ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Thomas Newton, Basic/XA and Keypad Controller

Thomas Newton, published two programs with Atari Program Exchange: Keypad Controller, software for reading the keypad game controllers from BASIC; and BASIC/XA, a set of add-ons for Atari BASIC programmers.

This interview took place December 11, 2015.

Arlan Levitan, writer

Arlan Levitan wrote for many computer magazines including Creative Computing and Compute!, where he wrote the Telecomputing Today and Levitations columns. He helped design the menu system and feature set of the AMIS bulletin board system, and hosted the first AMIS BBS at his house. He was heavily involved with MACE, the Michigan Atari Computer Enthusiast user group, and wrote the book The User's Guide to Atari 400, 800, 1200XL Computers, Software & Peripherals.

This interview took place on December 10, 2015.

Teaser quotes:

"They [Atari] were either, depending on how you want to look at it, very generous or very foolish with their money."

"It's not so much about the hardware, I think, as the people."

Link:

Arlan's articles in Compute!: http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/index/index.php?author=Arlan+R.+Levitan

Sandy Dwiggins, AtariLab manuals

Sandy Dwiggins wrote the manuals for AtariLab - both the light and temperature modules - while she was an adjunct professor at Dickinson College, teaching Film Studies. She worked closely with Priscilla Laws, whom I previously interviewed.

This interview took place on October 14, 2015.

Teaser quote:

“She [Priscilla Laws] found these two programmers who only came out at night and were barefoot all the time ... they didn’t take showers, they didn’t take baths, they didn’t do anything except sit in their nest.”

Links

AtariLab starter set/temperature module manual: http://www.atarimania.com/documents/AtariLab_Starter_Set.pdf

AtariLab light module manual: http://www.atarimania.com/documents/AtariLab_Light_Module.pdf

Andrew Soderberg, Atari Product Manager

Andrew Soderberg was a product manager at Atari from 1980 through August 1983. He oversaw projects including the XL line of computers, and De Re Atari. He was also production manager for several of Atari's TV commercials, one of which won a Clio award. He was a member of the team that build the first computer/laserdisc interactive kiosks for use in retail.

In this interview we discuss Tandy Trower, whom I previously interviewed.

This interview took place on November 18, 2015.

Teaser quote:

“So here I am, 21 years of age, in New York City, being put up in the junior suite of the Plaza, for a week. It’s all been downhill ever since!”

Links:

Andrew’s web site: https://about.me/AndrewSoderberg

Conversational French commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXZN9o7qlWU

Mike West, Pirate

Mike West was an east coast software pirate who went by the handle “Jolly Roger.” He was — and still is — friends with Gary Walton, whom I previously interviewed.

This interview took place on October 9, 2015.

Teaser quotes:

“The whole thing was kind of bizarre. It’s like, on one side of their moth they would scream about piracy. On the other side of their mouth they would kind of — I don’t know, promote it in some way. It was very weird.”

“Piracy did not kill Atari. Atari killed Atari.”

On this episode of ANTIC the atari 8-bit podcast: We explore the possibilities of new Atari software and hardware mods (yea faster Star Raiders explosions); and Randy delves into the turtle-y goodness of Atari Logo. Trigger warning: there may be some Amiga lust and gentle Apple // bashing in this episode.

Recurring Links

Floppy Days Podcast

AtariArchives.org

AtariMagazines.com

Kevin’s Book “Terrible Nerd”

New Atari books scans at archive.org

ANTIC feedback at AtariAge

Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge

ANTIC Facebook Page

What we’ve been up to

• “The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga (Platform Studies)” - Jimmy Maher, The MIT Press - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262017202/?tag=ataripodcast-20

News

• Brad Fuller Interview on Antic
• RetroChallenge - http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/retrochallenge-2012sc/
• Mr. Atari releases new game called Lost In Space
• Fujiology Archive V2.1 – Biggest Atari Demoscene archive
• New Years Disk 2016
• Listen to the Antic podcast on your Android device with a new app (by Trevor Holyoak) at Google Play
• New Racing Game ‘E-Type’ – From 1990 BBC Micro to 2015 Atari 8-bit , http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7249
• OpenEmu 2.0 brings your old Nintendo, Sonic and Sega games on OS X - News4C, http://openemu.org/
• Atari 800 Raspberry Pi 2 case by Tim Klus - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1237748
• Atari XL Parallel Bus cover - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1241053
• Ultimate Atari Video upgrade by Bryan Edewaard
• Super SpartaDOS cartridges, http://www.bitsofthepast.com/

• Phaeron Star Raiders explosion upgrade
• Explosion Upgrade Explanation here

• Upcoming Shows:

• VCF Southeast 4.0 - April 2 & 3 2016, Roswell, GA
• VCF East - April 15-17, 2016 - InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ
• KansasFest - July 19-24, 2016 - https://www.kansasfest.org
• BASIC 10-liner contest rules - http://gkanold.wix.com/homeputerium#!basic-tenliners-2016/c450
• BASIC 10-liner contest discussion - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247971-basic-tenliners-contest-2016/

