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Homebrew@30
The Homebrew Computer Club 30 Year Retrospective
Was held at the Vintage Computer Festival 8.0
On the weekend of November 5-6th, 2005 at the
Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
See our full coverage of this event below

Report from the Homebrew@30 Event!


Photo Gallery of the Panel


Full Audio of the Panel


Video sections of the panel

Meeting the Woz! DSC09968.JPG Cake Cutting Ceremony

News coverage of the event


CNET Covers the Homebrew@30 event
and CNET's video segments of the panel (mostly Woz speaking)

Backgrounder on the Homebrew@30 Event

What in Hades was the Homebrew Computer Club?

On March 5, 1975 a very special meeting took place at Gordon French's garage in the then freshly named "Silicon Valley". This was the first gathering of the "Homebrew" Computer Club (also called the Amateur Computer User's Group). Now this was no amateur group of folks but the very acorn of the great tree of the personal computing revolution to come. Want to know where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak introduced the Apple I?... through the Club! The hand-soldered microcomputer grew up to become the personal computer through the guiding hands of Homebrew Club members and the many other clubs and enterprises that popped up like mushrooms in the late 1970s.

What a time and what a Club it was, so we came together on November 5th, 2005, to cut a cake, toggle in a boot loader or two and hear from some of the members of that core kernel team that compiled us the nerd world in which we are all seemingly permanently uploaded.


Bruce Damer -
Convener & "prema-nerd at 13" in 1975

Lee Felsenstein
MC and yardstick whacker

Michael Holley - whiz kid!

Bob Lash - "kid" at Gordon French's garage


Len Shustek -
scored the room (then and now)!


Allen Baum
- helped make Apple I and much more!

Steve Wozniak
well.. he's the Woz!

Read about our Panelists for this event which was held at 1:00pm Saturday November 5th, 2005. Sellam Ismail of the Vintage Computer Festival and Computer History Museum introduced the event and Bruce Damer, curator of the DigiBarn, hosted and emceed it. Lee Felsenstein screened an excerpt from a DVD of a film just released about early Club member and newsletter editor Fred Moore and did a tremendous job of telling stories and keeping the other Club members hopping along.

Homebrew@30 was a special event produced by the DigiBarn Computer Museum (a kind of giant Homebrewer's garage in the Santa Cruz Mountains right next to Silicon Valley) and hosted by the Vintage Computer Festival 8.0 and held on November 5, 2005 in Mountain View, California at the Computer History Museum. At the VCF there were plenty of great exhibits of Homebrew-era gear all weekend (das blinkenlights of the Altair 8800) and a special tour of the DigiBarn was held on late Sunday afternoon.


Check out our special online collection of early Homebrew
Computer Club Newsletters

Preview the incredible Cake Image
for this year's celebration!

To understand more about why we did the Homebrew@30 event or if you want to find out more about the Club please dont forget to see our super duper online exhibit of several years of Homebrew Club newsletters and other memorabilia. Catch our video and audio of the panel too. See our previous two "@30" events, the Maze War Retrospective and Alto 30th birthday party also held at the VCF in 2004 and 2003.

Know any more about the Homebrew Computer Club or have any pictures, movies, stories or artifacts to contribute to this effort? Contact us!

Read more about the Club, its Times and Artifacts

Pages about the Club by the Club Members and Others

The DigiBarn is grateful for the support of former Club members and others who have provided images, stories and more on a series of Club-devoted web sites, which we are featuring below:


From Bob Lash, Memoir of a Homebrew Computer Club Member


From Michael Holley, a Homebrew Computer page and a picture of Michael Holley with his SWTPC system shortly after he moved to Seattle.


See Steve Dompier's People's Computer Company
article here
along with the listings for "Fool on the Hill" and "Daisy"
Erik Klein re-enacting the switching in of the 8080 instructions for Fool on the Hill
from Steve Dompier's listing

Short movie segment from "Triumph of the Nerds" showing actual club meeting


See Len Shustek's page on the last Homebrew club reunion
(in 2001)

More about the Vintage Computer Festival 8.0 and DigiBarn Open House


Take a tour of the VCF 8.0's exhibits and exhibitors

The DigiBarn Open House for the VCF 8.0 attendees

The DigiBarn's own Online Exhibits of Homebrew-related stuff!

The DigiBarn has been gathering artifacts, running systems and stories about the Club and its times for several years. We invite you to explore (and add to) this growing online exhibit which is featured at the links below.


See our great collection of
Homebrew Computer Club
Newsletters
(1975-77)

The Altair 8800

"das blinkenlights!"

MITS Computer Notes

The First West Coast Computer Faire, YOU can be a part of it!

Rich Didday's classic "Finite State Fantasies" cartoons about the microcomputer culture

Byte Magazine beginnings... amongst others covering the Homebrewing revolution

Other DigiBarn Homebrew-related Links:

The Homebrew Computer Club as depicted at the Smithsonian Institution

Our People's Computer Company Newsletters from the same time period

Ted Nelson's Computer Lib

Our Newsletter announcing this event


Know any more about the Homebrew Computer Club or have any pictures, movies, stories or artifacts to contribute to this effort? Contact us!

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