The Madness of Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 2022 

As someone across the planet, there's something about the mundane americana and scenery with your commentary that I find so entertaining even without the tech.

13:21 - That's us! Thanks for stopping by man, it was great talking to you even for a short while. That exhibit was a few years in the making, and we're glad to share the nostalgia with everyone. The whole weekend was an absolute blast, and we're doing it again next year (hopefully with a fuller crew!)

That Sega R360 is just insanity. That's every VR enthusiast's dream machine. And to think Sega released it in 1990. Those guys really were just awesome in their peak years.

Thanks! Always amazing Clint, and a big thanks to your brother for filming as well! Hopefully I'll be able to make the event in the future.

I'm genuinely amazed Technology Connections and LGR hadn't met yet, those are two of my favorite channels.

Last year's video was fun, but the quality of the footage is waaaaaay better this time around! Good job to you both!

We are so lucky to have someone like yourself, so young still, so much knowledge, I'm a geek from way back myself. Born 1967, I was the computer assistant in my high school. I grew up playing the first racing games on Atari and grew up in the different computer age than we have now. Currently I'm still rocking a i7 8700k with a 1080ti, really thinking about jumping to the 40 series this year coming. VR is a tech that is so far beyond anything we had when I was younger. I love love love your videos, we are lucky to have you.

I can watch LGR for hours. He's relaxing, super knowledgeable entertaining, and overall just a lot of fun to watch. I want to stay up late playing video games and drinking beers with him.

@LGR Clint! Thanks SOOOooo much for the Forgotten Machines table overview at 15:30, and the T-shirt sighting at 22:10 ...wow! Even a setup view at 2:56 and a "wind-up" at 11:15! You're always a thrill to meet in person, every bit as warm and inviting in person as you are in all of your videos. It was truly my honor to see you again...and thank you!!! BTW, this video is also SOOooo well done! The videography is Top Notch, almost paralleling your buttery-smooth voice narration, which has always been a true highlight of every single LGR video... You and your brother Luke really raised the bar on this one!

What I love about channels like this is, that I lived through these times and it fills me full of nostalgia. But I'm sure it's even liked by many people that are younger and like to see how technology has changed over the years.

I'm in the Army and your videos have gotten me through two deployments your chill relaxed tone always calms me down never stop doing what you do always appreciated.

The show looks like it's set to upgrade to a conference center, it's outgrown the hotel. Neat to see it grow.

As someone who likes conventions but doesn't get to travel very much at all, I really enjoy your convention vids. They always do such a good job of bringing us along for the ride, even if we couldn't really go. Also kudos to Luke for doing such a good job with the video capturing!

so glad something like this exists, you guys are literally helping preserve history instead of these amazing machines ending up in land fills! Wish I could go one day

It was great seeing you again Clint! This was an awesome video and I’m glad you had a great time. Thanks for the shout out. See you again next year! 😀

I can't watch most convention/travel footage because wobbly cameras give me terrible migraines, but I am so happy you got a go pro with stabilization! It made it possible for me to watch this video. Thank you! Excited to see what you wanted to share :)

The editing on here is superb it feels like really being there and cut between the guests coming in and walking through the door gave off the vibe walking on stage at a rock concert

Seeing LGR dedicate a solid 5 minutes to the Amazingness that is Galloping Ghost brings my heart joy, I visit it once a year and the owner Doc Mac is an amazing man doing Nerd God's work here on earth :3

Any convention related stuff on LGR is always great to see.

Your videos are always so comfy, but ones like this epitomize it ❤️ Also, you and your brother almost look like Street Fighter palette swaps of one another, and I think that's so neat.

Great to see so many pieces being preserved!

This was such a great show, glad I could make it and meet you in person Clint! As someone from the area it's criminal how little this is talked about, I literally didn't even know it existed until your video last year and I'm happy that you gave it such positive exposure. Looking forward to going again next year!

The ashtray next to the computer really helps set the time period.

Thank you for staying humble to your fans.

Ooh, we're off conventioning again! Hoorah!

Hey, Clint! Yes - I was running three instances of Quake from a single SGI Octane. I expect to have improvements (full hardware texturing, better frame rates) on the setup for next year!

Yay! I was there :-) Glad to see you again! I do agree about the "arc of RU-vid" leading to some pretty heavy crowding.

It was absolutely fantastic to see you and others there at VCFMW. My kids really enjoyed the experience too. It is such a wonderful thing to know that in "real life" the various RU-vid personalities are all wonderful people to chat with. I will certainly be back and I hope you will be too.

