Antic The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Tom Halfhill discusses Charles Brannon and SpeedScript Charles Brannon was program editor at Compute! Publications from 1980 until 1986. He wrote and edited articles for Compute! Magazine and Compute!'s Gazette. His Linkedin profile says that his "primary responsibility was crafting BASIC and assembly language software creations. Secondary was managing other young programmers." Charles' wrote and ported many type-in programs for the Atari 8-bit and other computers. His Atari programs included FontMaker, a character set editor and The Atari Wedge, for adding commands To Atari BASIC. His most popular and well-known program was SpeedScript, an assembly language word processor that was available first for the Commodore 64 in the March 1985 issue. In subsequent issues -- one month after another -- versions were published for VIC-20, then the Atari 8-bits, then the Apple II. Each version was a type-in listing that -- after excruciating hours of careful entry -- would build a powerful, functional word processor. C

Donald Dixon, Robotics R&D at Atari Research Donald Dixon worked at Atari Research from 1983 through 1984, under Dr, Alan Kay. There, he worked in robotics research and development, working on a robotic wheelchair. After Atari, Donald worked at Axlon, Nolan Bushnell's toys and consumer robotics company; and Worlds of Wonder, the company most famous for the animatronic bear toy, Teddy Ruxpin. This interview took place on July 27, 2021. Don's web site ANTIC Interview 11 - David Small ANTIC 2013 Chris Crawford interview ANTIC Interview 420 - Brenda Laurel, Atari Research ANTIC Interview 421 - Jim Leiterman, Atari Research Group Video version of this interview 

ANTIC Episode 80 -  Atari Dunking Booth In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… we discuss the exciting progress being made around the 576NUC+ project, all of the great new Atari projects from the mind of Jason Moore, Kay’s awesome series of recent interviews, and we dunk your minds in the deep booth that is 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 discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  Intro Atari Ad Slicks, Line Art, Radio Scripts 1983-07-13 - https://archive.org/details/Atari_Ad_Slicks_Line_Art_Radio_Scripts_1983-07-13  What We’ve Been Up To “How I accidentally archived hundreds of Apple II source code floppies” by Kay at KFest 2021 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFa75CqJw_4  https://archive.org/details/TheMagicRoomDocuments - (https://tw

Jim Leiterman, Atari Research Group Jim Leiterman worked at Atari from April 1982 through March 1984 in the research group, under Alan Kay. His various projects included software for Project Puffer, an exercise bike peripheral for the Atari 800; an 8-player Hammurabi game; and an unreleased port of the game Warlords. He created a symbolic disassembler, which he used to port the game Kangaroo from Atari 5200 to the Atari 800. That version of Kangaroo was released by Atari Program Exchange, in the fall 1983 catalog. Prior to Atari, Jim was a programmer at Horizon Simulations, where he worked on Shadow Hawk One, "a futuristic game of spacefaring piracy." This interview took place on July 12, 2021. Be sure to check out Jim's web site where he has posted some photos of the hardware and software that we discussed. This interview at YouTube Jim's Atari page Jim's games at AtariMania "Atari nearly introduced the world to fitness gaming 30 years ago" in Washington Post AtariProtos on Tumbleweeds Horizons S

Brenda Laurel, Atari Research Dr. Brenda Laurel worked at Atari from 1980 through 1984. She began as software specialist for educational applications then soon became manager of software strategy for the home computer division. In mid-1982, she joined Atari Corporate Research at the Sunnyvale research laboratory, where she worked with Alan Kay. After Atari, she worked at Activision as director of software development. Later she founded Purple Moon, a software company focused on creating games for young girls; and co-founded Telepresence Research, a company focused on first-person media and virtual reality. This interview took place on July 15, 2021. Check the show notes for links to articles she wrote for Atari Connection magazine; her doctoral dissertation, "Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System"; scans of memos on the subject of interactive fantasy that she wrote while at Atari Research; and more. Brenda's web site Brenda's dissertation — Toward the Design of a Computer-Base

