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 micromanager." "At one point I think we had 160 or so collection lawsuits against us in the initial Atari years." "I think really happily back on my Commodore times, less so on the Atari ones." "When you made a computer, made it cheap, shipped it out, and sold it, that was perfect for Jack." Nicholas Lefevre listened to his interview and send along these corrections to his statements: "I did notice a couple errors in what I said which could be in an errata but they are probably not significant enough. At the beginning of my discussion of the Microsoft Multiplan story I introduced it by saying these things happened in 1984. Most of it was in 1983. Only the meeting at Softcon with John Shirley and Bill Gates was in 1984, after Jack's departure from Commodore. I also said that our claim was for $24M x 3. I think it was actually for $8M x 3 (total $24M)."

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 we interviewed him on May 2, 2015 on stage at Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 3.0. LINKS The Internet Archive Pole Position - The Animated Series Jason on Twitter Jason’s Blog

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 computers were just in their infancy. Joe shares with us the thoughts and reasoning that went into the design of the 400 & 800 and thus brings all of us a little closer to being a part of an amazing time in computer history. Please enjoy! Teaser Quotes: “we wanted to build the next great game system and we wanted to build a computer” “we were designing for home users not office people” “We don't get to have slots; that drove us crazy” “In retrospect, I wish we had built an 800-series machine with one built-in disk drive that was right on the bus” Links: Portland Retro Gaming Expo PRGE 2013 - Joe Decuir

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 for other platforms) and Space Knights, a unique product that was a novella that included related Atari games on disk. He also wrote for The Atari Connection magazine. This interview took place April 20, 2015. Teaser quotes: "I think they sold well over 100,000 copies of that book. And they were very successful." "A young engineer came up to me... and he says, 'You know, I am a professional software engineer now because I got so excited about writing software from your Dr. Wacko 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 place February 27, 2015. LINK Steve's web site Teaser quotes: "Just the fact that we have an Atari, that was never designed to be on the Internet, OK? -- NEVER designed to be on the Internet -- on the Internet." "Anybody who has an XE keyboard, sooner or later is going to have a keyboard failure. At least that's been my run-in with them."

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-packed show we've had yet this month! Links mentioned in this episode: Recurring Links Floppy Days Podcast AtariArchives.org AtariMagazines.com Kevins Book “Terrible Nerd” New Atari books scans at archive.org ANTIC feedback at AtariAge Show Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 3.0 Boisy Pitre Interview Liber809 Wade - Atari Portfolio UK Based Portfolio site with information about the system and a software repository Information about the system and how to load a binary program by hand (without file transfer) Atari Portfolio Wiki Atari Portfolio Information Sources for game show Michael Current’s Atari Timeline The Birth of the IBM PC Atari Company Store Price List Jewel-encrusted Atari 1200XL Article Jewel-encrusted Atari 1200XL discussion Computer lab on a bus article Links to Inverse ATASCII www.InverseAtascii.info twitter.com/InverseATASCII

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. Teaser quotes: "So I decided that instead of trying to sell the program, I want to be paid for every single floppy disk drive that a manufacturer makes." "It was designed for sort of a moment in time, and the goal was not to keep evolving it as new hardware became available. It was to fulfill the need at that time."

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 Br0derbund Games Teaser quotes: "So we thought it'd be funny to call it Br0derbund and put a slash through the O. Caused all kinds of grief." "There was a competition between us and a number of other companies like Sierra Online and Sirius Software to see how many [products] we could get on the best seller list at the same time. I think maybe the best we ever did was something like 6 products out of 30." "It was kind of a game: we had very talented engineers in-house who loved to try to put copy protection on, and sometimes carried it to unfortunate lengths." "I drove across the country and back over 5 weeks and sold about $15,000 worth of software, and often ended up staying at the homes of the people who owned the little computer stores. I would just look up a name of a computer store in every town I went through and zigzag across the country."

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. Victor lent me his collection of Atari news releases that he wrote, which I scanned and uploaded toarchive.org. You'll find a link to that in our show notes atAtariPodcast.com. This interview was conducted March 5, 2015. LINK Victor's Atari 5200 and Atari 2600 News Releases Teaser quotes: "For me, this was kind of like my big break... it was a huge blessing for me, really." "I did play the game, and I kept killing E.T.. ... He kept dying on me. He'd literally have little crosses over his eyes. And I was going my god, nobody's going to like this."

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 reference manual for the original VisiCalc program. And in an interesting Atari-related note, she and her husband Steve Smith were married by Atari 400/800 designer Jay Miner -- she talks about that in the interview, too. This interview was conducted January 28, 2015. As of the day I'm recording this in April 2015, Liza hasn't been able to find the manuals and newsletters that we discuss to scan them -- but she says she's still on the lookout. When she finds them and we get them scanned, they'll be added to the show notes atAtariPodcast.com. LINK History of Computing for Learning and Education: A Virtual Museum Teaser quotes: "There was no way that this machine [the Atari 800] would be accepted by a touch typist if you had to shift to get lower case." "I met Steve Wozniak...I was the first person that he had ever met who was taking computers into schools so he gave me the first Apple... So we have Apple I number 1 and Apple II number 10." "One of the things very few people know about Jay [Miner] is that he was interested in nudism. The local nudist group used to have their parties at his house." "So I would have to go and stand in the accounting office...and say 'It's a week after my pay date and I have not received my check... write me a hand check, and put it in the system later ... And I'm going to stand here until you do it." "The guys who started Activision were at Atari. ... Somebody asked me how much I was being paid. I told them ... And they said, '$40 an hour! We're in the wrong business.' And they all quit, and they said 'If you want us to work for you, hire us back at consultants for $40 an hour.'"