In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast...we have a surprise roundtable with guests Nir Dary, Jason Moore, Corey Koltz, and Bill Kendrick!
READY!
ANTIC Episode 84 - Atari Resolutions for the New Year
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast...we each talk about our top Atari resolution for 2022 (although maybe not the type of resolution you were thinking), and discuss all the Atari news we could find for December, 2021.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
Recent Interview Shows
News
YouTube videos this month
New at GitHub
Word from our Sponsor
ANTIC Episode 83 - The Dog Ate It
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast...Kay forgets to wear his ANTIC t-shirt, we all have new members of the family (and Brad’s eats everything in sight), Kay goes crazy scanning Atari magazines, and we have lots of listener feedback.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
New at GitHub
Listener Feedback
Jack Verson was the founder of JV Software, where he programmed and published several games for the Atari 8-bit computers: Action Quest, Ghost Encounters, and Journey to the Planets. Roklan Software repackaged Action Quest and Ghost Encounters into a single game, titled Castle Hassle.
As part of On-Time Software, Jack programmed the Atari versions of Gyruss, James Bond 007, and perhaps other games, published by Parker Brothers. He ported the Atari 8-bit version of Joust to the Commodore 64. As Applied Systems Engineering, he programmed Time Tunnel for Commodore 64.
This interview took place on December 2, 2021.
AtariMania's list of Jack's software
James Bond 007
Gyruss
Journey to the Planets version differences and bugs
Larry Kalpan thanks Jack in the manual for 2600 Activision Bridge
Time Tunnel for Commodore 64
Jack's company, CDOAN
Mark Benioff review of Action Quest
Popeye "V1" for Commodore discovered
Verson quoted in Compute! "How the Pros Write Computer Games"
ANTIC Episode 82 - FujiNet to Take Over the World!
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast...we have special guest Thom Cherryhomes who tells us why FujiNet is aiming to take over the world, we discuss the recent VCF Midwest and VCF East, and of course tell you everything going on in the world of Atari.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
New at GitHub
Listener Feedback
Dave Johnson: Demon Attack, Atlantis; APX Lookahead; Personal Financial Management
Dave Johnson programmed software for the little-known Interact Model One computer, and later worked as a programmer for Atari, where he created the game Lookahead, which was published by Atari Program Exchange. Lookahead is a fun little strategy board game that you can play against the computer or another human.
We think Dave Johnson programmed the Atari Personal Financial Management System, a slick-looking but buggy home finance package that Atari kept delaying, finally released a year late, then quickly discontinued. Read Bill Lange's blog post for the full story about that program.
After Atari, Dave worked at Imagic, where he programmed the Atari 8-bit versions of the games Demon Attack and Atlantis. There, he also created the game Quick Step! for the Atari 2600.
This interview took place on October 12, 2021. A video version is also available.
AtariMania's list of Dave's Atari 8-bit games
Play or download Lookahead
Lookahead in the fall 1981 APX catalog
Bill Lange research on Atari Personal Financial Management System
Personal Financial Management System at AtariWiki
Interact Model One computer
Dave on Twitter
This interview on YouTube
Margaret (Akin) Guilbault, Atari Camper
Margaret Akin was one of the children who attended Atari's computer camps, and one of the kids who was featured in The Magic Room, Atari's movie about the camps. Her name is now Margaret Guilbault.
Atari ran its summer camps from 1982 through 1984 at several locations around the United States. That first year, Atari commissioned a film about its summer camps, which was filmed at the San Diego location. Margaret attended Atari camp that first year in San Diego, then again in 1983 the Minnesota location.
It turns out Margaret's first year at a computer camp was in 1981, the summer before Atari's first camps. Her first computer camp experience was at Zaca Lake -- near Santa Barbara, California -- hosted by a company called Computer Camp Inc., which used Atari computers.
I talked with Margaret about her experiences at those camps, and taking part in the filming of The Magic Room, on September 12, 2021.
You can watch The Magic room at YouTube and Internet Archive. In previous interviews I've talked with filmmaker Bob Elfstrom; Linda (Gordon) Brownstein, the Atari vice president who oversaw the camp project; and other Atari computer campers.
The Magic Room (18-minute version)
Newspaper article about Computer Camp Inc.'s Zaca Lake camp
ANTIC Interview 419 - Bob Elfstrom, The Magic Room
ANTIC Special Episode - Atari Summer Camp
Eric Podietz, Interactive Picture Systems
Eric Podietz was co-founder of Interactive Picture Systems, a company that created software for 8-bit computers from 1982 through 1984. The company's first program was PAINT! for the Atari 8-bits, which was developed at the Superboots software development lab located at the Capital Children's Museum in Washington, D.C.. PAINT! was first published by Reston then by Atari.
Their next program was Movie Maker, an animation program. Next came three educational titles published by Spinnaker Software: Trains, a business simulation; Grandma's House, a digital dollhouse; and Aerobics, a fitness program. The company also created Operation Frog, simulated frog dissection software for the Apple II and Commodore 64.
This interview took place on September 9, 2021. In it, we discuss Guy Nouri, Ann Lewin-Benham, and Bill Bowman, whom I have previously interviewed.
After the interview, Eric sent me the source code for his early Apple II program Painter Power, which I scanned and uploaded to Internet Archive.
This interview on YouTube
ANTIC Interview 410 - Ann Lewin-Benham, Director of Capital Children's Museum
ANTIC Interview 407 - Guy Nouri, Interactive Picture Systems
ANTIC Interview 278 - Bill Bowman, CEO of Spinnaker Software
Reston Software's Paint manual
The Designers Behind MovieMaker in Compute! Gazette Issue 15
IPS feature in Starlog Magazine Issue 084
Movie Maker feature in Creative Computing April 1984
Painter Power source code
Emma One Sock fabric
ANTIC Episode 81 - Too Much Commodore
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… we wax philosophical about Raspberry Pi upgrades for the Atari, discuss the drama that was the Atari fest of the past, and talk WAY too much Commodore!
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
Tom Halfhill discusses Charles Brannon and SpeedScript
Charles Brannon was program editor at Compute! Publications from 1980 until 1986. He wrote and edited articles for Compute! Magazine and Compute!'s Gazette. His Linkedin profile says that his "primary responsibility was crafting BASIC and assembly language software creations. Secondary was managing other young programmers." Charles' wrote and ported many type-in programs for the Atari 8-bit and other computers. His Atari programs included FontMaker, a character set editor and The Atari Wedge, for adding commands To Atari BASIC.
His most popular and well-known program was SpeedScript, an assembly language word processor that was available first for the Commodore 64 in the March 1985 issue. In subsequent issues -- one month after another -- versions were published for VIC-20, then the Atari 8-bits, then the Apple II. Each version was a type-in listing that -- after excruciating hours of careful entry -- would build a powerful, functional word processor. Charles wrote a couple of books about SpeedScript (one specific to Atari and one specific to the Commodore versions) which contained the manual, type-in program code, and commented assembly language source code.
I've been trying to get an interview with Charles Brannon since 2015, to talk about his time at Compute! in general and SpeedScript specifically. This year, I heard back from his wife Margaret, who told me that Charles suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2016 and no longer feels confident in his memory. I won't be able to interview Charles.
But, Tom Halfhill, Charles' old friend and colleague at Compute!, volunteered to talk to me about Charles. Tom was a supervisor at Compute! when Charles wrote SpeedScript, and often discussed which features to include and the problems he encountered. Tom worked at Compute! Publications from 1982 to 1988, starting as the first Features Editor for Compute! Magazine later becoming Editor. He was the launch editor of Compute!'s Gazette for Commodore, Compute!'s Atari ST Disk and Magazine, Compute!'s PCjr Magazine, and Compute!'s PC Magazine.
This is not the first time I've talked with Tom: I interviewed him about his time at Compute back in 2016. This time I talk with him with an emphasis on Charles Brannon and SpeedScript. (To be perfectly honest, we stuck to those topics for about 35 minutes. After that, we found other interesting things to talk about, most of which I left in this episode.)
This interview took place on July 22, 2021.