ANTIC Episode 79 -  Basically MyTek and Nir In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… we discuss all the great work that MyTek is doing with Atari hardware (including the 576NUC), Nir Dary surprises all of the hosts with (late/early) Christmas (or birthday) Atari gifts, and Randy gets unmercifully teased about his overuse of the word “basically”. 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 discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  What We’ve Been Up To Magic Dump! - http://atariprojects.org/2019/02/12/dump-your-atari-computer-screen-to-printer-or-disk-10-15-mins/  CircuitScribe - https://circuitscribe.com/  Monkey Wrench II - http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-monkey-wrench-ii_17608.html  News  MyTek’s 576NUC+ and internal FujiNet!! - https://

Bob Elfstrom, The Magic Room Interview and research by Kay Savetz. From 1982 through 1984, Atari ran summer computer camps at several locations around the United States. I covered the Atari camps extensively in a special episode in 2015. Now it's summer 2021, and we're going back to camp! That first year of the computer camps, in 1982, Atari commissioned a film about its summer camps, about the kids and teachers who were there, about the process of learning about computers, about kids challenging themselves, and about making friends at summer camp. Atari commissioned filmmaker Bob Elfstrom and his partner Lucy Hilmer to make the film. They shot the 26-minute film at the University of California, San Diego campus in 1982. It would be titled The Magic Room and was released the next year. There are many scenes in the computer lab: we see close-ups of kids concentrating, thinking about the logic of their programming projects. Their faces light up as they solve their problem. There’s an adorable scene with a

Rick Trow, Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow This is the second interview episode about Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow. Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow was a school assembly, sponsored by Atari, that played at hundreds of middle schools and high schools throughout the United States in 1983 and 1984. In the previous interview episode, I interviewed one of the show's presenters and the filmmaker. In this episode, my interview with Rick Trow. Rick Trow was the president of Rick Trow Productions, the company that created the Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow show -- as well as more than 40 other school assemblies and other productions over the years. Mr. Trow wrote the script for the 40-minute show, which combined two synchronized films with a live actor to teach computer basics to young people. This interview took place on June 5, 2021. ANTIC Interview 417 - Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow The Career Game Rick Trow Productions Employee Newsletters 1983 "Taking the Show on the Road" in Personal Co

ANTIC Episode 78 -  The Extremely Elderly Computer Geeks Club In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… We discuss lots of new things you can do with your FujiNet, the differences in FujiNet versions, the Old Computer Geeks Club, and other recent 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 discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  What We’ve Been Up To Interesting conversation with Mike Albaugh - https://twitter.com/KaySavetz/status/1388206215356829696?s=20  2013 Mike Albaugh interview: https://archive.org/details/MikeAlbaughInterview  Brian Manning - Academy on Computers tapes and newsletters https://archive.org/details/@savetz?query=academy+on+computers TIARA - The Internet Archive Research Assistant - https://github.com/savetz/tiara  News  Fuji

ANTIC Interview 417 - Computers: Expressway to Tomorrow Interviews and research by Kay Savetz Imagine this. It's 1983 or 1984. You're drudging through yet another day of middle school or high school. But today, there's a surprise, a break from the monotony. The teacher tells your class to put away their stuff and go to the gym, or the cafeteria, or the auditorium. Today, there will be an assembly. As you and your class -- and all the other classes -- get settled in the uncomfortable folding chairs, or the bleachers, or even the floor, you take in the scene: two large projection screens. Some speakers and audio equipment you haven't seen before. One of your peers is getting ready to run a spotlight. Then, this enthusiastic person -- older than you but really not by much -- explains why you're here. Today, at this assembly, you're going to learn about computers. The lights go down, the spotlight comes up on that energetic host, and you realize this is a different sort of school assembly than you've seen befo

