if I can make it that long) – UTC+10:00 for WOzFest RC 21/10 (and prep) and UTC+11:00 for WOzFest 22 (and prep).

As always, I’m continuing to raise funds via Ko-Fi. This allows small (or large!) donations to be made – check out my intro post there for the lowdown, and feel free to drop anything you can in the can to help me to run WOzFest moving forward.

I hope to (virtually) see you there!

WOzFest 19 Announcement

Hot on the heels of WOzFest 18 I’m very happy to announce the date for the next WOzFest: WOzFest 19 will be held on Saturday 1 May 2021, starting at midday Sydney time (UTC+10:00).

The theme for WOzFest 19 is “Freedom” – a good friend and frequent WOzFest attendee retires the day before, so I thought what better way to celebrate than to get together with Apple ][ enthusiasts?! I’ll leave it to attendees to interpret the theme as they see fit.

WOzFest 19 will be streamed on Twitch via WOzFest TV for the whole duration. I’ll be aiming to do some productive work to stream, and will have some Skype calls as well.

That said, I’ve not yet organised any Skype calls – but I’m sure I’ll be able to rustle up some Apple ][ enthusiasts from around the world to participate.

The COVID-19 situation has seemed to stabilise here. That said, all prospective attendees will need to pre-register their interest, and sign-in via QR code upon arrival. Masks are optional, hand sanitiser will be provided. I ask all prospective attendees to follow the NSW Government’s self-isolation rules.

Snacks and cider will be provided (I ask for a small donation for same), and those present at dinner time are welcome to join in our pizza order.

Lastly, for WOzFest 19 I’m continuing to raise funds via Ko-Fi. This allows small (or large!) donations to be made – check out my intro post there for the lowdown, and feel free to drop anything you can in the can to help me to run WOzFest moving forward.

I hope to see you there!

P.S. If you happen to be in Sydney and available on 30 April, drop me a line, I’m planning on taking the day off and will be in WOzFest HQ for much of the day.

QFest 18 Announcement

SteveK in Brisbane has now confirmed he’ll be able to host a QFest to coincide with WOzFest 18 – hooray!

Not only that, he’s done the upgrade and got the quintessential mini-Australian-Apple ][-Fest infrastructure for use by attendees – a table tennis table!

Because of timezone differences, QFest 18 will be starting at 02:00 UTC (WOzFest 18 will be starting at 01:00 UTC), but we’ll stream with them as soon as they’re up and running at WOzFest TV.

Food and other refreshments will be provided by Steve (what a champ!), but registrations are essential – reach out to me or comment here if you would like to register.

Despite COVID-19, this is going to be a bumper WOzFest year, and I hope our Northern friends can keep up the pace!

Apple ][ Forever!

Community Service

As per the official WOzFest 18 announcement, the theme for the upcoming event is Community Service.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about giving back to our retrocomputer communities – it’s something I’m passionate about because of the significant help and support I’ve received not only from my own local community especially, but also from the wider community online.

I was never much involved in “the community” back in the day, and it took some time from when I first started getting back into Apple ][s in 1998 to when I found and became a part of the local retrocomputer community (in 2013/14). (I was, however, quite involved in the Mac community, which ended up seeing me start my Mac consultancy in 1997.)

But in the short time since I found the local retrocomputing community, here I am in 2021 planning four WOzFests and Skyping/communicating with some of the current leading lights of the Apple ][ retrocomputer scene!

I engage with the community in other ways, sometimes just participating in conversations, but, more importantly, also trying to find ways to give back to the community that has given me so much.

This is not to big note myself – many people are doing much, much more than I, but even a schlub like me can make a positive contribution to the community, and I’d like to share some of the ways I have done so over the years.

I hope this post will serve as inspiration to others and give them ideas on how they might be able to contribute to their retrocomputer community – every little bit really does count.

Offer help

First up, I’d say if you see a request for assistance you can answer, answer it! It doesn’t get any easier than that. Try to keep all contributions positive. This is most especially applicable when dealing with new members of the community.

You might know the answer immediately, or know which manual you have to open – you might even find yourself firing up some equipment to check behaviour. But it’s amazing how strange the path to helping might be.

For example, a question was asked on the KansasFest 2020 Discord about converting a vector PICT file – modern programs were having issues interpreting it. I also found none of the graphics or DTP programs I had on my macOS Catalina iMac wanted to convert the file.

However, I remembered one semi-modern (or at least able to run on semi-modern macOSes) program which I thought might have the legacy parsing code in it, even though it’s the worst page layout program I have ever used: MYOB AccountEdge. And guess what? Under macOS Mojave (10.14), MYOB AccountEdge v11.5 was able to load the PICT into an otherwise empty invoice layout screen, and print to PDF the file in its full vector glory!

Just jump right in and try things out when helping your fellow enthusiasts – in and of itself, overcoming such technical challenges can be rewarding.

Specialist skills – Silentype font

As a long-time desktop publisher and user of vector-editing programs, I’ve always been interested in fonts. In several DTP jobs, this led to using Fontographer to create bespoke fonts for customers to simplify logo and symbol use in their work.

When I started getting back into retrocomputers, I wanted to recreate the feel of one of my first printers, the Apple Silentype. I didn’t have a Silentype, but I was able to source a full character output “rainbow” printout via a request online.

With that in hand, I released the original version of my Silentype font in March 2004. Because of character rendering changes in OS X, I had to tweak the font and released v2 in December 2012. I released it under the Open Font License so that others could work on it if they wish.