This interview at Youtube
Compute! articles by Charles Brannon at AtariMagazines.com
SpeedScript book, Atari version, at Internet Archive
SpeedScript book, Atari version, at AtariArchives.org
Download SpeedScript for Atari or try it in your browser
My 2016 interview with Tom
Tom's web site
ANTIC Interview 206 - Richard Mansfield
ANTIC Interview 7 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - Bill Wilkinson
Donald Dixon, Robotics R&D at Atari Research
Donald Dixon worked at Atari Research from 1983 through 1984, under Dr, Alan Kay. There, he worked in robotics research and development, working on a robotic wheelchair. After Atari, Donald worked at Axlon, Nolan Bushnell's toys and consumer robotics company; and Worlds of Wonder, the company most famous for the animatronic bear toy, Teddy Ruxpin.
This interview took place on July 27, 2021.
Don's web site
ANTIC Interview 11 - David Small
ANTIC 2013 Chris Crawford interview
ANTIC Interview 420 - Brenda Laurel, Atari Research
ANTIC Interview 421 - Jim Leiterman, Atari Research Group
ANTIC Episode 80 - Atari Dunking Booth
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… we discuss the exciting progress being made around the 576NUC+ project, all of the great new Atari projects from the mind of Jason Moore, Kay’s awesome series of recent interviews, and we dunk your minds in the deep booth that is Atari news!
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
Intro
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
New at Github
Jim Leiterman, Atari Research Group
Brenda Laurel, Atari Research
Dr. Brenda Laurel worked at Atari from 1980 through 1984. She began as software specialist for educational applications then soon became manager of software strategy for the home computer division. In mid-1982, she joined Atari Corporate Research at the Sunnyvale research laboratory, where she worked with Alan Kay.
After Atari, she worked at Activision as director of software development. Later she founded Purple Moon, a software company focused on creating games for young girls; and co-founded Telepresence Research, a company focused on first-person media and virtual reality.
This interview took place on July 15, 2021. Check the show notes for links to articles she wrote for Atari Connection magazine; her doctoral dissertation, "Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System"; scans of memos on the subject of interactive fantasy that she wrote while at Atari Research; and more.
Brenda's web site
ANTIC Episode 79 - Basically MyTek and Nir
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… we discuss all the great work that MyTek is doing with Atari hardware (including the 576NUC), Nir Dary surprises all of the hosts with (late/early) Christmas (or birthday) Atari gifts, and Randy gets unmercifully teased about his overuse of the word “basically”.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
New at Github
Listener Feedback
End of Show Music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2klUVHRWtyk Original Atari 800 POKEY Chiptune by Cobra Commander
Bob Elfstrom, The Magic Room
Interview and research by Kay Savetz.
From 1982 through 1984, Atari ran summer computer camps at several locations around the United States. I covered the Atari camps extensively in a special episode in 2015. Now it's summer 2021, and we're going back to camp!
That first year of the computer camps, in 1982, Atari commissioned a film about its summer camps, about the kids and teachers who were there, about the process of learning about computers, about kids challenging themselves, and about making friends at summer camp. Atari commissioned filmmaker Bob Elfstrom and his partner Lucy Hilmer to make the film. They shot the 26-minute film at the University of California, San Diego campus in 1982. It would be titled The Magic Room and was released the next year.
There are many scenes in the computer lab: we see close-ups of kids concentrating, thinking about the logic of their programming projects. Their faces light up as they solve their problem. There’s an adorable scene with a robotic, computer controlled turtle running across the floor, racing an actual turtle. There's kids riding horses at magic hour, and singing by the campfire, and finally an epic pillow fight, with feathers flying everywhere in the dorm hallways. The end credits were made with an Atari 800, naturally.
This interview is with the filmmaker, Bob Elfstrom. (Lucy Hilmer was unavailable for an interview.) Bob has a long list of film credits to his name. He is known for his work on Johnny Cash! The Man, His World, His Music (1969), and Mysteries of the Sea (1980) -- his IMDB page lists scores of credits.
It's easy to watch The Magic Room (and you should!). It's available at YouTube and Internet Archive.
My interview with Bob took place on June 17 and June 25, 2021.
Watch The Magic Room
The Magic Room Trailer
This is the second interview episode about Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow.
ANTIC Episode 78 - The Extremely Elderly Computer Geeks Club
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… We discuss lots of new things you can do with your FujiNet, the differences in FujiNet versions, the Old Computer Geeks Club, and other recent Atari news...
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
ANTIC Interview 417 - Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow
Bob Puff, Computer Software Services
Bob Puff is owner of Computer Software Services, a company that began creating hardware and software for the Atari 8-bit computers in 1982. Bob became president of the company in 1991. He designed a bevy of hardware products for the Atari computers, including The Black Box, a hard drive host adapter; The Multiplexer, a networking system; the UltraSpeed Plus operating system upgrade; upgrades for the XF551 floppy drive; the Super-E Burner EPROM burner; and others. He also created a number of popular utility programs, including the BobTerm terminal program; Disk Communicator, to convert boot disks to a single compressed file for transfer over modem; and MYDOS version 4.53; among other software.
This interview took place on April 27, 2021.
Computer Software Services legacy site
1993 Computer Software Services catalog scan
ANTIC Interview 393 - Charles Marslett, MYDOS and FastChip
Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, Atari Game Research Group
Valerie Atkinson was a member of Atari's Game Research Group. Now named Valerie Manfull, she was on the team that designed and programmed the game Excalibur, along with Chris Crawford and Larry Summers. Excalibur was published by Atari Program Exchange in fall 1983. She is also one of the programmes of Ballsong, along with Douglas Crockford. Ballsong is a music and graphics demo program released by Atari, in which a ball bounces on the screen in response to an improvised tune. She was one of the programmers, with Ann Marion, of TV Fishtank, a demonstration of an artificially intelligent fish. (It's unclear if the fishtank program was released anywhere, though it apparently was shown at the 1984 SIGgraph conference.)
This interview took place on April 22, 2021.
ANTIC Episode 4 - Chris Crawford
ANTIC Interview 240 - Douglas Crockford
TV Fishtank at SIGgraph
Jim Leiterman describes TV Fishtank
Chris Crawford describes the development of Excalibur in The Art of Computer Game Design
Excalibur announced in Atari Program Exchange, fall 1983
Excalibur review in Atari Connection
Excalibur at AtariMania
Video of Ballsong
ANTIC Episode 77 - Jason Moore, PhD
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… Jason Moore joins us to discuss his atariprojects.org Web site and we discuss all the news rocking the Atari 8-bit world...
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
Linda Brownstein, Atari VP Special Projects
As I've researched Atari and it's 8-bit computer projects over the years, one name has come up over and over again, attached to the most interesting projects. Linda S. Gordon. Executive Director of Atari Computer Camps. Linda. Executive Producer of The Magic Room, Atari's movie about its camps. Atari's collaboration with Club Med to offer computer labs at vacation destinations — Linda again. Atari Club, the fan group that published Atari Age magazine - Linda launched that. More recently, in my interview with Ann Lewin-Benham of the Capital Children's Museum, Linda's name came up once again -- she was the liaison between Atari and the museum. Linda worked on the most interesting projects.
Today, her name is Linda Brownstein. Linda joined Atari in December 1980 as Vice President of Special Projects, where she worked on most of the projects that I mentioned before. In October 1983 she became Senior Vice President in Atari's Education group. She left the company in July 1984 after Jack Tramiel took over the company.
This interview took place on April 21, 2021.
ANTIC Interview 78 - Manny Gerard, The Man Who Fired Nolan
ANTIC Special Episode - Atari Summer Camp
ANTIC Interview 410 - Ann Lewin-Benham, Capital Children's Museum
ANTIC Interview 185 - Ted Kahn
Atari Computer Camps — The Magic Room
Video version of this interview
Mark Simonson, Atari Artist and Font Designer
Mark Simonson used his Atari computers who create art that was published in magazines in the 1980s, including a portrait of Nolan Bushnell that was commissioned by TWA Ambassador, an inflight magazine; a colorful street scene for the cover of Minnesota Monthly, the magazine of Minnesota Public Radio; and a juggler for the cover of Credit Union Advantage magazine, among others.
Professionally, Mark is a font designer. He created Atari Classic, a free TrueType font family for modern computers that looks like the Atari 8-bit screen font. Today, you'll see Atari Classic used in many Atari emulators, web sites, the WUDSN IDE, and elsewhere.
This interview took place on April 15, 2021.
Mark's Atari reminisce blog post
Mark's Mac/Atari Fusion site
Mark's Nolan Bushnell portrait in Hi-Res Magazine Issue 1
A wild Mark appears on AtariAge
FujiNet
This interview on YouTube
Ann Lewin-Benham, Director of Capital Children's Museum
Ann Lewin-Benham was executive director of the Capital Children's Museum in Washington, D.C. The museum was home to the first public-access computer center in the nation’s capital, and indeed, one of the first in the United States. In 1981, Atari and Apple each donated dozens of computers to the museum. The exact number is unclear, but 30 is the number I've seen most often for Atari's contribution.
