KansasFest: The Longest-Running Apple II Festival
Most Apple products, even commercial failures, are
celebrated by Apple fans, but only the Apple II has a
weeklong festival dedicated to it.
In 1989, a group of users and developers gathered
to keep the machines alive, sharing software knowledge
and hardware hacks in what became the first KansasFest
festival, named after the original organizer who lived in
the Kansas City area.
KansasFest grew out of attempts to keep Apple II
machines going as they were getting phased out. “The
Apple II wasn’t getting much attention. Today it would be
like the iPhone not getting updates for four, five, or six
years,” said Weyhrich, a KansasFest board member. “In
retrospect, Apple was right to see the Mac as the future,
but still….”
Fans of today’s Apple don’t have to understand how
their machine works, and if they encounter a problem,
they can simply make an appointment with the Genius
Bar. But Apple II fans have to know their machines inside
and out, building spreadsheets and databases and, some-
times, even writing their own software. That’s one reason
KansasFest runs a contest for Apple II hacks. On the final
day of the festival, the most creative hacks are awarded
prizes. Hacks have included connecting the pioneering
computer to the latest LCD screens, giving it 8MB of mem-
ory (the highest back in the day was 64kB), and making an
SD card emulate a floppy disk.
“KansasFest was a developers’ conference for the
first five years, and people kept coming back. One year,
it was down to 28 people, and we still had it.”
Weyhrich said the number of festival attendees has
been steadily climbing, with a mix of the original torch
carriers, vintage computer fans, and even teenagers with
a taste for hacking hardware. In recent years, 70 or 80
people have attended, including some kids who weren’t
born when the Apple II was around. A younger genera-
tion is intrigued by the Apple II, Weyrich said, and is now
contributing programs and various work-arounds to give
the Apple II some 21st-century computing powers.
But don’t judge the love for Apple II by just the
KansasFest attendance. There is an Apple II user group
on Facebook of more than 5,600 members called Apple II
Enthusiasts, and if you can’t make the festival in Kansas
City, you can attend the Apple II Festival held in France
every August.
One recent KansasFest epitomized what makes this
gathering so attractive to the fans who keep coming back.
The 28th Annual KansasFest
Yellowed keyboards, monitors, and disk drives sat in
orderly piles. These ancient artifacts of personal comput-
ing certainly weren’t pretty to look at, especially not when
compared to a shiny new MacBook Pro. But 80 infatuated
campers were ready to pounce on the pile. In a matter of
minutes, almost all the hardware would be claimed, and
this Apple II Garage Giveaway was the kickoff for the 28th
annual KansasFest in 2016. The spirit of the festival can
be encapsulated by the official opening cheer: “Apple II
forever!”
Festival attendees from all over the United States
and as far away as Japan and Australia spent five days on
the Rockhurst University campus attending seminars and
swapping software, hardware, old manuals, and copies of
the now-defunct Nibble magazine. In their dorm rooms,
they stayed up all night devising hacks that would give
the Apple II some modern computing powers.
But at the very heart of this festival are stories of
how people became so loyal to the Apple II. For some, it’s
about fulfilling a childhood dream — finally getting that
Apple II that they wanted so badly as a kid. For others, it’s
indulging in nostalgia — like tracking down the very first
car they drove as a teenager.
At the 2016 festival was T. Joseph Carter of Portland,
Oregon, who was born blind. The Apple II helped him to
read and write while in elementary school. “Sitting behind
that keyboard, I could do anything a sighted person
could,” he said.
Javier Rivera of Miami, Florida, remembers grow-
ing up in Mexico and his father smuggling an Apple IIc
into the country. “Look at these things,” Rivera said of the
Apple II. “Thirty-five years later, they still work. Today’s
MacBook won’t make it that far.”
Kathryn Szkotnicki, a teacher from Harpers
Ferry, West Virginia, finally got the Apple IIGS she
had wanted since she was 12. But she had to work for
it. Before the Apple II Garage Giveaway, Szkotnicki
scouted out the monitors, keyboards, and various
peripherals. She emerged from the scrum with all the
pieces she needed, including a mouse and a couple of
game paddles that she draped around her neck.
“The 12-year-old me is very happy,” she said.
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