Chris Torrence has done something similar with another font I always intended to work on, Motter Tektura. Not wanting to duplicate effort, I now just use his font and am happy to see it available before I got a chance to work on my own version.

Specialist skills – Proofreading

Once again utilising my experience in publishing and editing, I have proof-read a few items for different projects, most significantly early versions of the .woz file spec for John Morris’s Applesauce and more recently passing my eye over John Snape’s reprint of the Beneath Apple DOS/Beneath Apple ProDOS books.

I don’t always bring a deep technical knowledge to such a task, but I am very details-focussed, and often pick up slight inconsistencies otherwise missed. This helps the community as the documents have had more review, and being non-technical is in some ways an advantage as I will request details to try and make sure technical material is clear to cater to all levels of readers.

Grunt work – BBS Crackscreens

Sometimes the work is much less glamorous and/or much less interesting in its actual undertaking.

Many retrocomputer enthusiasts know of Jason Scott, who not only works at the Internet Archive but also maintains his own archives of information from and relating to BBSes.

He maintains a list of BBSes – including the dialin number, sysop, date/s in operation, etc. His tweet sought volunteers to scour old text files looking for such details, and as a follower of the Apple II Crackscreen Twitter account, I knew the details available in such crackscreens would need special attention as it wasn’t just text – it would all need to be manually transcribed.

With the bot owner’s permission, Jason provided all 8,000+ source images to me. On Jason’s suggestion I removed the screens without details, then went back and transcribed the details for all the BBSes I could find in the remaining images.

I ended up with about 750 screenshots with details to transcribe, which had about 1,450 BBS listings (many of which were, of course, duplicates). Jason is incorporating these details into his main list, and many Apple ][ BBSes will now be findable. On and off, this took me three months to complete.

Twitter image bot

Speaking of the Apple II Crackscreen Twitter image bot, it inspired me to create my own image bot, the Applesauce Fluxes bot, which tweets random flux .pngs from the Internet Archive’s Flux Capacity collection several times a day.

I just love the variety and beauty of the Applesauce flux images, I felt I had to share them with the world!

While I’m not regularly updating the bot’s image collection, there were over 20,000 images at the time of my download – this will keep things fresh for quite some time to come!

Preservation/digitisation

This is one which gets more critical every day as bits rot, pages moulder, collections are trashed upon death (bleak, I know), and knowledge and expertise fade.

I have an Applesauce I make available to WOzFest attendees, and others are brought to spread the load. Attendees bring scanners for scanning at WOzFests, and many attendees are scanning while at home, too.

While some preservation/digitisation requires specialist knowledge or specific equipment (not always cheap), even allowing others to undertake the preservation of your own items is a contribution to the community.

Reach out to other enthusiasts and find out how you can contribute material, time or effort to this very worthy cause.

non-eBay sales/disposal

Even when I didn’t have WOzFest HQ available to me, I acted as a clearing house for old tech for customers, family and friends.

With a reduction in e-waste collections generally in Sydney, I continue to offer to hold material for people, including WOzFest attendees, and will periodically visit the local Community Recycling Centre, which accepts e-waste and is only 5 minutes drive away. Occasionally, I’ll even offer items to Freecycle before e-wasting if they seem still usable.

I am diligent, however, in ensuring this “service” does not lead to accumulation of bulk material as I very much savour the free space I have available to me and I work tirelessly against the strongest of my hoarding inclinations (and I will always want to be able to meet my preferred definition of “collector”).

Society membership/volunteering

The Australian Computer Museum Society is trying to establish a national computing museum here in Oz – I recently became a Committee member (I like the fact that several WOzFest attendees are also Committee members or volunteers).

The Society has had a checkered past, and the new Committee is trying to get things back on the rails, which I think is well worth my time.

Beyond Committee matters, I also help out as they’re moving their massive collection to a single storage location, which involves pushing heavy, dirty computers on and off trucks – but it has to get done.

I’ve previously been on local and national Committees for APANA (an Australian community-based ISP), and was co-editor of (and contributor to) the Club Mac club magazine MACinations for a few years.

WOzFest

And, of course, I host WOzFests! I’ve enjoyed the 5+ years of WOzFests tremendously.

Product releases, Skypes to international luminaries, interesting technical discussions all feature at WOzFests, and I am also building up tools and resources for attendees to use (and perhaps borrow) including books, manuals, and test/repair equipment.

Providing space and motivation for attendees to work on projects has proven very rewarding and instructive, and I can now offer storage space for frequent attendees who can’t complete projects in one sitting but are space-constrained at home.

This is the hardest volunteering role for me to recommend to others – not because it’s hard work (it can be), but because it relies on a reliably-available venue. I would find it very hard to commit to hosting an event without the 42 m² (360 sq ft) in WOzFest HQ.

An alternative would be to get involved in the running of other events like Oz Kfest, KansasFest, VCF events, or just local gatherings of like-minded retrocomputer enthusiasts. I’m pleased that regular WOzFest attendee Murray now holds a generalist gathering called Nozfest.

Give it a go!

I’m sure others have more ideas for what they can do for their community – focus on things that “spark joy” for you, and it will make it that much more enjoyable. That said, grunt work can also be rewarding as there is a definite physicality to the contribution you’ve made.

Please add your own suggestions in the Comments below – it may even give me other ideas on what I can do, and hopefully will do the same for other enthusiasts.

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