VCF West 2026 — German Educational Computers of the 1980s

VCF West 2026 — Aftermath

The show happened!

VCF West 2026 was a lot of fun — here are my highlights.
August 2026 · Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.

The full VCF West 2026 exhibit table: oscilloscope drawing a vector cube, Microtronic and CP1, and the emulator builds — The whole setup — the **Tektronix scope** drawing the rotating vector cube, the **Busch Microtronic** and **Kosmos CP1** boxes, the *Vector Invaders* controller, and the family of Microtronic emulator builds and the PicoRAM 2090.

Michael Wessel with Jose Corral and Leonard Tramiel at the VCF West 2026 table — Michael Wessel with **Jose Corral** and **Leonard Tramiel** at the exhibit table. Still from “Silicon Valley celebrates its past at Vintage Computer Festival,” © AP Archive — youtu.be/yubh3oMjUns.

Allan Alcorn stopped by

Atari co-founder Allan Alcorn — the engineer behind the original PONG — was taken with the Vector Invaders shooter running on the oscilloscope, and talked through how the 1972 PONG was built entirely from discrete hardware logic, with no microprocessor and no software at all.

Leonard Tramiel & the Lectron kits

Leonard Tramiel shared that he first learned electronics as a kid from the Braun Lectron magnetic building-block kits — a lovely full-circle moment beside a table of 1980s German educational computers.

“You made an oscilloscope do something that it is not supposed to do — like I did back in the day with PONG!” — Allan Alcorn, on the Vector Invaders shooter

Watch the moment — AP Archive coverage Walk my table — full video

📄 Show program: the official VCF West 2026 Program Guide (PDF · © Vintage Computer Federation).

Background Reading — in English

Translated from German

These machines were born in 1980s Germany, and their manuals and the articles about them are German. Here are English translations — start with the overview article for the whole story of all three computers.

★ Start here · the overview

German Educational Computers of the 1980s

The all-in-one English edition of the LOAD-magazine articles covering all three machines — the Busch Microtronic, Kosmos CP1 and Philips MasterLab — with a speed benchmark, modern developments and the Microtronic Phoenix.

Read the article → The original manual, in English

English Busch Microtronic Manuals

An English translation of the original Busch Microtronic 2090 computer-system manual — web + PDF. Hosted by permission of Jörg Vallen / Busch GmbH & Co. KG.

Read the manuals →

Exhibit posters

A3 · click View for the live page, or PDF to print

Philips MasterLab MC6400

3-D Vector Graphics in 1 KB

An INS8070 CPU trainer drawing a rotating wireframe cube, torus and sphere — and a playable vector shooter — live on an analog X-Y oscilloscope, via a home-made R-2R DAC.

View PDF

Busch Microtronic 2090

The 1981 4-bit Trainer

A hex-keypad single-board computer that taught machine code to a generation — its architecture, its programs, and the modern Phoenix rebuild that still runs the original 1981 firmware.

View PDF

Busch Microtronic 2090

A Ten-Year Emulation Journey

The Microtronic rebuilt in hardware: a decade of Arduino-based emulators (2016–2026), from the first Mega 2560 to the Phoenix that runs the original 1981 firmware ROM. The spark goes back to 1985 — Michael's first Microtronic emulator, written in BASIC on an Amstrad CPC 464.

View PDF

Kosmos CP1

Towers of Hanoi

The classic puzzle solved in hand-written machine code on the Kosmos CP1 — driving a robot and an RGB LED matrix — framed by the ancient Tower of Brahma legend.

View PDF

All three machines

Head to Head

The three trainers side by side — CPU, clock, memory, I/O, expansion, cassette and raw speed — and what each one was really best at.

View PDF

For the kids

US-Letter handout · binary, hex & your first program

Take-home handout

Become a Programmer!

A friendly one-pager with the Buschi mascot — count in binary and hex, read your first machine-code program, and learn how to build your own Microtronic.

View PDF