New at Archive.org

• many new issues of Personal Computing Magazine - https://archive.org/details/personalcomputingmagazine?sort=-publicdate

Of the Month

• Atari 800 Best Game Pack - http://atari800.tistory.com/

Programming Languages Segment (Atari Logo)

• PILOT YOUR ATARI, ATARI LOGO LOOKING GOOD, New language joins Turtle tuss by Ken Harms, ANTIC VOL. 2, NO. 6 / SEPTEMBER 1983 - http://www.atarimagazines.com/v2n6/logo.html
• Atari Logo at AtariMania - http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-atari-logo_15782.html
• Logo video with Alan Alda at YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BENdNkoZwb8
• Atari Logo Demonstration at YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGHs_4vwGWU
• About Logo - Logo Used in a School - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nisFUjnO87g
• Atari Cambridge Research - Logo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR2CwKculBU
• Atari Logo at Atari Wiki - https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Logo
• “LogoWorks: Challenging Programs in Logo”, edited by Cynthia Solomon, Margaret Minsky and Brian Harvey - https://logoworks.wikispaces.com/

Closing

• END OF SHOW MUSIC — Music from Lulu, Russ Wetmore’s heretofore-lost, unfinished game - Russ Wetmore - Lulu - Atari 800 - YouTube

Landon Dyer, Donkey Kong and Super Pac Man

Landon Dyer started as a software engineer in the Atari home computer division in 1982, where he specialized in converting arcade games to the Atari 8-bits. There, he programmed the Atari 400/800 versions of Donkey Kong, and Super Pac Man — which was never officially released by Atari (but has been widely available for many years.) After the Tramiels bought Atari, he worked on the Atari ST, including BIOS boot code and the floppy disk driver. Landon’s blog, at DadHacker.com, has many interesting posts about his Atari days.

This interview took place December 9, 2015.

Teaser quotes:

“In many ways, Atari marketing was completely divorced from the process of making games. They didn’t understand what programmers did, they didn’t understand what manufacturing cycles were.”

“To get ROMs made inside of Atari you had to go through a mastering lab. So basically you’d hand a couple of guys disks. They would disappear into their lab, smoke some dope, and come out with ROMs. And often, keep the disks.”

Link

Landon's web site: http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=987

Tom Briscoe, APX Software Evaluator

Tom Briscoe worked at Atari as an intern in the summer of 1981, where he evaluated the user-written software that had been submitted to Atari Program Exchange.

This interview took place on September 26, 2015.

Teaser quote:

“Hangman was sort of the obvious game for people to submit, and if I recall the obvious business application was the personal finance and record keeping ... budget programs.”

Bob Brass and Peter D'Amato, Cauzin Softstrip

If you read certain computer magazines from the early days of microcomputers — magazines like Byte, Family Computing, II Computing and InCider — you might see long, black-and-white strips of bar codes. Those are computer programs encoded for use with the Cauzin Softstrip reader.

Introduced in 1985, the Cauzin Softstrip was a hardware peripheral that attached to your Apple //, Macintosh, or IBM computer (there was no Atari version.) It optically read the printed two-dimensional bar codes, which were published in those magazines and in books - allowing you to quickly input data - for instance, inputting programs without having to laboriously type them in.

This interview is with two of the people at that company: Bob Brass was co-founder of Cauzin (along with Dr. Jack Goldman, who has passed away), and Peter D'Amato, who was Manager of OEM and VAR Support at Cauzin from 1984 through 1988.

This interview took place on October 5, 2015.

Teaser quote:

"I remember being stumped. How are we going to get something with gears to move 1/100 of a degree? It just won't happen because the slop in a gear would exceed that. ... I said, 'That's it. We're going to have a spiral gear, and we'll have the equivalent of a phonograph arm and it will track to a hundredth of a degree without a problem.'"

Links:

Softstrip information: https://web.archive.org/web/20180322081142/http://softstrip.info/

Scans and documentation at Apple2Scans.net http://www.apple2scans.net/2015/12/20/cauzin-softstrip-reader-manuals-software-etc/

1985 NY Times article about Cauzin: http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/15/science/personal-computers-supermarket-bar-codes-are-applied-to-software.html

Reverse Engineering The Cauzin Softstrip (thesis published October 2018, two years after this interview)

Jim Inscore, Documentation Manager

Jim Inscore was hired at Atari in 1981 as a writer in the marketing department, then became documentation manager, where he managed writers and production staff to produce technical and consumer documentation for Atari computer hardware and software.

This interview took place on December 9, 2015.

Teaser quote:

“A process where ... 12 different design firms came in and did 12 different versions of the packaging. Those of us who had been around for a while were just kinda sitting back and going ‘What is going on here? I don’t understand any of this.’”