The computer lab was called The Future Center. There, the museum offered computer literacy classes for people of all ages, from Compu-Tots for preschoolers, to programming classes for adults, there was even a computer literacy session for members of Congress. It also used the lab for birthday parties. (Last year, I interviewed a woman who had her 8th birthday party at the museum.) The museum used more of its computers in its exhibit on communication. It established a software development laboratory, called Superboots, in which developers created custom softare for the museum, and one product that was released commercially: the graphics program PAINT!
In a 1982 article titled A Day At The Capital Children's Museum, Melanie Graves described the scene:
"My twelve-year-old friend Sarah and I went to the museum to explore the computers. There are several dozen computers scattered throughout the building which are used for exhibits, classroom teaching and the development of educational software...
A machine that calls itself "Wisecracker" is the noisest of the computers that beckon visitors to the Communication exhibit. "My-name- is-Wise-crack-er," it says in a monotone, "Come-type-to-me." This message repeats endlessly until someone types at the keyboard or turns off the computer. "Hello, how are you?" Sarah typed, and pressed the return key. "Hel-lo-how-are-you," the machine’s voice responded. Sarah typed for awhile longer and then proclaimed, "It sure is dumb, but its voice is kind of cute."
The computer next to Wisecracker has a data base program that asked Sarah her name, where she came from, and other questions. It informed her that she was the thirty-seventh person from Virginia to type in data that day... "Fifty-five percent of the people who came here were girls," she told me. Next to the data base, a computer is set up with a music program. Sarah pressed some random keys, causing notes to sound. At the same time, the letter names of the notes appeared on the keys of a piano that was displayed on the screen.
There is also a Teletext terminal that tells inquirers about weather predictions, and news releases, the latest acquisitions at the public library, local cultural events and whatever else has been entered into the data base for that day...
After playing with Teletext, Sarah and I went to the Future Center, a room equipped with twenty Atari 800s. On weekdays, the classroom is available to school groups ranging from prekindergarten to high school. On weekends, families arrive for courses in programming. Classes have also been created for working people, senior citizens, community groups, congressional spouses and other special interest groups. This summer more than sixty students from the Washington, D.C. public schools attended one of two free month-long computer camps at the museum."
This interview took place on April 2, 2021.
Ann's web site
Museum in Atari ConnectionVolume 1 Number 4
A Day At The Capital Children's Museum
ANTIC Episode 76 - The Bill Kendrick Show
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… Bill Kendrick gets more mentions than when he’s on the show, Kay discovers he owns more Atari disk drives than the rest of the Atari community combined, and we discuss all the news rocking the Atari 8-bit world.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
Commercial
New at Github
Listener Feedback
Closing
ANTIC Interview 408 - David Maynard, Electronic Arts Worms?
David Maynard created the game/simulation "Worms?" Published by Electronic Arts in 1983, it was a launch title -- one of the five initial releases from the company. David, one of EA's first employees, wrote Worms? for the Atari 8-bit in FORTH. It was later ported to the Commodore 64.
Worms is an interactive version of Paterson's Worms, a family of cellular automata devised in 1971 by Mike Paterson and John Conway. It is an unusual program, in which the player teaches wormlike creatures how to move on a hexagonal grid -- what direction to move in various situations. The worm's goal is to to grow and survive, and to capture more space on the grid than its competitors. Up to four worms could play simultaneously, with any combination of human- and computer-controlled worms.
But the program's manual didn't tell you all that straight off. In fact, here's the first thing you saw after opening the package: "You will find detailed instructions enclosed. Do not read them. Instead, sit down and get started. Don't ask how. Just start. You know how these things work... Resist them. Do not read them for a very long time. In fact, do not read them until you know how the game works... Then never read the instructions. Innocence is bliss."
David also collaborated on Cut & Paste, a word processor published by Electronic Arts in 1984.
After our interview, David sent me a binder of Worms? development documentation and source code for Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64, all of which I have scanned and are available at Internet Archive and GitHub. The originals are going to the Strong Museum of Play, at David's request.
This interview took place on March 4, 2021.
Worms? source code for Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64
Scans of printed Worms? source code
Worms? Development Notes
David's blog
Worms? at AtariMania
Michael Beeler's original Paterson's Worms paper
Martin Gardner's article in Scientific American
Darworms, Javascript version of Worms?
Darworms instructions and explanation
More Paterson's worm math
EA We See Farther poster
Atari at the Science Fair: Michael Fripp: Silent E
An article was published in the Daily Press newspaper of Newport News, Virginia on February 13 1985, titled "Best in Show at Science Fair: Computer program helps young readers conquer the 'silent e' challenge'.
Two years ago Michael Fripp wanted to make sure his younger brother didn't face a hard time learning how to deal with the "silent e" principle in reading lessons. Putting his own Atari computer to work, Michael developed a fun, educational computer program designed to teach then 6-year-old Daniel how to successfully pronounce words like "cap," "tub" and "man" when an "e" is added to each.
"I remember the trouble I had with 'silent e' and didn't want him to have that trouble," says 13-year-old Michael, an eighth grader at Queens Lake Intermediate School. "There are lots of math but few English programs for computers. I hope to bridge that gap."
Michael went on to expand the "silent e" program, complete with more detailed instruction and graphics, through his computer science class at school and entered it as an exhibit in the York County Science Fair. Michael's educational reading program — "Silent E: A Program for K-3" — was judged best in show.
"We were pleased and surprised a computer program was picked because usually the judges pick pure science," says Carolyn Gaertner, who teaches math and computer science at the intermediate school.
Michael's computer program involves a simple story outline about an earthling named Tim and his spaceship landing on the planet EOP which is ruled by the Silent E's. There, Tim learns how the Silent E's simply and quickly turn words such as "pan" into "pane" with the addition of their favorite letter...
He has copyrighted the program and hopes to market it commercially. More than 100 hours of work have gone into the project...
"Computers are like a fever; they grow on you," says the young man. "I try to do a lot of programming at home but homework really limits me."
The large photograph accompanying the article shows young Michael, replete with calculator watch, in front of an Apple II computer, not an Atari.
I talked with Dr. Fripp to hear all about his program.
This interview took place on February 28, 2021.
Intro song: Silent E by Tom Lehrer
Heidi Brumbaugh, Antic and START Magazines
Heidi Brumbaugh worked at Antic Publishing, where she started off as editorial clerk, then was promoted to editorial assistant, for both Antic magazine and START magazine, then was programs editor for START Magazine. She wrote many articles for Antic and START, including three programs for the 8-bits published in Antic: Red, White and Blue, a board game; Hot and Cold, a Master Mind-type game; and Antic Prompter, a teleprompter application.
She met her husband through Antic publishing, START author and programmer Jim Kent, who also created the Cyber Paint program for Atari ST.
This interview took place on February 28, 2021.
List of Antic articles by Heidi Brumbaugh
List of START articles by Heidi Brumbaugh
Heidi's programs at Atarimania
Heidi's review of Linkword Languages
Cyber Paint by Jim Kent
2013 Interview with Jim Capparell, Founder of Antic Magazine
Atari at the Science Fair: Scott Ryder: Atari-Controlled Robot
Here's an article from The Fresno Bee (Fresno, California) dated April 15, 1982: "Science proves Fair game to young minds".
"Joseph Paul Ogas, 17, has designed a cheaper way to manipulate material beneath a microscope. Garey Nishimura, 13, has evaluated the relative flammability of several household fabrics. Theirs were the big winners among the 693 projects that filled the Fresno Convention Center Exhibit Hall for this year’s California Central Valley Science and Engineering Fair.
"There were other interesting projects that didn’t win big [such as]
'The Effects of Birth Control Pills on Plants,' and 'Determining the Correlation Between Canine Howling, Cockroach Activity and Earthquake Prediction'."
And later -- in the article's final paragraph, the reason for this interview: "Runners up [included] Scott Ryder, a sixth-grader at Ayer Elementary School: "Can an Atari 800 Control a Robot With Software?"
Can an Atari 800 control a robot with software? And if so, why did an awesome Atari-controlled robot only earn a runner-up award at the Science and Engineering Fair? I talked with Scott to find out.