Bob Evans, Capital Children's Museum administrator This is the fourth in our series of interviews about the Atari computers at the Capital Children's Museum. Bob Evans wore many hats at the museum: he was director of special exhibits, where he worked on the museum's exhibit on the history of human communication, which used several computers, both public-facing and behind the scenes. He was administrator of Superboots, the museum's software publishing lab -- it published the computer art program PAINT! but no other software. Bob was administrator of The Future Center, the museum's public computer lab, and administrator of the museum's summer computer camp for disadvantaged youth. This interview took place on April 22, 2021. ANTIC Interview 391 - Tracy Frey, Atari Birthday Girl   ANTIC Interview 410 - Ann Lewin-Benham, Director of Capital Children's Museum ANTIC Interview 415 - Peter Hirshberg, CCM computer center director

Peter Hirshberg, Capital Children's Museum Peter Hirshberg was curator of the communications wing of the Capital Children's Museum in the early 1980s, where he helped build The Future Center, the computer lab outfitted with Atari 800 computers; and museum exhibits, some of which were computer controlled. This interview took place on April 12, 2021. In it, we discuss Ann Lewin-Benham, director of the museum; and Guy Nouri, from the Superboots lab, both of whom I previously interviewed. Compu-tots and Other Joys of Museum Life by Peter Hirshberg, Instructional Innovator, Sept 1981 ANTIC Interview 410 - Ann Lewin-Benham, Director of Capital Children's Museum ANTIC Interview 407 - Guy Nouri, Interactive Picture Systems Finding Home Computer Uses, NY Times article by Andrew Pollack Gray Area art and technology center This interview on YouTube

Bob Puff, Computer Software Services Bob Puff is owner of Computer Software Services, a company that began creating hardware and software for the Atari 8-bit computers in 1982. Bob became president of the company in 1991. He designed a bevy of hardware products for the Atari computers, including The Black Box, a hard drive host adapter; The Multiplexer, a networking system; the UltraSpeed Plus operating system upgrade; upgrades for the XF551 floppy drive; the Super-E Burner EPROM burner; and others. He also created a number of popular utility programs, including the BobTerm terminal program; Disk Communicator, to convert boot disks to a single compressed file for transfer over modem; and MYDOS version 4.53; among other software. This interview took place on April 27, 2021. Computer Software Services legacy site 1993 Computer Software Services catalog scan ANTIC Interview 393 - Charles Marslett, MYDOS and FastChip

Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, Atari Game Research Group Valerie Atkinson was a member of Atari's Game Research Group. Now named Valerie Manfull, she was on the team that designed and programmed the game Excalibur, along with Chris Crawford and Larry Summers. Excalibur was published by Atari Program Exchange in fall 1983. She is also one of the programmes of Ballsong, along with Douglas Crockford. Ballsong is a music and graphics demo program released by Atari, in which a ball bounces on the screen in response to an improvised tune. She was one of the programmers, with Ann Marion, of TV Fishtank, a demonstration of an artificially intelligent fish. (It's unclear if the fishtank program was released anywhere, though it apparently was shown at the 1984 SIGgraph conference.) This interview took place on April 22, 2021. ANTIC Episode 4 - Chris Crawford ANTIC Interview 240 - Douglas Crockford TV Fishtank at SIGgraph Jim Leiterman describes TV Fishtank Chris Crawford describes the development of Excalibur i

ANTIC Episode 77 - Jason Moore, PhD  In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… Jason Moore joins us to discuss his atariprojects.org Web site and we discuss all the news rocking the Atari 8-bit world... 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 discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  What We’ve Been Up To Ed Fries source code, mac/65 tokenized:  https://github.com/savetz/edfries-seachase https://github.com/savetz/edfries-anteater https://github.com/savetz/edfries-frog https://github.com/savetz/edfries-nitro  https://github.com/savetz/edfries-chess (Xuel got it working at https://atariage.com/forums/topic/318961-assembly-source-code-for-5-programs-by-ed-fries/?do=findComment&comment=4799922  Prentice Associates Classroom Computer News and Apple II source

