It is with great pleasure that my family and I were able to attended the Vintage Computer Festival Sponsored by Mid-Atlantic Retro-Computing Hobbyists, Inc. at the Infoage Science-History Center in Wall Township, New Jersey May 2006.
This mutterings has been composed from a myopic viewpoint and does not cover but one small aspect of what took place there that day.

During a pre-arrange session on the veranda of the old Marconi Hotel, located at Camp Evans, New Jersey, the IBM System 3 Special Interest Group was formed.

Pictured on the left is Mike Ross http://www.corestore.org/ in front of his travailing road show.
The gray haired short guy in the front is me, Bob Bradlee http://postcardbob.com.
Henk Stegeman pictured here right center frame, came over from Dordrecht Netherlands with his charming wife for this occasion. Henk has two Systems 3's in his collection a Mod 10 and a Mod 15B. He assisted Mike in transporting the 4 Systems down from New York during this well timed visit.
Pictured on the far right is David Smith of Columbus Ohio, David is the proud owner of the last IBM System 3 Computer in the world to still be processing customer data in a small weekly batch. Although a limited production environment, it still counts as commercial use of a System 3 as it remains up 24/7 as a data entry station for importing data from old 8 inch Diskettes.

Although they were unable to attend, William Donzelli of Road Island and Yves Bolognini of the Bolo's Computer Museum in Lausanne Switzerland, qualify as charter members of this System 3 SIG as they are the only other proud owners of System 3's in the world any of us are aware of.

Listening to these gentlemen, as my wife would say "talking numbers", on the front porch comparing models and features of these old work-horse systems was a pleasure, in itself well worth the trip! I am now sorry I took so few pictures and did not get time to talk with more of the exhibitors, but alas I was recovering from oral surgery earlier in the week, I was on a mission and not very talkative.

Much to my surprise Infoage had arranged for three power circuits, allowing three systems, a System /32, /34/ and /36 to be all powered up and running! A not so minor task in that old building.
In the case of the S/32 Although it had been powered up a number of times, it was the first time it successfully IMPLed in a very long time. We looked on in wonder as the console lights flickered as the system went through its first IMPL, Mike surely had the look of a proud papa as the system came to life, and complained about it with its first error message in a very long time. This first image was taken of the system console at the end of that first IMPL. This photo shows the rebirth of this aged CPU as the first error it encountered turned out to be simple fixes. Alas this image was taken before he had a chance to get a rag and cleaning and adjusting the brightness of the monitor. He has a much better picture on his website.

While Henk and his wonderfully understanding wife Toop, having traveled from Holland unquestionably traveled the furthest, my dear old mother Mary Bradlee at 82 was most likely the oldest attendee. She is the proud original owner of a Tan Case Osborne 1. She commented on the ride home that she thought Michael Pearson's training computer, the one that was based on the old book was the most interesting.

I on the other hand found Frank O'Brien's NASA Apollo Guidance Computer pictured here, to be the most unique and Computer Collectable of significance at this show, while it was not an IBMcollectable it was inspired in many ways by the IBM System 360 logic design, and unquestionably priceless.

There is little question that Mike Ross efforts with the assistance of Henk to move 4 big systems a S/32, S/34, S/36 and S/38 and set them up was Herculean. Mikes pictures are available here at http://www.corestore.org/vcfeast06.htm. I took two photos of him as he was packing up. While the photo with the flash shows Mike proud papa, the candid I took without the flash, shows how draining an effort this truely was.
Thanks for the effort everyone, I look forward to seeing some of you at Purdue in July..... Bob