This interview took place on February 21, 2021.
ANTIC Episode 75 - Video Wars
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast… we discuss the merits of Sophia vs. VBXE for video upgrades, kick off the BASIC 10-liners contest, discuss some new games, and talk about numerous hardware upgrades that are coming.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
Recent Interviews
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Archive.org
Dan Kramer, Atari Trak-Ball Controllers
Dan Kramer worked at Atari from 1980 to 1984 in the consumer engineering group where he created products for the home computers and home video games. He championed the creation of the Trak-Ball accessories for the Atari game consoles and computers, and received a patent for his digital-to-analog interface for the Atari 5200 trak-ball. He also worked on the French (SECAM) version of the Atari XL computers, the Atari 2700, and various other projects.
This interview took place on December 18, 2020.
Playing Catch-Up: Dan Kramer (2005 interview): https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/97175/Playing_CatchUp_Dan_Kramer.php
Patent: Digital-analog conversion for shaft encoders: https://patents.justia.com/patent/4496936
Video version of this interview at YouTube: https://youtu.be/l0E6BCrhka0
ANTIC Episode 74 - Name Wars
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast… Kevin (er... Kay) and Randy have a name fight and, as usual, we bring you all the Atari 8-bit news that’s fit to print.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
Recent Interviews
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at GitHub
New at Archive.org
Feedback
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
The Famous Computer Cafe
This is a podcast episode featuring three interviews with people who created a radio show that did hundreds of interviews.
The Famous Computer Cafe was -- not a restaurant -- but a radio program that aired from 1983 through the first quarter of 1986. The program included computer news, product reviews, and interviews.
The program was created by three people — who were not only the on-air voices, but did all the work around the program: getting advertisers, buying air time, researching each day's computer news, booking interviews -- everything. Those three people were Andrew Velcoff, Michael Walker (now Michael FireWalker), and Ellen Fead Hansen (later Ellen Walker, now Ellen Fields.) For this episode of Antic, I got to talk with all three of The Famous Computer Cafe's proprietors.
There were several versions of the show, which aired on several radio stations, primarily in California. A live, daily half-hour version allowed phone calls from listeners. Taped versions (running a half-hour and up to two hours) also aired daily. The show started in 1983 on two stations in the Los Angeles area: KFOX 93.5 FM and KIEV 870 AM. In 1985 it began airing in the California Bay Area: on KXLR 1260 AM in San Francisco and KCSM 91.1 FM in San Matro, and KSDO 1130 AM in San Diego.
Also in 1985 a nationally syndicated, half-hour non-commercial version of The Famous Computer Cafe was available via satellite to National Public Radio stations around the United States, though it's not clear today which stations ran it.
To me, the most exciting thing about the show was the interviews. The list of people that the show interviewed is a who's-who of tech luminaries of the early 1980s. But not just computer people: they interviewed anyone whose work was touched by personal computer technology. musicians, professors, publishers, philosophers, journalists, astrologers.
The cafe aired interviews with Philip Estridge, the IBM vice president who was responsible for developing the PC; Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates; Atari Chairman Jack Tramiel; Bill Atkinson, developer of MacPaint; Infocom's Joel Berez; Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek; musician Herbie Hancock; Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts; author Douglas Adams; Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog; psychologist Timothy Leary; science fiction writer Ray Bradbury; synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog; and pop star Donny Osmond. The list goes on and on and on. By mid-1985, the show had run more than 300 half-hour interviews.
Here's the bad news. Those episodes, those interviews, are lost. Today, a recording of only one Cafe episode is known to exist. That show, which aired January 2, 1986, includes an interview with Rich Gold, creator of the Activision simulation Little Computer People; a call-in from tech journalist John Dvorak; and commercials for Elephant Floppy Disks and Microsoft Word. The entire 29-minute episode is available at Internet Archive, with the gracious permission of the show's creators. It's an amazing time capsule -- which survived because Rich Gold, interviewed on the program, saved a cassette of that show. Perhaps, somewhere, there are hundreds more episodes waiting to be re-discovered — if someone has the recordings. If you do, contact me at antic@ataripodcast.com.
The good news is that transcripts of six interviews do exist (and are now online): Timothy Leary, Donny Osmond, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky; Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series; Tom Mahon, author of Charged Bodies; and Jack Nilles, head of the University of Southern California Center for Futures Research.
Check this episode's show notes, at AtariPodcast.com, for links to the one episode, the six transcripts, and the cool Famous Computer Cafe logo.
You'll hear the interviews in the order in which I recorded them. First up is Michael FireWalker, then Ellen Fields, then Andrew Velcoff.
The interview with Michael FireWalker took place on May 27, 2020. The interview with Ellen Fields took place on June 1, 2020. The interview with Andrew Velcoff took place on July 3, 2020.
Special thanks to fellow researcher Devin Monnens, and the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University.
This podcast used excerpts from the one The Famous Computer Cafe episode that is known to exist. That episode, now available at Internet Archive, was digitized by Stanford University (the physical tape is in their special collections located in the Stanford Series 9 of the Rich Gold Collection (M1510), Box 2.)
If you have any other recordings of any Famous Computer Cafe episodes, please contact me at antic@ataripodcast.com.
The Famous Computer Cafe 1986-01-02 episode
The Famous Computer Cafe interview transcripts
The Famous Computer Cafe ads, photos, articles
ANTIC Episode 73 - Randy’s Personality Board
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast… we have a ton of Christmas gift ideas for that Atari nerd in your life (even if that nerd is you); we find out Randy has a broken personality board; and we bring you the Atari 8-bit news to fill out your life.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
Recent Interviews
News
Shows
Christmas Gift Ideas
YouTube videos this month
New at GitHub
New at Archive.org
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
Suzanne Ciani, pioneer in electronic music
Suzanne Ciani is a pioneer in electronic music, Grammy-nominated composer, and recording artist. In the 1980's, she created music for television commercials, corporate tags, and audio logos for Atari as well as many other companies. She also created the soundtrack for the 1980 Bally pinball machine, Xenon. In addition to being an early adopter of electronic music, she educated the world about it, demonstrating sound design techniques on The David Letterman Show, 3-2-1 Contact, and other popular media.
This interview took place on November 5, 2020.
Suzanne Ciani's web site
Suzanne Ciani Creates The Soundtrack For A Pinball Machine
A Life In Waves trailer
Suzanne Ciani interview in ANP Quarterly Vol 2/No 7
2012 Suzanne Ciani interview in LA Times Music Blog
Suzanne Ciani on Letterman
Suzanne Ciani on 3-2-1 Contact
Atari Video Game Summer commercial
This interview at YouTube
ANTIC Episode 72 - Pick and Place
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast… we have as a guest Mr. Gavin Haubelt who runs the Vintage Computer Center and who is feverishly producing #FujiNets for the Atari community, Brad as the host of this episode shows why he’s considered the master of segues, and we talk about all the new hardware available or coming (such as the world’s smallest Atari 8-bit).
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
Making the Boxes for collectors of the Atari 800 xl and the Drive 1050 to keep the collections in perfect condition The scheme and prints in:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zE68...
New at Archive.org
Listener Feedback
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
Jim Tittsler, Atari 1600 prototype
Jim Tittsler got my attention with a tweet, an old photo of a computer in a PC-style case, connected to Atari joysticks and disk drive. In the tweet, Jim wrote: "A prototype of what we hoped would become the #atari 1600: an Atari 800 grafted on to an IBM PC compatible. A Jekyll/Hyde mashup allowing you to plug in cartridges, SIO drives, and PC expansion cards. It seemed a good idea at the time."
So I reached out to Jim to learn more about that computer, and his time at Atari.
Jim worked in Atari's Special Projects Group, where he worked on several pie-in-the-sky, unreleased, home computer projects including the Atari 1600. When Atari was sold to Jack Tramiel, he was re-hired, where he worked on the Atari ST, the Atari PC-1 IBM compatible, and other projects. He worked at Atari for more than a decade.
This interview took place on September 9, 2020.
Video version of this interview at YouTube
Jim's Atari 1600 tweet
Dan Noguerol (Farb): Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative
Two interviews with the same person, recorded more than four years apart. Dan Noguerol is better known to the Atari community as Farb. He is the mastermind behind the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative, and years ago created SIO2Arduino, an Arduino-based disk drive emulator.