Linda Brownstein, Atari VP Special Projects As I've researched Atari and it's 8-bit computer projects over the years, one name has come up over and over again, attached to the most interesting projects. Linda S. Gordon. Executive Director of Atari Computer Camps. Linda. Executive Producer of The Magic Room, Atari's movie about its camps. Atari's collaboration with Club Med to offer computer labs at vacation destinations — Linda again. Atari Club, the fan group that published Atari Age magazine - Linda launched that. More recently, in my interview with Ann Lewin-Benham of the Capital Children's Museum, Linda's name came up once again -- she was the liaison between Atari and the museum. Linda worked on the most interesting projects. Today, her name is Linda Brownstein. Linda joined Atari in December 1980 as Vice President of Special Projects, where she worked on most of  the projects that I mentioned before. In October 1983 she became Senior Vice President in Atari's  Education group. She left the company in

Mark Simonson, Atari Artist and Font Designer Mark Simonson used his Atari computers who create art that was published in magazines in the 1980s, including a portrait of Nolan Bushnell that was commissioned by TWA Ambassador, an inflight magazine; a colorful street scene for the cover of Minnesota Monthly, the magazine of Minnesota Public Radio; and a juggler for the cover of Credit Union Advantage magazine, among others. Professionally, Mark is a font designer. He created Atari Classic, a free TrueType font family for modern computers that looks like the Atari 8-bit screen font. Today, you'll see Atari Classic used in many Atari emulators, web sites, the WUDSN IDE, and elsewhere. This interview took place on April 15, 2021. Mark's Atari reminisce blog post Mark's Mac/Atari Fusion site Mark's Nolan Bushnell portrait in Hi-Res Magazine Issue 1 A wild Mark appears on AtariAge FujiNet This interview on YouTube

Ann Lewin-Benham, Director of Capital Children's Museum Ann Lewin-Benham was executive director of the Capital Children's Museum in Washington, D.C. The museum was home to the first public-access computer center in the nation’s capital, and indeed, one of the first in the United States. In 1981, Atari and Apple each donated dozens of computers to the museum. The exact number is unclear, but 30 is the number I've seen most often for Atari's contribution. The computer lab was called The Future Center. There, the museum offered computer literacy classes for people of all ages, from Compu-Tots for preschoolers, to programming classes for adults, there was even a computer literacy session for members of Congress. It also used the lab for birthday parties. (Last year, I interviewed a woman who had her 8th birthday party at the museum.) The museum used more of its computers in its exhibit on communication. It established a software development laboratory, called Superboots, in which developers created custom softa

Ed Fries: Romox Ant Eater, Princess and Frog, Sea Chase Ed Fries programmed three games for the Atari 8-bit computers, which were published on cartridge by Romox: Sea Chase, Ant Eater, and Princess and Frog. His forth game for Romox, Nitro, was unfinished because the company went out of business before Ed was done coding it. Years later, Ed became vice president of game publishing at Microsoft where he oversaw the creation of the Xbox. In 2010, Ed released Halo 2600, a demake of the Halo video for the Atari 2600. In 2013, he coded an Atari 2600 version of Rally X. This interview took place on March 11, 2021. After the interview, Ed sent me the assembly language source code to five games, which he graciously released as open source. You'll find the code for Sea Chase, Ant Eater, Princess and Frog, the unreleased/finished game Nitro, and a chess game, at GitHub. AtariMania's list of Ed Fries' games 2015 Atari Compendium Interview Ed's Blog Ed on Twitter This interview at Youtube ANTIC Interview 76

ANTIC Episode 76 - The Bill Kendrick Show In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… Bill Kendrick gets more mentions than when he’s on the show, Kay discovers he owns more Atari disk drives than the rest of the Atari community combined, and we discuss all the news rocking the Atari 8-bit world. 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 discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  What We’ve Been Up To Worms? Source code archiving - https://github.com/savetz/worms  Atari Speed Reading Receipts - https://archive.org/details/atari-speed-reading-receipts  News  800XL PCB remake: https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-pcb-soldering-and-troubleshooting https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-pcb-remake ATasm, a command-l