The Atari interview discussion thread

[Mclaneinc]

Did Hellesen program the Atari 8-bit version of Gyruss? Various sites credit him with the C64 version.

 

I'd presume he did do the Atari as well, I've scanned the hex code for any mention and played with the character coding but there's no actual mention of him BUT to get Gyruss on to 16K is a BIG ask and I suspect any spare bytes were put to more important uses...

 

I know not every one loves the Atari Gyruss but it was staple play back then and I cheated the hell out of it too, its still a great little time waster these days..

 

Some AMAZING conversions to carts or small mem in those days...Now there's a million times more space wasted on little Easter eggs and programmer ego splats than an entire disk box of Atari 8 bit games..

[Tempest]

Meh, I'd rather know who did the 2600 version of Gyruss. Now THAT version was amazing given the hardware.

[Mclaneinc]

/me heads off when I have time to look at this version..Sounds interesting..

[Kyle22]

I really like Gyruss. It would be nice to have an updated version of it. Especially one that takes advantage of the latest tricks of programming the Atari chipset.

 

And doesn't cut off the sound early.

[Savetz]

Norm Draper, Draper Pascal

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-355-norm-draper-draper-pascal

Norm Draper was the creator of Draper Pascal, a version of the Pascal programming language for the Atari 8-bit computers. Draper Pascal started as a commercial program sold directly though advertisements in computer magazines, then later became shareware.

This interview took place on July 3, 2018.

"I offered club members to pay them for every bug they would find in my software. I'd pay them $3. ... There were a few. I didn't have to pay out that much money at all, really."

[Savetz]

Michael McInerney, physics experiments with Atari computers

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-356-michael-mcinerney-physics-experiments-with-atari-computers

In the 1980s, Michael McInerney was a professor in the physics department at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, when he wrote several journal articles about how to control experiments and gather data using Atari computers.

The articles included Interfacing the Atari Microcomputer in the Science Laboratory, which appeared in the spring 1983 issue of Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching; Game Port Physics - Introductory Experiments in Linear Dynamics, which appeared in the spring 1984 issue; and Computer-Aided Experiments with the Damped Harmonic Oscillator, which appeared in the October 1985 issue of American Journal of Physics.

This interview took place on May 21, 2018.

"The reviewers refused to believe I could do it which such cheap equipment. ... They said it wasn't possible to do it."

[_The Doctor__]

Much was said with few words,

Can you imagine the excitement when realizing the computer could do what was needed and at a fraction of the cost, and the frustration of getting others on board... it may not seem like it, but he was pioneering what we take for granted today. The areas delved into were folded into other courses and extensions- that is a testament to his progress and acceptance. A very humble and dry start in the interview leading up to a bit more as it progressed.

 

Hope that there is a follow up to uncover more of his papers and dissertation. It would take some extreme digging as It's very hard to get at some of these things when the memory isn't what it used to be. While most of it had been a practicality and filed away as such in the recesses of the mind, it of note. Tracking down more of the material could be very tough but possibly gratifying. Does paper ever truly disappear from that era? Reading the papers was just enough to wet the whistle, but created a thirst for the rest of it.

 

Thank you once again, I enjoy reading the materials you add to supplement the interviews...

 

It's rather interesting to hear the movement towards more theoretical aspects and some thoughts on neural subject matter.

It's the odd thinker that uncovers the truth in the universe we can not normally see, for our perceptions are often reflections of the workings of our minds.

Were you going to ask him about the matrix movie? You almost went there

Edited July 29, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[Savetz]

Rockie "RJ" Morgan, APX Piano Tuner

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-357-rockie-rj-morgan-apx-piano-tuner

Rockie “RJ" Morgan published one program through Atari Program Exchange: Piano Tuner, which first appeared in the summer 1983 APX catalog.

This interview took place on June 5, 2018.

[+therealbountybob]

Looking forward to these new episodes. The assembler book written Alan Moose is on my shelf next to my Atari setup and I'm always iinterested in those from people who have created the games

 

Kevin if you get time can you message me the email addresses for Charlie Kulas (347) and Orson Scott Card (323) as I'd like to contact them.

Thanks

Jason

In Episode 52 an Atari XL/XE podcast was mentioned - can't see a link in the show notes - or find it

[Savetz]

In Episode 52 an Atari XL/XE podcast was mentioned - can't see a link in the show notes - or find it

 

https://soundcloud.com/user-124188691

 

As for contacting people: I don't give out peoples' email addresses. They've done me a favor in taking time for an interview, but don't necessarily want to their emails published. Orson is on twitter. For Charlie, if you email me a message I can forward it to him.

 

Kevin

[Savetz]

David Young, Omnimon

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-358-david-young-omnimon

David Young was the creator of Omnimon, the popular hardware monitor/debugger for the Atari 8-bit computers. His other products included DiskScan, a floppy disk utility; Supermon, the predecessor to Omnimon; Omnicom, a terminal program; and Omniview, an 80 column E: handler.

This interview took place on June 11, 2018. In it, we discuss Wes Newell, whom I previously interviewed.

"The IBM PC came out. I looked at it really hard. ... And I thought, 'You know, I really should develop products for this guy.' But it was just such a ugly beast."