I interviewed Farb on August 29, 2019, where we talked primarily about the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative. That interview took place at the Fujiama Atari event in Lengenfeld, Germany. Our friend Roland Wassenberg sat in on the interview. Shortly after doing that interview, I learned that Randy Kindig had also interviewed Farb, on April 20, 2015, but got busy and hadn't published the interview.
So in this episode, two interviews with Farb: my more recent interview first, then we'll go back to 2015 to hear Randy's interview.
...
Since this interview was recorded, I received my SuperCard Pro, and have used it to digitize a couple hundred Atari disks. I've also digitized dozens of Atari cassette tapes. With the Software Preservation Initiative web site, the process has gotten a lot easier. The Kryoflux and SuperCard Pro hardware and software still isn't as foolproof as I'd like, but there's been progress on that front for sure.
Next, Randy's 2015 interview. In it, they discuss the Software Preservation Initiative, which was at a much earlier stage at that point, and SIO2Arduino. SIO2Arduino is an Atari 8-bit device emulator that runs on the Arduino platform. It connects to Atari 8-bit hardware and emulates a single Atari 1050 disk drive. In the years since this interview was recorded, the project has largely been made obsolete by projects like the S-Drive-MAX and FujiNet. But Farb's work on SIO2Arduino, and making it open-source, absolutely laid the groundwork for those newer hardware projects.
Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative
SIO2Arduino web site
SIO2Arduino at GitHub
ANTIC Episode 71 - Goodbye, Curt Vendel
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast...we say goodbye to good friend and Atari legend Curt Vendel and bring you lots of other Atari news.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
Recent Interview Shows
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Github
New at Archive.org
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
Youth Advisory Board: Steve Cohen
This is the eighth in a series of episodes featuring the kids of Atari's Youth Advisory Board. In 1983, Atari formed a Youth Advisory Board, selecting teenagers from around the United States to share their opinions about computers and video games, test software, and promote Atari's computers at events. The group consisted of kids aged 14 through 18, including Steve Cohen.
He attended George Washington High School in Denver Colorado, where his teacher, Dr. Irwin Hoffman, taught. George Washington High School received a grant from the Atari Institute for Education Action Research, Atari's educational support arm, The Atari Institute Newsletter (fall 1982) wrote: "High school students in a model math and computer program will use their grant of ATARI Home Computer systems to develop individual and group research projects in their own fields of interest. Extensible programming languages, such as FORTH, will be used to develop new syntax for use in other high school subjects: electronics, music, art, history, mathematics, and home economics. This project supports a major 'model school' known for its innovations in computer education over the last twenty years."
This interview took place on May 21, 2020.
Enter Magazine—When These Kids Talk, Atari Listens
Kai and George Esbensen, Micro-Ed Software
I first heard about the Micro-Ed software company when a member of the Atari community sent me a batch of educational cassette tapes to digitize. The tapes had titles like Maps and Globes, Punctuation, and Spelling Level E. Intriguingly, the tape labels said "Micro-Ed, creators of more than 2,500 programs, pre-school through adult." 2,500 programs? Why had I never heard of this company?
I asked 4AM, a software preservationist specializing in the Apple II — and specializing in little-known educational software — if they had heard of the company. The answer was also no. So I started to research.
A two-page advertisement in Compute! magazine issue 4, May 1980, provided my first glimpse into the company: "LOOK at all the MICRO-ED programs for the PET!" The titles listed include Agreement of Subject and Verb; Run on Sentences; Higher, Same, Lower; Word Demons; and (oddly) Usage Boners. Many of the software tapes were sold in packs, for instance $84 for a pack of 12 elementary school programs. $49.95 for a grade's worth of spelling lessons on 7 tapes.
An item in the Washington Apple Pi journal, four years later, January 1984, intrigued me: "$10,000 EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY. Micro-Ed Incorporated has announced its willingness to donate up to $10,000 worth of software to any school district, Special Education cooperative, or parent group willing to establish a school-to-home lending library. No limit has been established on the number of grants Micro-Ed will make. The donation is not contingent upon the purchase of any Micro-Ed products. ... Thorward Esbensen, Micro-Ed's president, 'envisions the establishment of a free lending library of educational software for families.'"
Less than a year later, in November 1984, the Commodore magazine The Transactor (v5n3) wrote that Micro-Ed had donated "more than a half million dollars worth of its instructional programs to school systems" for those free software lending libraries.
So. Micro-Ed was established in 1979 by Thorward (Tory) Esbensen. Based in Eden Prairie, MN, the company specialized in low-cost educational software. The software, written in the BASIC programming language, was available for Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, TRS-80, and Texas Instruments computers. Micro-Ed's best-known title was perhaps "Trail West," an Oregon Trail-like game.
Mr. Esbensen died in 2012. I interviewed two of his sons, both of whom worked with their father at Micro-Ed. First, I talked with Kai Esbensen, the youngest in the family. Kai told me in email: "My siblings had all moved out by the time Micro-Ed was in motion, but I lived it. Helping out with Micro-Ed was my first paid job, in 2nd/3rd grade, and I was still on the payroll helping out through age 22." This interview took place on May 28, 2020. ...
Next, I talked with Kai's older brother, George Esbensen, who was a salesman for Micro-Ed, and later was president of Cycle Software Services, a software duplication company that spun off from Micro-Ed. This interview took place on June 3, 2020.
Very old Micro-Ed/Thorwald Esbensen web site
AtariMania's partial list of Micro-Ed Software for Atari
Micro-Ed advertisement in Compute! magazine May 1980
Thorwald Esbensen obituary in StarTribune
Thorwald Esbensen obituary in Duluth News Tribune
Washington Apple Pi, January 1984
The Transactor v5n3
Myra Marshall, Computer Applications Tomorrow
Myra Marshall, along with her husband-at-the-time Roger Marshall, was co-founder of Computer Applications Tomorrow, a small software company that specialized in educational software for microcomputers. Most of the company's software was self-published and sold in small computer stores, including titles such as USA States and Capitals, Spelling Exam, and Alphabet Keyboard Primer. One title, Musical Computer: The Music Tutor, was sold by Atari Program Exchange. It first appeared in the spring 1982 APX catalog. It was available on disk and cost $14.95.
This interview took place on August 26, 2020.
Musical Computer in the spring 1982 APX catalog
AtariMania's list of Computer Applications Tomorrow software
ANTIC Episode 70 - Who Wants a FujiNet Anyway… I do!
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast… we discuss the roll-out of the first 50 units of FujiNet, “virtual” shows remaining this year, new software, hardware and all the current Atari news riding the waves.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Github
Commercial
New at Archive.org
Listener Feedback
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
Charles Marslett, MYDOS and FastChip
Charles Marslett wrote floppy disk and hard drive drivers for Percom, and was the creator of MYDOS, a disk operating system for the Atari 8-bit computers that offered support for double density sectors, subdirectories, and hard drives. He also created FastChip, a hardware add-on for the Atari, sold by Newell Industries, that claimed to speed up floating point routines by 300%. He also created the A65 Assembler, a macro assembler. He has released the source code for MYDOS and FastChip.
This interview took place on July 13, 2020.
Charles' web site
MyDOS at AtariWiki
MyDOS 3.0 User Guide
A65 Assembler at AtariWiki
ANTIC Interview 212 - Wes Newell, Newell Industries
ANTIC Interview 7 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - Bill Wilkinson, OSS
ANTIC Interview 11 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - David Small
ANTIC Interview 22 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - Kathleen O'Brien, OSS
Michael Abrash
Zen of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash
Zen of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash: free eBook version; code at GitHub
ANTIC #69 Show Notes, July, 2020
Title: Bill Collector
Guests
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube
Feedback
Dorothy Siegel, Pioneer in Computer Music
I'm Kay Savetz, and this is ANTIC: The Atari 8-bit podcast. This interview, however, is about events that happened before Atari released its first computers.
This interview is with Dorothy Siegel, a pioneer in computer music. The music she created was on an IMSAI 8080 computer and a clarinet.
The First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival was held August 25, 1978 as part of a show called Personal Computing '78 held at the Philadelphia Civic Center. In 1979, Creative Computing Magazine published a record album, also titled First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival. The 12" 33 RPM record was of music performed at the festival: 18 pieces, including Dorthy's.
Dorothy was co-founder of Newtech, along with her husband Michael Abram and business partner Stuart Newfeld, a company that built add-on music cards for two S-100 bus computers: the IMSAI 8080 and the Southwest Technical Products Corporation 6800. The Newtech Music Cards cost $59.95 each. (Newtech was not the same company as NewTek, the company that sold the Video Toaster in the 1990s.)
