This episode features Analog Database, released in 1986 by Analog Computing. It was programmed by Bryan Schappel and Barry Kolbe.

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This episode features Personal Fitness, released in 1981 by APX. It was programmed by Dave Getreu.

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APX

• 1981 APX Catalog cover – Only $1
• Ad in APX catalog for Personal Fitness.

• Splash screen
• Splash screen – Revised for version that supports smart device heart readings.
• New screen in revised version to support a data disk in drive other than 1. The original program only supported disk 1.
• Regardless of version, you are prompted to insert the disk before reading.
• Looking at the charts with no data entered.
• Program main menu.
• Starting the Exercise Sequence.
• 1st Exercise – Overhead Stretch. Personal Fitness adapts and will adjust your repetition count as you progress.
• 2nd Exercise -Jumping Jacks.
• Repetition counts displayed with animation. Keep in sync!
• 3rd Exercise – Sit Ups.
• Confirm number of repetitions completed.
• 4th Exercise – Hip Lifts.
• Confirm the number of repetitions completed.
• 5th Exercise – Push Ups.
• Confirming number of repetitions completed.
• 6th Exercise – Trunk Twister.
• Confirming number of repetitions completed.
• 7th Exercise – Running In Place. This is a static 3 minutes. Keep pace with the animation.
• Revisions I made to the program to allow for smart device heart rate readings. You can use 1 which is the standard 15 second count as originally designed in the program, or 2 to enter a direct heart rate reading from a smart device.
• Revised program entering a direct heart rate reading from a smart device.
• Efficiency summary is displayed for the original version and the revised version of Personal Fitness.
• When using the original program (or 1-Measurement option of the revised program), you will need to count your heart rate via pulse measurement over 15 seconds. Press START when you are ready to begin.
• Keep counting that pulse rate. Honestly, the smart device reading is simpler and quicker.
• Enter your pulse count over the 15 seconds, it will compute your heart rate. You’d be done by now if you used the revised version.
• Efficiency summary when using the original program or the measurement option of the revised program.
• Trunk Twister animation stop/start. Hey, is that Freddie Mercury.
• Saving the data at the end of the session.
• Session over, left at BASIC prompt.

• Daily – The last 30 logical days. These are not tied to specific dates.
• Weekly. The last 30 logical weeks based on the logical days. These are not tied to specific dates.

• Running MAKER.DIS from BASIC.
• WARNING Acknowledgement!
• Some info…
• Enter your age.
• Enter your gender.
• Time to measure your resting heart rate.
• Count your pulses over 15 seconds.
• Entering your pulse count.
• Insert the data disk. It must be in drive 1.
• Ready to run the main program now!

• Directory of files on the program disk.
• Contents of the DISKNAME.DAT file.
• Directory of a data disk.
• Contents of the D file on the data disk, when echo’d to the screen.
• Hex dump of the D file on the data disk.

There is no printer output from Personal Fitness.

I revised Personal Fitness to allow two features:

A) The ability to use the data disk in a drive other than drive 1.

B) The ability to enter your heart rate from a direct reading from a smart device like an Apple Watch.

This file is named with .key extension here so WordPress would accept the upload – ATR is not a WordPress supported file type. Download and rename it to .ATR.

This episode features Personal Fitness, released in 1981 by APX. It was programmed by Dave Getreu.

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This episode features The Computer Gourmet, released in 1984 by New Horizons.

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Ads (all from 1986):

• Loading screen.
• Boot Splash
• Asking for recipe disk to get started.
• Reading the index off the recipe disk.
• Main Menu. I’ll take fries with that.
• Add new recipe empty screen.
• New recipe entered.
• Saving the new recipe.
• Searching for a recipe by Category.
• Busy screen while The Computer Gourmet searches for the match.
• Displaying the matched (searched for) recipe.
• Altering the recipe (category in this case).
• Saving the update to the recipe.
• After a match, you can elect to see the next match.
• Using Show Recipes to show a recipe. First you have to search for it!
• Retrieving the recipe to show. No field criteria results in retrieval of first recipe.
• Recipe being shown. You can print the recipe or ingredients from here.
• Will the recipe make more than you can eat? Adjust the recipe to the number of servings you need. Cool feature!
• Recipe adjusted for 4 servings instead of 8.
• Print Menu
• You have the option of printing in 40 columns if you desire (or have to).
• Make sure the printer is online before proceeding.
• Find example: Searching by recipe name. You can search by Type as well.
• It’s looking for the recipe.
• The error displayed when there are no more matches for your search criteria.
• Using Change Recipe Diskette. Swap the disk and press START.
• Just like at the beginning, it must read the recipe disk index.
• The error displayed when a non TCG (The Computer Gourmet) disk is used.

Show Full Recipe (40 Columns):

Show Full Recipe (80 Columns):

Show Ingredients (40 Columns):

Show Ingredients (80 Columns):

Inverse ATASCII Recipe Index (by Category, Recipe):

Inverse ATASCII Recipe Index (by Disk, Category, Recipe):

Inverse ATASCII Recipe Index (by Recipe):

Inverse ATASCII Recipe Index (by Type, Recipe):

Inverse ATASCII Recipe Index (Excel format):

This episode features The Computer Gourmet, released in 1984 by New Horizons.

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This episode features Home Inventory, released in 1983 by Antic. It was developed by Erv Friedman.

