ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

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.’”

Russ Wetmore: Preppie!, Sea Dragon, Homepak Russ Wetmore started at Adventure International, where he worked with Scott Adams on Savage Island Part II. He then went on to program Preppie!, Preppie! II, and Sea Dragon - all of which were published by Adventure International - and Homepak business software, which was published by Batteries Included. This interview took place on September 24, 2015, and then a little bit more on January 4, 2016. After the main interview took place, Russ sent me the source code for Preppie!, Preppie! II, and Sea Dragon, plus an demonstration disk of an unfinished Atari game called Lulu. I successfully archived all of those disks and have posted them to archive.org. I also made a YouTube video of the Lulu demo. Links are below. Links Game source code Video of Lulu Lulu discussion and ATR download AtariMania list of Russ Wetmore software JavaScript version of Preppie AtariAge discussion about the source code Teaser quote: “I actually only spent about 18 months writing those three games, and I probably would have done them in much sooner time, but I was 23 and lazy.”

Paul Lewandowski, APX Puzzler Paul Lewandowski was in high school when he wrote Puzzler, which was published by Atari Program Exchange and won the Atari Star Award in fall 1983: first prize in the learning category. Puzzler is a game that shows you a picture on the screen, chops it into equally sized squares, and scrambles them. Then, the player uses the joystick to try to put the picture back together - like one of those plastic puzzles where you slide numbers around to put them in order. Puzzler had three difficulty levels: 4x4 was easy, 8x8 was hard, and 10x10 was “insane”. This interview took place on December 9, 2015 Teaser quote: “The whole thing was such a great idea ... having users write programs. It was so ahead of its time.” Links APX catalog featuring Puzzler Puzzler download at AtariArchives.org Paul on Twitter

Clinton Parker, Action! Welcome to this special interview edition of Antic, the Atari 8-bit computer podcast. All of our interviews are special in some way and we appreciate the time that the interviewees donate to the Atari 8-bit community at large. This interview is a much-anticipated one due to the beloved nature of the software provided by the interviewee and due to the fact that the he has been away from the Atari 8-bit community for some time. The software I’m talking about is the Action! programming language and the author is Clinton Parker. Action! was released in 1983 by Optimized Systems Software (better known as OSS). It quickly became one of the favorite programming languages ever produced for the Atari 8-bits and was used in the development of some commercial products. The 6502 source code for Action! was made available under the GNU General Public License by the author in 2015. This interview took place on September 6, 2015 via Skype. Teaser Quotes “It was an opportunity for me having a platform, which is what the Atari was to me. It provided a platform where I could sit down and literally design a language that I liked and that had the features I liked.” “It was selling well enough that I was able to for several years to pretty much make a living off the royalties of the sales of it.” Links Action! Review in ANALOG - http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/an16/action.htm HI-RES VOL. 1, NO. 4 / MAY/JUNE 1984 / PAGE 72 - http://www.atarimagazines.com/hi-res/v1n4/action.php Action! at SourceForge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/atari-action/ Action! Source at Archive.org - https://archive.org/details/ActionVersion36_SourceCode

Peter J. Meyer - Tempest Xtreem, Venture, Delta Space Arena The intro music to this episode is the tune “Mind’s Eye” from the Atari XL/XE version of Tempest Xtreem; composed by Sal KJMANN Esquivel. Our guest for this interview is the author of Tempest Xtreem, as well as Delta Space Arena and Venture for the Atari 8-bits, Mr. Peter J. Meyer. Peter has done a great job of developing game software for the Atari in the modern era and continues to develop additional software. His software is available at Video 61 and Atari Sales, run by Lance Ringquist. Please enjoy the interview and let Peter know you appreciate the work he continues to do for the Atari 8-bits. Teaser Quote: “I was on my Atari and my friends brought over this Nintendo system and they said ‘Oh, your Atari will never be able to do anything like this!’” Links: Video 61 and Atari Sales - http://members.tcq.net/video61/main.html Delta Space Arena at YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW_9myJ2Cu0 Tempest Xtreem Music (Mind’s Eye) by Sal Esquivel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq3XaGBPc60 Tempest Xtreem at YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbpN4cMnQrw Download of Tempest Xtreem - http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-tempest-xtreem_23225.html Venture at YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hpmD5LQcoE Antic Episode 26 with Bill’s Modern Segment on Tempest, Venture, Delta Space Arena - http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-episode-26-100-episodes-and-counting