September 2019 marked the 43rd anniversary of the beginning of the West Coast Computer Society, or WCCS for short. (It was called the British Columbia Computing Society, or BCCS, the first year before it was legally incorporated as a society.) The last official meeting of the WCCS was held 1990-Oct-03, when we voted to disband the club.
The first meeting was held in the basement suite of the Duff brothers in Burnaby, BC, on 1976-Sep-08, with 19 people attending, including me. An interim executive was elected, with Karl Brackhaus of Dynapro Systems as president. As far as I know, the BCCS/WCCS was the very first (micro-)computer club in the Vancouver, BC (Canada) area.
The WCCS also participated in the Pacific Coast Computer Fair Association (PCCFA). In 1990 the "Computer Paper" magazine published a brief history of the first 10 years of the PCCFA -- see pages 50-51.
We held a 43 year anniversary WCCS reunion on Saturday, November 16th, 2019, in Coquitlam. Attendance was 22, with former members coming from as far away as Agassiz, Victoria, and Pender Harbour. Several vintage computers were displayed, including the Z8001-based Proteus (10.4MB .zip file) from Innovative Electronics Technology (IET), that several WCCS members had been part of. Pictures from the reunion have been posted to the WCCS Facebook group page and to a Google photo album -- contact me for more information.
A few days before the reunion, the Tri-City News interviewed David Querbach, Al Mar, and me. The article appeared in the November 14th issue.
Hopefully we will plan another reunion in the near future to accomodate those who were unable to join us for this one, and for those former members who we haven't found yet but will. Maybe we could even organize a Vintage Computer Festival open to the public?
I have several WCCS membership lists from 1976-1988, and one 68XX list from 1987. When I merged all of these lists, I ended up with 439 names! Of course many of these will have passed away by now, including Doug Lockhart and David Maroun. If you were involved with the WCCS in the past, I would love to hear from you! If you have contact information for other people who were associated with the WCCS, please let me know as well.
I scanned the few documents I kept after my last purge (I used to have an almost complete collection of the BCCS/WCCS newsletters):
Here is a list of all newsletters that I know are in the possession of various former members and the Vancouver Archives:
Year J F M A M J J A S O N D <- month ---- ----------------------- 1976 . . . . . . . . s s s 1977 * * * 1978 * * * 1979 * * * * * * * * * 1980 * * * * * * * s * * 1981 * * * * * * * * * * 1982 * * * P 1983 s s - s s s 1984 s s s s s s s s s s s 1985 - s s s s s * s s s s s 1986 s s s s s s s s s s s s 1987 s s s s s s s - s - - s 1988 - - s - - s - - * - - s 1989 - - s - - s - - s 1990 - - . . . s - - . Legend: 'P' = newsletter has been scanned and redacted and posted 's' = newsletter has been scanned but not yet posted (ask me for copy) '*' = newsletter possessed by a member or Vancouver Archives but not yet scanned '-' = combined with previous month(s) '.' = not published ' ' = missing
Note that where two months were combined, or it was published quarterly, the first month is shown as '*' or 'P' or 's' and the following month(s) are shown as '-'. Where a published date wasn't given, the date of the earliest upcoming meeting that it announced is used. Let me know if you have any of the missing issues. (Note that the 1989-Mar issue says 1988 by mistake.)
Some newsletters have already been scanned and redacted and converted to searchable PDF files, ready to be downloaded. These are posted on the separate WCCS Newsletter page. Charlie Gibbs scanned 54 issues, which John Robertson converted to searchable PDF files, but I have not redacted them. Thanks, Charlie and John! (The unredacted versions of the newsletter are only available by special request, for privacy reasons, because they contain mailing addresses and phone numbers of members.) I hope to scan and post more newsletter issues in the near future.
Three of us former WCCS members, plus a friend, attended the Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest, held in Seattle at the Living Computers: museum + labs in February 2018. I exhibited a system I built that is helping in recovering data from old floppy disks by capturing both the analog and digital signals.
Last revised 2024-Jun-08 20:01 PDT.
Copyright 2016- David C. Wiens.