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Front:

Inner Front:

Inner Back:

Back:

• Boot Splash
• Loading
• Main Menu
• Item Maintenance Menu
• Adding an Item
• Item type selection popup
• Scrolling through the item type popup selections – 4 rows at a time.
• Just a year date is not sufficient! Need month/day/year (MM/DD/YY) format. It is not Y2K compliant so choose a past compatible year.
• Save confirmation.
• Invalid item number!
• Save?
• Change item form.
• Delete item menu.
• Data shown and confirmation asked for. Note the screen isn’t properly cleaned up.
• Displaying an item requires you to enter the item number.
• Once a valid number is displayed, you can browse left or right.
• Item type maintenance.
• Adding a type and confirming.
• Changing an item type and saving.
• Deleting an item type and confirming.
• Displaying item types.
• Room maintenance menu.
• Adding a room and confirming.
• Changing a room and confirming.
• Deleting a room and confirming.
• Displaying rooms.
• Location maintenance menu.
• Adding a location and confirming.
• Changing a location and confirming.
• Deleting a location and confirming.
• Displaying locations.
• Report menu.
• Items being sorted by requested report type.
• Busy creating the report.
• Depreciation report menu.
• Needs a date, again not Y2K compliant.
• Send it to the screen this time…
• Which item number do you want to see?
• Once a valid number is displayed, you can browse left and right.
• Creating a new data disk.
• It prepares for the maximum number of items that can be held.
• Dooo dooo doo….
• Changing the data disk.
• Ruh Roh, not a valid disk. It has to be initialized by the software first.

• Nice clean exit?
• Side 2 is the documentation. This helps you print it.
• Send it to the screen or the printer?
• And the end of printing a page to the printer.
• Whew done, no more pressing SPACE!
• Printing to screen.
• Files on the data disk.
• Dump of the data in the room data file.
• Dump of data in the item data file.
• The item index file dump.
• Dump of the control file. Unsure what each byte represents.

Documentation:

Listing by Number:

Listing by Type:

Listing by Room:

Depreciation Report:

This episode features Home Inventory, released in 1983 by Antic. It was developed by Erv Friedman.

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This episode features Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), and my experience then and now with them. In short this is a socialization episode.

Bulletin Boards are much like modern web based forums. These are places to socialize with other people with the same interests, send/receive files, email, games, etc.

There is no preference in the boards presented. They are being presented in the order in which I registered for them. There are many more boards than those presented here. YOU should visit the boards, both on this list and off, and decide on your own which ones YOU prefer.

The content here won’t mean much without listening to the podcast episode.

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Atari 8 Bit Terminal Programs

These are just a couple of the many communications programs available for the Atari 8 bit. There are many, many others.

BobTerm

Boot splash:

Changing the baud rate:

Ready to dial:

Dialing:

What? It’s busy!

HomePak HomeTerm

Boot splash:

Ready to communicate. Note the default font is a custom one:

Changing the translation mode:

Now the font is the standard ATASCII font:

BBS’s

The Basement

Dialing and logging in:

Windowed menu instead of a command prompt? Very neat feature!

Menu help screen:

Alcatraz

Dialing Alcatraz and connecting. Most Atari boards ask for a keystroke to identify if they support ATASCII graphics or not:

Posting a message:

Reading a message:

Checking other boards for messages:

Menu help:

List of message bases (boards):

User statistics:

Checking for e-mail (in the early 80’s!):

Previous callers list:

Top Callers list:

Logging off:

Star Fleet HQ

Loggin in (with SyncTerm on Mac):

Excellent color ANSI login screen. A random starship or space station appears:

BBS menu help:

Message base menu:

Posting a message:

Reading a message:

User statistics (4 pages worth here):

Message base (board) listing:

Logging off:

Irata Online (Fuji FoReM)

Logging in:

Main menu help:

File download menu:

Reading messages:

Southern AMIS

Dialing:

Registering:

Login screens:

User statistics:

Checking for e-mail:

Main menu help:

Message base (board) list:

Changing message boards. Note it shows if there are unread messages:

Message base menu help:

Posting a message:

Reading a message:

Extras! Check out the ATASCII movies, but set your baud rate below 1200 to view them if you want to be able to read them:

Logoff screen:

• AtariMania BBS Programs: http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-programs-can-i-use-to-host-a-bbs-on-the-atari_105.html
• Atari800MacX: http://www.atarimac.com/atari800macx.php
• FujiNet: https://fujinet.online
• FujiNet Discord: https://discord.gg/7MfFTvD
• Jason Scott BBS Documentary Webpage: http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/director.html
• Jason Scott BBS Documentary Video: https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary
• Jason Scott BBS Documentary Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS:_The_Documentary
• Alistair Ross – Back To The BBS Documentary Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0OwGSX2IiQ
• Alistair Ross – Back To The BBS Documentary Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snpbAEN4I6M
• Alistair Ross – Back To The BBS Documentary Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpFaoLPPRGc
• Lon Seidman – Retro Review – BBS Systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWdr4zeE3JU
• SyncTerm: http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/​

BBS’s Visited in this episode:

Southern Amis: southeramis.ddns.net (23)

The Basement: basementbbs.ddns.net (9000)

Alcatraz: alcatrazbbs.ddns.net (9000)

Irata Online (Fuji): irata.online (6502)

Star Fleet HQ: bbs.sfhqbbs.org (5983)

Good list of Atari BBS’s (Hosted by SFHQ): http://sfhqbbs.org/ataribbslist.php

Podcast: Download

This episode features My First Alphabet, originally released in 1981 by APX Software, then later by Atari. This is a educational title. It was developed by Fernando Herrera who was the first to win Ataris’ Star aware, and later was one of the founders of First Star Software.

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Ad from APX catalog in winter 1981: