ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Nicholas Lefevre, Attorney for Commodore and Atari   Nicholas Lefevre was in-house counsel for Commodore under Jack Tramiel during the time of the Commodore 64, then in-house counsel for Atari after Jack Tramiel bought it.   This interview took place April 10, 2015.   Teaser quotes:   "Particularly with Jack Tramiel, he was willing to give you enough rope to hang yourself. He was not a micromanage...

Jason Scott, Internet Archive   Jason Scott is a digital historian and documentary filmmaker who for several years has worked for the Internet Archive, a nonprofit that has worked to save as much online - and offline - culture as possible. He is also known to attend the occasional vintage computer festival, so as luck would have it, ANTIC and Jason were in the same festival at the same time, and w...

Hello, and welcome to another interview edition of Antic, the Atari 8-bit Podcast.  I am Randy Kindig.  I am extremely honored to bring to you today an interview with one of the true pioneers of the personal computer, one of the primary designers of the Atari 400 & 800, Mr. Joe Decuir.  Joe worked closely with Jay Miner, Steve Mayer and others to design a computer in the days when personal compute...

David Heller, Dr. C. Wacko   David Heller may be better known to Atari users by his pen name - Dr. C. Wacko. As Dr. Wacko, David wrote the books "Dr. C. Wacko's Miracle Guide to Designing and Programing Your Own Atari Computer Arcade Games" and "Dr. C. Wacko Presents Atari BASIC" as well as similar books for other platforms. He also wrote the book "Free Software For Your Atari" (and similar books...

Steve Carden, RealDOS   Steve Carden maintains RealDOS, a free, command-line DOS that's multiplexer capable, and still being actively maintained to work with modern hardware.  He also works on a variety of hardware products, some of which are available to Atari hobbyists, and some of which aren't. Steve also helped take over maintenance of BBS Express from Keith Ledbetter.   This interview took pl...

On this episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast, AND Inverse ATASCII, the Atari 8-bit productivity podcast, we record live from Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 3.0!!   On this show we interview attendees with Atari stories, find out who's going to win the grand prize for our game show (hint: It's someone you may know!), and answer questions from the audience.  Come join us for the most fun-p...

Ron Bieber, SmartDOS   Ron Bieber was involved with the creation and marketing of SmartDOS, an alternative DOS that was bundled with disk drives from Rana and Astra, and also sold by Sears stores. SmartDOS'swas the first disk operating system to be "Density Smart" — automatically changing between the disk drive's density modes depending on the disk used.   This interview took place on March 4 2015...

Doug Carlston, Broderbund CEO   Doug Carlston was co-founder and CEO of the software publisher Broderbund.   Broderbund published many hits across several platforms, including Bank Street Writer, Print Shop, A.E., Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, Spelunker, David's Midnight Magic, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.   This interview occurred March 5, 2015.   LINKS AtariMania.com's List of...

Victor Cross, Atari copywriter   Victor Cross was a freelance copywriter for Atari from 1982 through 1984. He wrote many press releases and product announcements for Atari 2600 and 5200 games. He also wrote the documentation for the Atari 5200 Baseball game; plus various catalog copy for Atari.  He also wrote game manuals for LucasArts, Spectrum Holobyte, Br0derbund, and other software companies....

Liza Loop,Technical Writer   Liza Loop wrote the first users manuals for the Atari 400 and 800 computers. She was a Consultant/Technical Writer for Atari from June 1979 through April 1980, sometimes writing documentation for interfaces that had not been designed yet -- so her description became the de facto interface specification.  Liza also worked for Personal Software, where she wrote the refer...

Hello, you are listening to Antic, the Atari 8-bit computer podcast.  I am Randy Kindig, one of the co-hosts, and I’m bringing to you today an interview episode with the author of one of the best games ever released for the Atari 8-bit computer line.  That would be David Fox, one of the authors of Rescue on Fractalus.  David shares his memories of developing that iconic game, working for LucasFilm...

Charles Ratcliff, son of MAT*RAT   Charles Ratcliff is the son of Matthew Ratcliff, the prolific writer for the Atari magazines. Matthew Ratcliff -- or MAT*RAT -- died in 1999.   Matthew wrote for Antic, STart, Compute!, A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing, and ST-LOG. In 1986 won Antic magazine's award for Outstanding Contributor. Here's what they wrote about him:   "In 1985, Missouri programmer Matthew Ratcl...

