ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Duane Bolster, Midas Touch and Advanced Fingerspelling Duane Bolster published two programs with Atari Program Exchange: Midas Touch and Advanced Fingerspelling. Midas Touch, a word game, was first available in the summer 1982 APX catalog. Advanced Fingerspelling, a program for teaching letters in sign language, was first available in the fall 1983 catalog. He also created an add-on for the Atari...

Tom Halfhill, Compute! Magazine Tom R. Halfhill was features editor of Compute! Magazine, and was later launch editor of several other magazines from that publisher, including Compute!'s Gazette, Compute's Atari ST, and Compute!'s PC Magazine. He co-wrote the book Advanced Amiga Basic and was later editor of Game Players magazine. This interview took place on March 29, 2016. Teaser quotes: "SpeedS...

Richard Mansfield: Compute! Magazine, 6502 Machine Language Books Richard Mansfield is author of the best-selling book Machine Language For Beginners, and its sequel, Compute!'s Second Book Of Machine Language, both published by Compute! books. He also wrote Apple Machine Language for Beginners, Commodore 128 Machine Language for Beginners, and a bevy of other computer books continuing right up th...

  Richard Wiitala, Number Blast Richard Wiitala was the author of Number Blast, an arithmetic teaching program that was published by Atari Program Exchange. Number Blast first appeared in the winter 1981 APX catalog, where it won third prize in the education category.  This interview took place on February 1, 2016. After we talked, Richard send me 23 pages of scans of his correspondance with Atari...

Ray Citak, music education software Ray Citak wrote Name the Notes, a music education program that was accepted by Atari Program Exchange, and won an APX award, but never appeared in the APX catalog. (The program is, as far as we know, lost to the sands of time.)  He also wrote the program Keyed Up, "a music education program disguised as a goofy game," which appeared in Antic magazine, and Lightn...

Ted Toal, Cyan Engineering Ted Toal was a software developer at Cyan Engineering, an Atari research group. He worked on Atari's unreleased picture telephone as well as other projects. This interview took place January 24, 2016. Teaser quote: "He wanted to have toys that would be able to listen to sounds in a room and figure out where the sounds were coming from, and like maybe be able to turn towa...

Peter Donoso, Atari Explorer magazine Peter Donoso was managing editor of Atari Explorer magazine from September 1991 through February 1993, primarily covering Atari during the ST era. This interview took place on November 23, 2015. Teaser quote: "[Jack Tramiel's] vision and his ability to find technology that was ahead of the market ... was just remarkable. I mean, he continually had these vision...

Bob Brodie: User Group Manager for Atari Hi and welcome to another special interview edition of Antic the Atari 8-bit computer podcast.  My name is Randy Kindig and I'll be providing the interview questions for this episode.  I'm extremely pleased to provide this interview with a name well-known in the Atari community: Mr. Bob Brodie.  Bob worked for Atari as User Group Manager and later Director...

John Harris: Jawbreaker, Frogger, Mouskattack John Harris created the games Jawbreaker, Frogger, and Mouskattack for the Atari 8-bit computers. He worked at Sierra On-Line and later Synapse Software. He later created video character generator systems based on the Atari machines. This interview took place June 10, 2016. Teaser quotes: "Literally — I mean, a day or two difference could have made — g...

Bob Alkire and Steve Saunders, Rainbow GPU Bob Alkire and Steve Saunders worked in Atari's Corporate Research lab under Alan Kay, where they worked on the Rainbow GPU. Rainbow was a next-generation graphics chip (after ANTIC) which was never released. This interview took place on June 10, 2016. The first voice you hear is that of Bob Alkire. Teaser quotes: Steve: "And they basically went around th...

Eric Freeman: Bootleg and Weakon Eric Freeman published two programs through Atari Program Exchange: Bootleg and Weakon. Bootleg first appeared in the summer 1983 APX catalog: the catalog called it "a search-for-booty maze game submitted from New Zealand," and it received a rare full-page description in that catalog. Weakon was only available in the final APX catalog, winter 1983. That game was la...

Max Manowski, Wizard's Revenge Max Manowski wrote Adventure, a text adventure game that he released into the public domain to Atari users groups. Later, he modified Adventure and called it Wizard's Revenge, which was published by Atari Program Exchange. Wizard's Revenge was available in the fall 1981 APX catalog, the very first APX catalog. This interview took place May 27, 2016. Teaser quote: "In...