Dorothy performed Johann Wanhal's Rondo from Sonata in B-flat for Clarinet and Piano. The IMSAI, with three Newtech music boards, performed the piano part, and Dorothy accompanied it on clarinet.
I'm going to play the song now. It's about four minutes long.
Regarding Dorothy's song, the album notes read: "Newtech's music card for the S-100 bus is essentially a digital-to-analog converter controlled by an output port on the computer. The analog output is fed into amplifiers to be heard. This approach to computer music synthesis is extremely flexible since hypothetically any possible sound can be created. In actual practice the performance of the music circuitry is somewhat limited by the speed of the host computer. Each card can produce up to three voices output to one channel.
Newtech's music software consists of a BASIC program which converts music into binary tables, and a machine-language interpreter to play the music with three voices and different envelopes. The piece on this record uses three cards each playing one voice."
Check the show notes for an extensive list of links to people that we talk about and the articles that Dorothy wrote for ROM Magazine and Popular Electronics. You can hear the entire First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival at VintageComputerMusic.com or buy the album on a remastered audio CD directly from Dave Ahl of Creative Computing Magazine.
This interview took place January 7, 2014, when I was doing research for a book about the first personal computer magazines. Although I've decided not to write the book, I am publishing the interviews that I did while doing the research.
Personal Computing '78 flyer
Popular Electronics magazine, January 1975
Edward Miller's Piece for Clarinet & Tape
Stan Viet
Electro-Harmonix
ANTIC Interview 332 - Mike Matthews, founder of Electro-Harmonix
ANTIC Interview 280 - David and Betsy Ahl, Creative Computing Magazine
Samuel Abram, Dorothy's son
ROM Magazine Issue 4: Scott Joplin on Your Sci-Fi Hi-Fi by Dorothy Siegel
ROM Magazine Issue 5: Make Me More Music, Maestro Micro by Dorothy Siegel
Popular Electronics November 1979: CP/M: The Standard Microcomputer Software Interface by Dorothy Siegel
Listen to/download First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival album
Buy the album on a remastered audio CD from Dave Ahl
David Gedalia, Atari-controlled Telescope
Listener Paul Somerfeldt sent me a blurb he found in a book titled "The Dobsonian Telescope" by David Kriege and Richard Berry. The book reads: "Computer-controlled Dobsonian telescopes entered amateur astronomy in the late 1980s. An outstanding early example was David Gedalia's 10-inch f/4.5 Dobsonian driven by an Atari 800XL computer, shown at the 1987 Riverside Telescope Makers Conference. With the Atari driving altitude and azimuth stepper-motors, the telescope would move automatically to coordinates entered on the computer’s keyboard. David was a third-year engineering student when he built this telescope."
I sought out David to find out more about his Atari-controlled telescope.
This interview took place on May 29, 2020.
Photos of David with his telescope
The Dobsonian Telescope by David Kriege and Richard Berry
Brad Stewart, Covox
Brad Stewart was the co-founder and chief designer of Covox, the company that created Covox VoiceMaster. VoiceMaster was speech digitizer and voice recognition hardware for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, and Apple II computers. Covox's own demonstration audio tape describes it well, although the demo tape that I found doesn't mention the Atari.
This interview took place on May 21, 2020.
Aerosynth
Brad's blog post about Covox Voice Master
Kay plays with VoiceMaster in 2014
Covox Voicemaster Demo cassette
A Bionic Approach to Speech Processing
Escape from Planet X at AtariMania
ANTIC Episode 68
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast… Jonathan Halliday joins as we discuss his amazing work on the SIDE loaders for the Incognito and Ultimate 1MB and the work going on for the SIDE3 cart.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Github
New at Archive.org
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
Fandal: Atari programer and archivist
Frantisek Houra is better known to the Atari community as Fandal. He's an Atari computer programmer and long-time archivist of European Atari software. He has created many original Atari games and conversions from other platforms: including Fruity Pete, Mashed Turtles, Crescent Solitaire, and Diamondz.
This interview took place on August 28, 2019, during the Fujiama Atari conference in Lengenfeld, Germany. Roland Wassenberg sat in to assist with the interview. Shortly after, Fandal and I and several other attendees hooked up a multijoy and played some rounds of Mashed Turtles with six players (up to eight can play), and it was so. much. fun.
Fandal's web site
Mashed Turtles
Xenophobe game for sale at Video61
Gregg Squires, Atari Manager of Hardware Engineering
Gregg Squires was a Manager of Hardware Engineering at Atari from 1982 through 1984, working from their New York office. He was project manager for Val, a cost-reduced version of the Atari 2600; and project manager for the Atari XL computer series. He was co-designer of the 65816 microprocessor architecture.
Greg sent me a scan of an Atari 600XL Product Status Meeting handout dated January 1983. It's an impressive 45 pages and paints a clear picture of the timeline, costs, and issues involved with creating that computer.
This interview took place on February 13, 2019.
Atari VAL photo
Atari 600XL Product Status Meeting Handout
The Working Clock-Timer by Joel Moskowitz
ANTIC Interview 65 - Steve Mayer, 400/800 Designer
Rik Dickinson, Encore Video Productions
Rik Dickinson is founder of Encore Video Productions, a company that rented Atari 8-bit computers to hotels for use as character generators. The computers would show information about the hotel on channel 2 of guests' televisions. This was part of a service that Encore offered to provide in-room movies that ran off videotapes. The tape machines ran on a timer, and when the movie ended, the video feed switched back to the text information displayed by the Atari.
This interview took place on April 20, 2020.
Forum about Encore Video Productions Display System
Encore Video Productions
ANTIC Episode 67 - Still Socially Distant
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast...Randy forgets to call the artist, formerly known as Kevin, as Kay about 100 times, we continue discussion on AtariFests and World of Atari, we help you with your free time by telling you about papercraft computers and RetroPie, and help you navigate what’s happening with vintage computer shows; plus a whole lot more Atari news!
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
What We’ve Been Up To
Recent Interviews
News
Shows
YouTube videos this month
New at Github
New at Archive.org
Feedback
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
Youth Advisory Board: Tracey Cullinan
This is the seventh in a series of episodes featuring the kids of Atari's Youth Advisory Board. In 1983, Atari formed a Youth Advisory Board, selecting teenagers from around the United States to share their opinions about computers and video games, test software, and promote Atari's computers at events. The group consisted of kids aged 14 through 18, including Tracey Cullinan.
Tracey worked as a salesperson at the ComputerLand store in Los Altos, California — starting at the age of 12. He started a software company, Superior Software, which produced custom software for local businesses, as well as a couple of games for the Apple II computer. At 14, Tracey was invited to be a member of the Youth Advisory Board. As part of that job, he went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago to demonstrate Atari computers. The next year, as a 15-year-old, Tracey was interviewed on the "Today" show as a young entrepreneur.
There's a chapter about Tracey in the 1984 book "Computer Kids" by George Sullivan. (His picture in on the back cover of the book.) I'm going to read several passages from that book, quotes from Tracey.
...A Computerland store opened
in a mall near my home. I made friends with the people
who worked in the store, and they let me use the computers
there.
The store happened to be within walking distance of
where I live, and I'd go there after school and on week-
ends, or almost anytime I had free time. I often wrote
game programs on the computers, and I bought a disk on
which to store the programs. They let me keep the disk
at the store.
When customers came into the store, I'd sometimes
help out by showing them what a computer could do.
They'd be amazed. "What’s this nine-year-old kid doing
showing me how a computer works?"
I’m now working at the store. I started as an employee
when I was twelve. I was in sales at first but later I shifted
over to computer repair...
I now know five or six computer languages — BASIC,
Pascal, LOGO, plus three machine languages: 6502, the
one that’s used on the Apple and Atari and the one I use
the most, Z-80. I’m starting to learn 8086, the language
for the IBM Personal Computer...
The company that I operate is called Superior Software.
I prepare custom programs for businesses in the
area. One program involves inventorying and invoicing
for a company that sells charcoal fire starters. I’ve got
another program that gathers stock market prices from a
computer, and then correlates them and prints them out
for a local stockbroker.
A third program I wrote for the Los Altos Little
League. It’s a mailing list program. They use it in sending
out notices about tryouts, practices, and things like that.