Hey LGR thanks to you I spotted a Silicon Graphics workstation PC cameo in a scene in a show called Night Sky (noticed one on the Quake table too at 18mins). I paused in the scene of the show and explained to my incredibly interested and impressed partner what it was and she was clearly enamoured with my knowledge. Thanks!

I shared a spot on Joshua's OS/2 table for my AT&T PC-6300 (somewhat out of place but wanted to host a table with friends). I did not have it fully setup yet when you took your footage. That is great you shouted Joshua out :) I did a walk by of your table and did not say hi this year due to the crowd but we did speak last year although we were both masked then :) I am local to the Chicago area and you and Luke did a wonderful job showing off some of the beauty of the city. Love your channel!

19:34 a Wild 8-Bit Guy has appeared! He also did a video on this convention and documented his trip from the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex using his wife’s 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV and showed that it is possible to cross country road-trip in a Non Tesla EV in 2022; it just takes careful route planning.

The best part about this is seeing how many people keep these bygone eras of computing alive. As kids growing up with these machines, they were awe inspiring and that experience drove us to learn more and work with tech our entire life. For many of us, this type of experience was a defining part of our lives.

Hey Clint! Happy to see you back again this year. You picked up the PC BIG BOX games from me at the show (think you got a few last year too). Hope you enjoy some of that oddness you grabbed!

Thanks for the captions for the Deaf. These are always a challenge to hear at with the crowds. This let me be a part of the event, takes me back a few years! Thank you.

Thanks for the video, Clint; I’ve been anticipating it.I’m happy to see your brother tag alone. Cherish and love your brother, Clint. You never know when disaster will strike. I lost my baby brother during February of this year. He was my best friend; we did everything together (i.e. game, shop, etc). Losing my brother devastated my world. I feel lost and empty inside without him. So keep your brother close to you, because you NEVER know what will happen tomorrow or the day after… Again, I enjoyed the video very much. Thank you for all you do.

@LGR, plot twist, I work for a major TV, Internet, phone provider that still uses those Weather Channel "WeatherStar" setups. They just work. Sometimes you have to reboot them because the weather on the 8's breaks but thats about it. Thanks for this video. I really appreciate it.

Top of the morning Lord Basinger, it was nice to chat with you at the show. In fact you were quite a chat buddy which is why I dropped it off with you. Happy Christmas and Long Live the Queen!

What a terrific video - really made me feel like I'd not only been there, but had tagged along with LGR himself. Just can't overstate how much fun this video was

8:11 Gotta love LGR for adding in the metric measurements as well. Much appreciated!

It was great seeing you at VCFMW this year!! Glad you made it out to Galloping Ghosts, that place nearly has it all. The Castlevania with whip controller was my fav. That R360 is the rarest of the rare arcade experiences, it's amazing you got footage of a working one.

8:32 - wow, imagine playing Forsaken or Descent playing in of those! It feels a bit unreal seeing David, Adrian and Alec in the same LGR video :)

Heaven. I wish we had festivals like this in the UK.

I love computer meets. Given what's happened over the last couple of years, we should never take them for granted. 👍

I thoroughly enjoyed myself while there! It was great to meet you, Clint! I got our selfie if you’d like to have a copy of it…just reply to my comment and I’ll send it to you (give me an email or something)… That said, me and my partner ADORED The Weather Channel equipment!! Been obsessed with that for most of my life! Awesome to see the actual equipment! A lot smaller than I imagined! I’ll be there next year!

Love this channel, and especially watching those kind of videos after a long, exhausting trip. So cozy.

I started out on an 88 Packard Bell, also helped in a machine shop with a 1978 Mazak 2 Axis CNC lathe. The program input media was magnetic punch tape to provide instructions. When I joined the Navy my mother sold my dog, and collectable PCs circa (1988-2003), IMac and Pentium I, II, III machines. Also had our pre-AOL 1.0 Compuserve registration disk.

Hey this looks like it was fun trip. I always enjoy these sort of travel blog/convention videos when you release them. You have such a unique style that manages to feel both professional and laid back at the same time. Not sure what you call that but I enjoy it. I'd also be interested to know more about the bit you mentioned with the Behind the Screens exhibit with a local broadcasting setup. You mentioned you do something similar in your home. That sounds really interesting.

9:16 spotted cow!! As a Wisconsin boy this was fun to see, solid beer.

70s/80s aesthetics: big ass ashtrays. Good or bad, it just was what there was. Well done.

LGR is such a legend, been watching for 10 years or more and his style is an absolute blast of nostalgia and uniquely comforting at the same time. Gotta say he's also helped me tremendously with insomnia over the years, his voice is so smooth it helps your mind calm down and drift into a restful sleep ☺️, just like I'm about to do right now 😴.

