ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

John F. White: Writing Strategy Games On Your Atari Computer & Superquerg John F. White is author of the book Writing Strategy Games On Your Atari Computer and the creator of Superquerg and Negaquerg, computer chess programs that were distributed in New Atari User magazine. He was also a contributor to the UK computer magazines Popular Computing Weekly, Personal Computing, Practical Computing, and...

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  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Ke...

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 electron...

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 small...

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. I...

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...

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  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 discu...

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 Stev...

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 ha...

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, an...

Michael Darland, Microperipheral Corporation and Sofcast Michael Darland was co-founder of Microperipheral Corporation, and president of Sofcast, a system that sent computer data over AM and FM radio.   Founded in 1979, Microperipheral Corporation produced 300 BPS modems for several brands of microcomputers, including models compatible with the Atari 8-bit computers. Using telecommunications softw...

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  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kevin's Book "Terrible Nerd"  New Ata...

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 r...

ANTIC #69 Show Notes, July, 2020 Title: Bill Collector Guests Bill Lange - https://twitter.com/BillLange1968   Bill Kendrick - https://twitter.com/billkendrick   Nir Dary - https://twitter.com/ndary   Bill Winters - https://twitter.com/TheGuruMeditate   What We've Been Up To https://archive.org/details/stx_Program_Protection_Methods_for_the_Atari   https://archive.org/details/program-design-intern...

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 2...

Tracy Frey, Atari Birthday Girl There's an article in the New York Times, dated April 9, 1982: "8-Year-Old's Birthday Party in a Computer Center." The story, written by Barbara Gamareklin, is about the birthday party of Tracey Pizzo — now Tracey Frey — which took place at the Capital Children's Museum in Washington, DC. Quoting the article: Tracy Pizzo decided that Chunky's Cheese Pizza Parlor was...

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 R...

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...

Henry and Nancy Taitt, Creative Learning Association Henry Taitt was founder of the Creative Learning Association, which created books and classes about how to program computers in BASIC. Henry, along with his wife Nancy Taitt, ran the company from 1982-1988. The book series, TLC For Growing Minds — TLC means Thinking, Learning, Creating — delivered self-paced lessons about the BASIC programming l...

Claudia Cohl, Editor-in-Chief of Family Computing and K-Power Magazine Claudia Cohl was the editor-in-chief of Family Computing Magazine for its entire run. Published by Scholastic, the magazine ran for 49 issues, from September 1983 through September 1987. Then it published 11 more issues, though August 1988, as "Family and Home Office Computing." Finally, it was rebranded "Home Office Computing"...

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  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kevin's Book "Terrible Nerd"  New Atari books scans at archive.org  ANTIC feedback at A...

Sherman Rosenfeld, Atari Institute for Education Action Research Dr. Sherman Rosenfeld is an internationally-known leader in informal learning and science education. He was a consultant to the Atari Institute for Education Action Research. Founded in June 1981 and led by Ted Kahn, the Institute provided equipment, advice, and financial support to non-profit educational organizations. It granted mo...

Software Automatic Mouth: Mark Barton Mark Barton was creator of SAM — Software Automatic Mouth. Released in 1982, SAM was the first software-only speech synthesizer for personal computers. It was available for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 8-bit computers. He later developed Macintalk, speech synthesis for the Macintosh computer; and narrator, the speech system for the Commodore Amiga. Th...

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 F...

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...