Frank Paris, Mathlib for Deep Blue C Frank Paris wrote Mathlib for Deep Blue C, a library of floating-point functions for use with the Deep Blue C programming language. Mathlib first appeared in the fall 1983 APX catalog, where it won second prize in the systems/telecommunications category. The Deep Blue C compiler was written by John Palevich, whom I previously interviewed. You can contact Frank...

In this three-year anniversary episode of Antic the Atari 8-bit podcast — we uncover an abundance of Atari source code, documentation, and engineering notes; Bill explores Five Dots, a new game; and we debate the fate of the 1200XL. 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 A...

Kathy and Phil Bergh, I'm Different! Kathy and Phil Bergh published one program through Atari Program Exchange: I'm Different!, which first appeared in the inaugural APX catalog, winter 1982-1983. The program won third prize in the Education category in that catalog. It was one of the few commercial programs developed in the PILOT language. Kathy and Phil also wrote three articles — also about PIL...

David Thiel, musician and interactive audio David Thiel is a musician and interactive audio designer. At Gottlieb, he did the sound for arcade games including Reactor, Q*Bert, and Mach 3. At Action Graphics, David created the sound for Artillery Duel for the Atari 2600, and Beamrider and Pitstop for the Atari computers. And at Free Radical Software/Incredible Technologies, he worked on Winter Game...

Gary Yost, The Catalog and Cyber Studio Gary Yost worked at Antic magazine, in product development. He was the man behind The Catalog, Antic's catalog of third-party software. When Atari Program Exchange was shut down, he contacted programmers from APX to re-publish their works in's Antic's Catalog. Gary was instrumental in creating CAD 3-D (written by Tom Hudson), Cybermate, and the Cyber Studio...

Fred Parr, MACE newsletter Fred Parr was a member of MACE — the Michigan Atari Computer Enthusiasts group, and the man who printed the club newsletter. You can find scans of the newsletter at archive.org . This interview took place on April 22, 2016. It in, we discuss Arlan Levitan, whom I previously interviewed. "And I just marvel that something that crude, in today's perspective, could have actu...

Roland Gustafsson, Print Shop Companion Roland Gustafsson wrote The Print Shop Companion, an add-on package for Brøderbund's popular Print Shop software, which added a printable calendar, font and page border editors, and other features. He first developed the program for the Apple ][, then ported the software to the Atari 800 and Commodore 64. In the retro-computing community, however, Roland is...

Chuck Gibke, Air Raid! Chuck Gibke, published one piece of software for the Atari computer: Air Raid!. The game first appeared in the winter 1982-1983 APX catalog, where it won second prize in the entertainment category. This interview took place on April 22, 2016. "Winning the contest generated a little bit of prizes you could pick from Atari stuff, which was pretty amazing. There was like $2,000...

Steve Cavin: Minotaur, Juggles' House, Juggles' Rainbow  Steve Cavin started at Cromenco where he built computer kits and tested hardware. Later he wrote several programs for the Atari 8-bit computers: Minotaur, which was published by Atari Program Exchange — it first appeared in the fall 1981 APX catalog; and the Atari versions of Juggles' House and Juggles' Rainbow, educational games published b...

Neil Harris: Commodore, Atari, GEnie Neil Harris started at Commodore as a member of the VIC-20 launch team, then continued to be a writer, programmer, and product manager there. He moved to Atari, where he was from 1984 to 1988. There he was hardware products manager, director of communications, and director of publications. He worked on Atari Explorer magazine, and wrote a bit for other publicat...

Jay Jaeger, APX Space War Jay Jaeger released one program for the Atari computers: Space War, which was published by Atari Program Exchange. It appeared in the fall 1983 APX catalog. This interview took place on March 16, 2016. Teaser quote: "It took a couple revisions back and forth. The program was fine; getting the documentation right, and yet have them be happy with it, was a little frustratin...

Joel Gluck: Babel, Attank!, Pushover, Fun-FORTH Joel Gluck published four programs through Atari Program Exchange: Babel, Attank!, Pushover, and Fun-FORTH. The first, Babel, was published when he was just 16 years old. He later worked at Atari's corporate research under Alan Kay. He also wrote a few articles for A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing magazine. Babel was available in the first APX catalog, fall 19...

Ted Kahn, Atari Institute for Educational Action Research Ted Kahn was creator of the Atari Institute for Educational Action Research, which  awarded major grants of Atari home computer products, and consulting services to individuals, schools, and non-profit organizations. The group granted more than $1.25 million in products and services to about 100 innovative people and projects around the US...