My reactions to pretty much this entire video is a lot of "Wow"s (like Owen Wilson's Wow LOL). Especially that R360 system with that gyro pod, and the amount of people in that convention, both things I would probably get physically sick off pretty quickly if I had to experience, but Wow. I'm pretty much in awe on how cool all those older tech there. You commentary just adds another layer of entertainment to all the footage that you shown in the video. Thank you to you and you brother Luke for sharing the experience of being in VCF Midwest to us folks who weren't there.

Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas is a close second for arcades and pinball. Or third. Always fun to put on your list when you visit.

I totally remember seeing the R360 at Disneyland in the early 90's. It was like $2-4 per play and my folks did not want to take valuable ride time for me to play video games, but it was etched in my mind.

This video is more than a festival, is completed with the visit to arcade game store ( 8-bit Guy visited too) and a plus was, the simulator machine, into the restaurant, is crazy. Thank you so much!

I played one of those R360's in Honolulu Hawaii back in the day. It was like $20 a game and had a attendant. Probably 1991. Crazy experience.

Playing midtown madness on your "wish I was an iMac" emachine was a nice nostalgia trip.

Been a bit since I seen a vintage computer convention. That arcade is awesome. I haven't seen space ace since I was a kid. I miss video arcades I miss taking $20.00 in quarters and playing games all day. Sad that a lot of arcades gone like Gameworks in Seattle. My Nostalgia feels were strong this video. Thank you. I seen that 360, I could not afford it, but it was awesome and you are so LUCKY to play it.

I remember hanging out at the Computer Museum in Brantford with Sid (RIP) and we got an Apple Lisa up and running for the first time. It was fantastic and thrilling to breathe life into such a rare machine.

Omg, seeing Ben Heck wearing a Halo Reach shirt is the single most 2010 thing I can imagine; pure nostalgia right there. I still remember reading about his Xbox 360 laptops in GameInformer magazine back then.

LGR, glad you liked my AnsaFone and the phone display :) All of the phones and faxes on my table were served by the Comdial FXII PBX all the way on the edge.

Glad they had a popular outing. I wish I could have gone. There's always next year. Checking out older computers is really awesome

gotta say i'm migrated from linus lately over to this channel due to content and the delivery. Something about cadence of speech and nostalgia combo is just top notch. I ended up purchasing some Sony mavica cameras after watching your channel. Just something about writing images to a floppy , despite owning a top of the line fujifilm mirrorless something about the mavica line was just awesome. Thanks for all that you do

Brave Firefighters!!! This was the only video game my dad would ever play with me. It's awesome. THE 360 WORKS???

Ohhhh the smile that came to my face, teletype machines, I´ve used those for years at work. So many memories down the lane. Thanks for the awesome vid.

Thanks LGR! Years of great content, looking forwards to years more!

Your living the dream LGR , Thank you and your Brother for this footage , Liked and Shared :) QC

These festivals are great to look at. I hope someday to visit the expo myself! Seems quite amusing, and the amount of stuff is incredible - It's for sure that the event gets bigger with every edition. Thanks for the tour!

Retired NAVY. Hell, I joined in Desert Storm. I went to school and learned in the Teletype. Did not know how to type.... had to learn real quick. And had to learn to read the paper tape dots. It was old when I joined.

Looks like a great event, its been ages since i have been to something like that. That Sega R360 is incredible never knew it existed and great that they have it working which i could imagine is quite a challenge as your not going to find many spare parts laying around lol.

Dude, Quake arcade game is unicorn 🦄. Awesome to see that. Thx for sharing!

Thoroughly enjoyable video. It's nice to see all that old equipment and memories brought back to life. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the demographic isn't all older 50s and 60s + aged, but largely younger. It's one thing to grow up with it and revisit what you remember, but it would appear that for many, it's discovering something totally new from the past before them.

I grew up in Chicago and moved away to Utah for 17 years. I moved back last summer to Chicago. I came across last years mvcf video that you made clint and was absolutely bummed that I didn't know about it and missed the convention. So I made sure I went this year. It was great I am going to attend every year here on out. So I thank you Clint. I went to your booth it was a pleasure to meet you. I brought you the Austin Powers pinball game for the palm pilot. Can't wait to see what it plays like.

I expected 7:45 to sound more like "And before we knew it, we were being led by two strangers into a locked up back room of an old Chinese restaurant west of Chicago, where we were forcibly anesthetized and had our kidneys removed."