I became a member of the Atari Youth Advisory Board
because someone at the consulting firm that was getting
the names of kids together for Atari happened to know
my dad. When the consulting firm found out that I was
into computers, they put my name on the list. Then the
people at Atari picked me.
We've been giving Atari advice mostly on their home
computers. Later, I think they're going to ask us for advice
on their video games and arcade games...
I also use the computer to write game programs once
in a while. One that I’ve written is called Glutton [for the
Apple II.] You, the shooter, are armed with little missiles
and positioned on the right side of the screen. You can
move up and down only. You shoot to the left.
The glutton moves back and forth across the screen.
The glutton likes to eat. Different kinds of food fall from
the top of the screen. Some of it is good food, like apples,
carrots, and chicken drumsticks. But some of the food is
junk food, like cupcakes and soda pop. The object of the
game is to keep the glutton well fed, but healthy, You try
to eliminate the pieces of junk food by blasting them with
your missiles.
I've tried to sell Glutton to some of the companies that
market game software to computer owners, to companies
such as Broderbund and Sirius. But I haven’t been successful yet.
...As far as the future is concerned, I plan to go to college.
I'd like to go to a good private university, a technical
one, like MIT, Cal Tech, or Stanford... After that, I
think I'd like to be a game programmer, and maybe work
for Atari, Imagic, or Activision, or some company like
that.
Tracey didn't go to any of those colleges. He died 1986 of brain cancer. He had just turned 18.
I talked with Tracey's mother, Leola Wooldridge; and his younger brother, Cory Cullinan, about their memories of Tracey.
This interview took place on April 17, 2020. In it, we discuss John Dickerson, whom I previously interviewed.
Tracey in Computer Kids book
Demystifying Excellence by Cory Cullinan
John Dickerson interview
Tracey Cullinan On Today Show on Youtube or Internet Archive
Atari Speed Reading: Karlyn Kamm and Brad Oltrogge
The Atari Speed Reading software package was released by Atari in 1981. It was a self-paced program, for use with the Atari computer and a cassette drive, that promised to teach you to increase reading speed and comprehension with 30 days of practice. The package contained a workbook and five cassette tapes.
This is an interview with two of the people who created the Atari Speed Reading package. Karlyn Kamm created the speed reading educational material at the University of Wisconsin with Dr. Wayne Otto. In 1975, she and Dr. Otto published a book titled "Speedway, the Action Way to Read." Dr. Otto died in 2017.
Brad Oltrogge is president of Learning Multi-Systems, the software publisher that was contracted by Atari to turn Kamm and Otto's speed reading material into a product for the Atari home computer.
This interview took place on April 16, 2020.
Atari Speed Reading Workbook
Atari Speed Reading at AtariWiki
Dr. Otto obituary
Speedway: The action way to speed read
The Study Skills Component of the Wisconsin Design
Learning Multi-Systems
Gabriel Baum: Atari Conversational French and Spanish
Gabriel Baum worked at Thorn EMI, where he managed the project to create two early language learning programs that were published by Atari: Conversational French and Conversational Spanish. (Atari's language learning series would also include Conversational German — Gabriel started that, but left Thorn EMI before that project was finished — and Conversational Italian.)
After Thorn EMI, Gabriel moved to Mattel where he became one of the "Blue Sky Rangers," creating Intellivision games. If you'd like to hear more about that, Paul Nurminen interviewed him about that time in episode 37 of The Intellivisionaries podcast.
For a deep dive into the Atari Conversational French software, listen to season 5, episode 1 of the Inverse ATASCII podcast. You can download the software and audio for all of the conversational language series from AtariWiki.
This interview took place on March 31, 2020. In it, Gabriel mis-remembers a bit of the technical capabilities of the Atari cassette drive, which was a lot less sophisticated than he recalls. If you'd like to read the technical details of how the Atari 410 and 1010 program recorders worked, check out Appendix C of De Re Atari.
Conversational language series at AtariWiki
Inverse ATASCII podcast covers Atari Conversational French
Gabriel interview on the Intellivisionaries podcast
De Re Atari on the Atari cassette capabilities
ANTIC Episode 66 - Socially Distant
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: We talk about what we’re doing Atari-wise in these socially distant times and we bring you all the Atari news from around the world.
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ANTIC Episode 65 - Cats with umbrellas and dogs!
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: Kevin’s dogs do their best to be a part of the podcast, we tell you all about a very busy month of personal Atari stuff, all the programming contests going on, and all the other news we could find.
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https://gkanold.server.deerpower.de/
AtariAge discussion - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/301250-2020-basic-10liner-contest/
https://atariaction.tumblr.com/post/190760859977/10-line-poker-machine
https://atariaction.tumblr.com/post/190761401187/10-line-blackjack
Atariage Thread - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/300855-kaz-kompo-2019-vote-for-the-best-game-of-2019/#comments
https://twitter.com/possan/status/1225530633621032961
http://forum.atarimania.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18847
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Craig Hickman, Atari Photography Software and Security System
Craig Hickman was featured in the June 1982 edition of Atari Connection magazine for his photography software tools. "Craig has developed two programs written in Atari BASIC for use in his darkroom. One of the programs times the negative’s development, and the other monitors and times enlargements and the making of the positive prints." His Developing program could store up to 30 film processing combinations. "Once the film is developed into a negative, you are ready to use Craig's Enlarger/Timer program to make a positive print." The Atari 400 was connected to the enlarger with relays: the computer would turn the enlarger on and off at precise intervals for making photographic prints.
Craig also rigged up an apartment security system using his Atari 400, which he wrote about in an article on his web site. He wrote: "I designed a home surveillance system for our apartment in Seattle that used little magnetic switches from Radio Shack. It displayed a representation of our apartment on the screen and showed when a door or window was open. It worked so well I expanded the system to include little tilt switches placed on bushes outside the windows. This also worked fine until one windy night when I was away from home and it set off the alarm every few minutes. The next day my wife told me to dismantle it."
Later, Craig created the popular program Kid Pix for the early Macintosh computer.
This interview took place on January 29, 2020. See the show notes for links to Craig's web site and YouTube channel, and the Atari Connection magazine article.
Craig's web site
Craig's darkroom timer in Atari Connection Magazine
Craig's YouTube channel
ANTIC Episode 64 - Living in the Future
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast:
We talk about our Atari-related resolutions for the new year, how 2020 sounds like we’re living in the future, and bring you news and feedback from across the Atari 8-bit landscape.
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Donate to Ted Nelson project at: https://paypal.me/Savetz
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James Hugard, Neanderthal Computer Things
James Hugard was co-founder of Neanderthal Computer Things, a company that created just one product. "810 Turbo" was a hardware conversion board for the Atari 810 disk drive that promised true double density storage, and faster data reading and writing. The device, released in 1983, could be installed inside your 810 disk drive with "no jumpers, no soldering, no extra box." It cost $295. James wrote the firmware for the device.
Check the show notes for links to the 810 Turbo Manual and advertisement, photos of the board, and a lively discussion on AtariAge (in which James has answered some questions and added more commentary.)
This interview took place on June 7, 2019.
810 Turbo ad
810 Turbo Manual
810 Photos and software
NCT Letter to Atari users groups
Discussion on AtariAge
SillyVenture and FujiNet
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: In the tradition of bringing you the latest Atari 8-bit news, we have a couple of very special guests in this episode. First of all, Bart comes to us literally direct from the fabulous SillyVenture show to give us a rundown, and then Thomas Cherryhomes tells us all about the amazing work going on with FujiNet!
READY!
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Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
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https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product-category/atari
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Bruce May, Unreleased Magic Castle Game
In 1982 Bruce May created Magic Castle, a game for the Atari 800 computer. He finished the game but was unable to find a publisher for it, so hardly anyone played it. In October 2019 he sent me scans of his original documents regarding Magic Castle: his design notes, and even rejection letters from the three companies that he submitted the game to: Catalyst Technologies, Avalon Hill, and Origin Systems. He hasn't been able to find the floppy disks with the game, but he does have printouts of the source code — which he also scanned and sent to me — so it could potentially be resurrected by the Atari community.
This interview took place on October 13, 2019.
Bruce's Magic Castle documents
Wolfgang Burger, President of Atari Bit Byter User Club
Wolfgang Burger is the president and a founding member of the Atari Bit Byter User Club, the world's largest user group dedicated to the Atari 8-bit computer. The group was founded in 1985 in Herten, Germany. Today, the group has about 500 members from around the world. The group's quarterly magazine — still produced on an Atari computer — is almost certainly the longest continually published computer magazine anywhere.