Michael Phillips, Atari Bench Tech   Michael Phillips worked as a bench technician at Atari from February 1981 to June 1984, doing component level repair of Atari video game systems, personal computers, and peripherals.   Because Michael is a lifelong stutterer, he didn’t want to do a voice interview — but he was willing to be interviewed by email. Because this is an audio podcast, I’ve enlisted R...

Ian Chadwick   Ian Chadwick is the author of Mapping The Atari, which was -- and remains -- the ultimate memory map for the Atari 8-bit computers. Mapping was published in two editions: the original was for the 400/800 computers, then an updated version was later released for the XL and XE machines. Ian also did a lot of documentation writing behind the scenes, including many of Antic's software m...

Louis Massucci, Atari Bench Tech   Lou Massucci was a bench technician for the Atari 800 line, repairing 8-bit computers and peripherals in Somerset, New Jersey. Later, he was was promoted to field service representative for the southwest territory.   This interview was conducted on March 2, 2015.   Teaser Quotes "Actually, that's what was causing some of the failure modes because the debris left...

On this episode of ANTIC the atari 8-bit podcast: a plethora of news about new atari software and podcasts Randy tells us all about the “other” official  basic, Microsoft BASIC for the Atari and we de-brief about all of the recent interviews. Yoomp will have a great time listening!   Links mentioned in this episode:   Recurring Links Floppy Days Podcast AtariArchives.org AtariMagazines.com Kevins...

Al Alcorn, Atari Employee #3   Welcome to Antic, the Atari 8-bit computer podcast.  I’m Randy Kindig and this is an interview-only episode of Antic.  My guest for this interview was employee #3 at Atari where he created the world's first commercially successful video game: Pong, Mr. Al Alcorn.  Al was a very influential figure in the early Atari and has a lot of great stories to share about those...

William Volk   William Volk wrote three Atari games for Avalon Hill: Conflict 2500, Voyager 1, and Controller. He also wrote Forth Turtle Graphics Plus, a 3-D graphics library for the Forth language that was released by Atari Program Exchange; ValGraphics for Valpar International; and Super Smart Terminal, an 80-column terminal application which -- may have been released by APX? He later went on t...

Jerry Jessop   Jerry Jessop worked at Atari from 1977 through 1985 where he did many jobs - including lead of production repair, customer service supervisor for the Atari 400/800, and he worked with the secret skunkworks group that was creating the Amiga, when it still could have been an Atari product. In this interview he shares great stories, including how he hand-assembled Atari 800s on the pro...

David Cramer - Western Design Center   David Cramer is the VP of Business Development at Western Design Center, the company that still, today, manufacturers and sells the 6502 chip, the CPU that's at the heart of the Atari 800, Apple ][, Commodore 64, and many other classic computers. In fact, the 6502 is used in many modern applications like pacemakers, and it's also available in development kits...

Rich Pasco   Rich Pasco was Manager of VLSI Development where he worked on the FREDDIE memory management chip used in the Atari XL and XE series computers. He worked at Atari from November 1982 through May 1983. He lobbied management to create some products for the Atari 8-bit line -- including a mouse and an 80+ column display system -- which were not developed. Prior to his time at Atari, he was...

ANTIC Episode 20 - Visicalc, Choplifter   LINKS:   Virtual Apple ][ Drop 300 Inches Podcast

Peter Dell, WUDSN and THE!CART Studio   Hello, welcome to another interview-only episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast.  My name is Randy Kindig and today I’ll be talking with Peter Dell, also known as JAC! on AtariAge.  Peter is the developer of the outstanding WUDSN product for developing Atari 8-bit software and also is the developer of another product called THE!CART Studio, which is used...

W. Sean Hennessy   W. Sean Hennessy worked in the Consumer Electronics Division at Atari from April 1982 through March 1984 where he developed Realsports Tennis for the Atari 800 and 5200, and created the version of Centipede for the Atari 5200, and Pengo for the Atari 800 and 5200. He also worked at The Software Machine, a company that was working to create edutainment software for the Atari and...

Scott Adams - Adventure International   Scott Adams is probably best known for his line of text adventures for early personal computers -- including AdventureLand, Pirate Adventure, Mystery Fun House, and many others. He was also the founder of Adventure International, the company that brought Atari users myraid programs, including Preppie!, Rally Speedway, Whomper Stomper, and lots of others. The...