Your intro desk area is a 1979-1985 time warp -WELL DONE - that hanging basket lamp pulls it together, my parents had one of those, wall paneling and a cig smoke cloud would take it to 11

That opening set was awesome. My grandpa had an Apple II on an old wood desk, with, what I'm pretty sure, was that EXACT ashtray 😆 That was the setting for my introduction to PCs back in the mid 80s. Spot on opening, dude👍

Man! That Arcade looks like a place straight out of my dreams! Nice video, please do more of these. I enjoyed it

LGR: 25 bucks for an entire day? Oh wow, I can't complain! 8-bit guy: _complains_

I'm somehow super lucky, and this excellent event happens in the town right next to mine, so i never miss a chance to come by and see you and Ben heck and 8bit guy and all the great old computers, it was super crowded and i had to park about a mile away, but it was so very worth it to see this great little how explode! I was the one who gave you the little bag of MCP/Tin Lung Klan stickers its so great to see in "real life" once a year 8)

10 seconds ago video, just great for my lunch

Great video and great photography at the end! I played the R360 at Disneyland around 96/97 and it was incredible. Never forgot that experience.

I used to work on and teach people how to maintain that exact Meridian system and many others. Nice to see someone bringing the old blue iron out!

It was a fun time at the event. While I did spend most of my time talking with Luke while volunteering for Ken, the few moments I spoke with you were excellent. For the folks who don't know, both Luke and Clint are really cool guys. Awsome to hang out with and their swave voices and personalities are indeed not only for the videos, they are genuine people, and I hope to hang out with them again next year. (As long as Ken let's me help out at his table).

Galloping Ghost is 2 blocks from my parents house. I was still living at home when it opened about 10 years ago. Place is amazing! It was also VERY jarring to see you walking through my hometown in this video. I've walked that same stretch of street hundreds of times in my life.

13:17 haha it's me! we did get the minute or so to talk (thanks for signing the SE manual again btw) and it was just nice to finally get to meet you and see the woodgrain 486 in person. hope to see you there again next year!

My vintage computer years when i was younger was with SWTP 6800 and 6809 SS50 bus computer systems which I built up from kits. I knew the ins and outs of these systems like the back of my hand at the time and did allot of programming in machine languages. Was allot of fun back then and got a local job working on similar systems for several years. Then went onto working for Motorola till I retired. thanks for the video.

You have some the most informative videos! I loved seeing all of the retro computers. Thanks!

Lived and worked in that city for many years. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I don't miss it at all. 🙂

Loved that video! Thank you for sharing with us details of your trip like hotel, food, traveling in the road etc. Greetings from Brazil!

Man that arcade was a flashback to my childhood…. So cool.

Seeing the LFC top was a pleasant surprise! Glad you guys had a fun (albeit busy) trip!

As a proud Chicagoan I’m very grateful for both this video and your channel as a whole. You introduced me to a festival I never knew existed and now I want to go there so bad!! Also, glad you enjoyed Galloping Ghost arcade. I’m jealous you managed to see the pinball arcade before I did; I’ve been meaning to take a buddy of mine there who really loves actual pinball machines. Also, my jaw dropped when you mentioned you managed to get a sneak peak at an R360 machine. I was wondering if the arcade staff had one up their sleeve! :D

when you did that sweeping shot at 11:05 I'm subscribed to that whole line up of tables, yourself included. lol

It's really fun to see my favorite RU-vidrs get together. I'm watched a number of vids about this event on different channels and I've enjoyed them all.

The show (and The Galloping Ghost) looks like so much fun. Wish I could have been there. Thank you for sharing this piece of history with us. Very nice to see so many people in attendance. I will plan on attending next year. Although your videos are always fun and fascinating, this video really got me thinking. So cool.

I love seeing all the kids playing with these machines. For many of the grown ups it's about nostalgia, but for the kids they don't have any of that so they experience these things for the first time and it's nice to see them enjoy them. That answering machine was awesome, there is just something special about machine that does it's job by physically moving things, that was also quite a smart way to go about bypassing the phone companies restrictions.

wow I love watching these convention videos, all that retro computer tech is quite the sight to behold! galloping ghost would be cool to visit too... so many freaking games in one place!

I had that Quake game in my garage for 18 years before Doc got it from me. Nice to see it back in play again. Thanks for your video and thank you Doc.

That Weather Channel stuff was awesome to see working in person! And yes, parking was a pain, I was way out on the street this year

20:24 Never thought I'd see Diamonds at an event like this, glad to see it get some love.

I didn't know this was a thing! They are having one in Dallas in June....I will be going. Thank you for sharing.