This interview took place on August 28, 2019, during the Fujiama Atari conference in Lengenfeld, Germany. Wolfgang doesn't speak much English, and I don't speak any German, so Roland Wassenberg provided real-time language translation.
ABBUC web site
Bruce Irvine, Atari VP of Software
Bruce Irvine was Atari's Vice President of Software — heading the company's new computer software division — from September 1980 through approximately July 1982. Among other responsibilities, he oversaw Atari Program Exchange and the opening of Atari "software acquisition centers." After leaving Atari, he co-founded Mindset Corporation with Roger Badertscher.
This interview took place on November 7, 2019. In it, Bruce mentions Steve Gerber, Fred Thorlin, Dale Yocum, and Manny Gerard, all of whom we have previously interviewed.
Infoworld — Atari Opens Second Software-Acquisition Center
ANTIC Interview 268 - Steve Gerber, VP of International New Product Development
ANTIC Fred Thorlin interview
ANTIC Dale Yocum interview
ANTIC Interview 78 - Manny Gerard, The Man Who Fired Nolan
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: Kevin hobnobs with Atari celebrities at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Brad and Randy find out they’re podcast hosts #2 and #3, respectively, and together we cover all the Atari news that’s fit to print.
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New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Donate to Ted Nelson project at: https://paypal.me/Savetz
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ANTIC Special Episode — Atari 800 series computers: 40 years
This is Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast. I'm Kevin Savetz. On Saturday, October 19, 2019 I had the privilege of taking part in a panel at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. The session was titled "Atari 800 series computers: 40 years." The panelists were Joe Decuir, one of the hardware designers of the Atari 400 and 800; David Crane, who was one of the developers of the Atari's operating system before he famously left Atari to co-found Activision; and myself.
The session was attended by roughly 50 people. There were some difficulties getting Joe's computer to throw its video to the projector, and you can hear some fussing with that in the recording before it gets resolved. I had a great time participating in this panel celebrating the Atari 800's 40th birthday.
Joe Decuir's slide deck for this panel
Joe Decuir 1977 Engineering Notebook
Joe Decuir 1978 Engineering Notebook
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: Kevin comes back from Fujiama with a report and Bill Lange joins us to talk about the David Ahl Collection that he acquired.
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New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
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Andrew and John Lenz: Atari Still in Productive Use in Store
It’s very difficult these days to find vintage computers still in productive use out in the wild. Andrew and John Lenz have an Atari 8-bit still in use, at the time of this interview, in the picture framing department at Lenz Arts in Santa Cruz, CA, a store that sells art materials and custom framing services. The Atari computer has over 200,000 hours of operational time. (That's on and in use!) Running a program written in BASIC by Andrew in the mid-1980s. According to Andrew, it boots from a floppy every morning without fail.
Store Web Site - http://www.Lenzarts.com
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: We try to catch up after being on hiatus for 2 months by bringing you all the Atari news we could find and we learn a new word in the process.
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New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
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Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
John Anderson: Rally Speedway and Arex
John Anderson worked at Adventure International, where he coded several games: Eliminator, Rear Guard, and Sea Dragon for the Apple II, then Rally Speedway and Arex for the Atari 8-bits.
This interview took place on May 22, 2019. In it, we discuss Scott Adams and Russ Wetmore, both of whom I have previously interviewed.
List of John's games at Atarimania
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: We have a special round table episode with Nir Dary, Darren Doyle, Roland Wassenburg, Thomas Cherryhomes joining the usual hosts of ANTIC where we discuss what everyone is up to in the Atari 8-bit world, including the latest shows (VCFSE and VCFE). It’s an Atari mega-show!
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Links Mentioned in Show:
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In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: Kevin regales us with his exploits in the 10-Line BASIC Contest, we discuss the renewed efforts to show off Midi-Maze on the Atari 8-bits, and the entire staff prepares to be involved in several great shows this year ...
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End of Show Music
The album is available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Deezer, Amazon and SoundCloud. More information on the official page of For Ember - http://kcdsoundtrack.com/for-ember.html
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: Bill Lange joins us as a special guest, and he has lots of Atari Pascal news; we have all the Atari news fit to print, and more shows coming in 2019 than you can shake a stick at ...
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Philip Bouchard - MECC, The Oregon Trail
Philip Bouchard spent over 30 years designing computer software, 18 of which were focused on educational software. He was the principal designer for the Apple II games The Oregon Trail and Number Munchers.
The Oregon Trail is a computer game originally developed in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The original game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. "The Oregon Trail" is the world's longest-running video game franchise.
This interview took place August 26, 2017.
Links:
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: late-breaking up-to-the-minute Atari news, Randy disappears mid-episode, and we hear what Atari was like in Chile...
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Stan Gilbert, Tricky Tutorials
Hello, and welcome to an interview-only episode of Antic, The Atari 8-bit computer podcast. Stan Gilbert worked for Educational Software (previously known as Santa Cruz Educational Software) in the early 80’s and developed several products in the Tricky Tutorial series for the Atari 8-bit computer line. He later also worked for Apple.
This interview took place July 29, 2017.
Links:
In this special Holiday episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast:
Nir Dary regales us with stories about SilliVenture 2018. We share Atari gift ideas for yourself or others for Christmas. Plus, all the Atari 8-bit news we could find...
READY!
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New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Donate to Ted Nelson project at: https://paypal.me/Savetz
TEH: Tech Enthusiast Hour - https://tehpodcast.com
What We’ve Been Up To
Atari News
UK Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Z-Atari-8-bit-Games-Gaming-ebook/…/
US Link: https://www.amazon.com/Z-Atari-8-bit-Games-Ga…/…/B07KYVVWDM/
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Nir Dary - SilliVenture 2018
Atari Christmas Gifts
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In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast:
What we’ve been up to in the past month PLUS all the Atari 8-bit news we could find...
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ANTIC Interview Index - here
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Commercial
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Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast:
Bill Lange guest-hosts with us and tells us all about the recent Atari Party East. We talk about all the traveling and Atari things we did over the summer. Kevin throws in a mini-interview he did. And, Jeff Fulton reviews Tempest Elite Plus. Plus, all the Atari 8-bit news we could find...
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Jeff Fulton
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Joe Hellesen: Deluxe Invaders, Pac Man, PQ: The Party Quiz Game
Atari Computer Roundtable
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast:
We got some of the biggest names of the current Atari computer community on a live, international conference call to ask: what’s happening in your Atari 8-bit world? Guests Thom Cherryholmes, Ethan Johnson, Joe Decuir, Simon Wells, Curt Vendel, Jeff Fulton, Nir Dary, and Roland Wassenberg. The conversation went in amazing and unexpected directions.
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Roundtable Discussion
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In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: In this five-year anniversary episode of ANTIC, we reminisce back to show #1 all those years ago, our friend Nir Dary tells us all about Atari Invasion, Jeff Fulton of the Into the Vertical Blank Podcast gives us a game review of Star Island, plus all the Atari 8-bit news that we could find. Happy 5-Year Anniversary to us!
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Nir’s Segment - Atari Invasion Party Netherlands 2018
Jeff Fulton’s Segment - Star Island Game Review
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In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: In our 50th episode, Kevin tells us about all his secret tours, we tell you about upcoming contests, review new books, and read lots of feedback from our listeners.
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Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: In this first episode of 2018, we talk about the fact that ANTIC has been downloaded over ½ million times, we get a surprise visit from Thomas Cherryhomes, who talks about PLATO for the Atari, we offer Atari 8-bit gift options for Valentine’s Day, Nir Dary tells us about some things he’s been exploring, plus all the Atari 8-bit news that we could find. Happy New Year!
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Nir’s Segment - SilliVenture 2017
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast: In this 2017 year-end episode, we get a surprise visit from our international correspondent, Nir Dary, we hear about Kevin’s dream find, and we unwrap our surprise Christmas gifts from Nir Dary. Nir Dary tells us about his visit to SilliVenture. (It’s a whole lot of Nir Dary!) Plus all the Atari 8-bit news that we could find.
Happy New Year!
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Donate to Ted Nelson project at: https://paypal.me/Savetz
TEH: Tech Enthusiast Hour - https://tehpodcast.com
What We’ve Been Up To
Interview Discussion
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New at Archive.org
Nir’s Segment - SilliVenture 2017
Commercial
Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation;
increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.