[Mclaneinc]

Another really good pod there Kevin, kind of downbeat because David comes across as a pure money maker and the source machine was immaterial to him but what he made were greatly loved, I remember the two things I used my newly recieved credit card for back then, the 1st was a ZX81 ram pack and the other was Omnimon, I still remember in detail the public phone box in Turnham Green in West London and awaiting what seemed an eternity for the item to arrive,,,Sounds like I probably spoke to the man himself as well

 

I still love using Omnimon today...I also await the (hopeful ) release of Ultimon from John Lawson (did you every do a pod on him, he's on here at rare times) of Ultimon II which check up on with John every year or so on.

 

But again thank you and David for that pod, I hope he carries on having a wonderful retirement...

 

I hear Jon Williams had his call from you yesterday, the first thing I talked to Jon about when he came on here with the Baby Berks thread was to talk to you and get a pod done..Hope its a great one, Jon said he was nervous re it

 

The multriboot history alone from Jon is a hugely interesting era which I hope got covered..His games and later work is also massively interesting to us and me in general as he worked with some people I got to know a bit in those years..

 

I love Atari history....The stories about the times are great...

Edited August 8, 2018 by Mclaneinc

[nonprophet]

Has Jim Huether ever been approached to be interviewed for the ANTIC podcast?

[Savetz]

Has Jim Huether ever been approached to be interviewed for the ANTIC podcast?

 

No.

 

-Kevin

[nonprophet]

 

No.

 

-Kevin

He wrote RealSports Football for the 5200 and is the designer that John-Michael Battaglia (http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-55-john-michael-battaglia) spoke of during his interview.

[+Nezgar]

 

David Young, Omnimon

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-358-david-young-omnimon

 

Yet another holy grail interview in my books, many thanks for persuing him for an interview, I enjoyed his recollections about the products he developed. I listened after seeing Mclaneinc's comments about it being a little 'downbeat' so I was expecting the worst, but found him more forthcoming and positive compared to Wes Newell. The end of that interview was a shock to me. But I think if you've been away from the A8 scene long enough, maybe they have forgotten the passion of the machines when they started. Or probably more to the point, by turning their interests into business ventures, it drained the passion by turning it into work. (I learned that I love photography, but getting paid to do it and the stress of delivering what the customers want makes it not fun for me, so I can relate to that.)

 

My experience with Omniview was my dad had installed it as a second switchable OS in his and and my own machines back in the day when I was a kid, and he had written a lot of BASIC programs that made extensive use of the Omniview 80 Column mode for basic programs, including menu loaders that could show a lot more files on the screen at once.. I think many of them were used on the club disks of the Atari users group he was a contributing member of (T.R.A.C.E. - The Richmond Atari Computer Enthusiasts - in Richmond, BC, Canada)

 

Good on you for tracking him down, it was great to hear him agree to consider his products PD. It would be really cool to hear if he is able to find any of his disks, and what they may contain!

[Savetz]

Ed Meyer, physical chemistry experiments with Atari computers

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-360-ed-meyer-physical-chemistry-experiments-with-atari-computers

In the 1990s, Ed Meyer was a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, where he taught physical chemistry. In August 1990, The Journal of Chemical Education published his article, "An Inexpensive Computer Station for Undergraduate Laboratories Using the Atari 800XL" in which Ed showed how to interface the Atari controller ports with a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter chip to do chemistry experiments. (The article includes schematics and code in assembly language and BASIC.)

From the article:

"The kind of “interfacing” that has been emphasized in

chemical education thus far in this country has been largely

limited to using the “game paddle inputs” of a home com-

puter, which allows the connection of any device that looks

like a variable resistor to the computer. This approach has

served admirably as an introduction to the power and versa-

tility of inexpensive home computers as data collectors and

handlers but suffers from significant disadvantages. The

most obvious is the limitation to 8 bits of information; one

would like to be able to obtain better precision than this

provides (at half scale we can expect roughly 1% reproduc-

ibility). Another is the requirement that the resistance of the

transducer used be consistent with that of the game paddle it

replaces.

It is possible, without spending inordinate sums of money,

to convert one of these home computers into a research-

grade instrument with a resolution of 1 bit in 4096, if one

knows a little about digital electronics. This article describes

an interface for the Atari 800XL computer based on a 12-bit

analogue-to-digital converter (ADC). We have incorporated

six of them into “computer stations” in our upper track

freshman laboratory. In general, the variables in question

(e.g., temperature vs. time for coffee cup calorimeter experi-

ments, pH vs. volume titrant) are plotted in real time on the

monitor screen, and after collection of the data, a hard copy

of the plot is produced on a printer, along with a table of the

data. We use similar stations in our physical chemistry lab-

oratory, where more sophisticated curve-fitting routines are

included."

This interview took place on July 9, 2018.

"Once the thing is able to read a DC voltage, you have all kinds of opportunities. ... I mean the most obvious one is to use a pH meter to do acid-base titrations."

[_The Doctor__]

 

Ed Meyer, physical chemistry experiments with Atari computers

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-360-ed-meyer-physical-chemistry-experiments-with-atari-computers

In the 1990s, Ed Meyer was a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, where he taught physical chemistry. In August 1990, The Journal of Chemical Education published his article, "An Inexpensive Computer Station for Undergraduate Laboratories Using the Atari 800XL" in which Ed showed how to interface the Atari controller ports with a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter chip to do chemistry experiments. (The article includes schematics and code in assembly language and BASIC.)

From the article:

"The kind of “interfacing” that has been emphasized in

chemical education thus far in this country has been largely

limited to using the “game paddle inputs” of a home com-

puter, which allows the connection of any device that looks

like a variable resistor to the computer. This approach has

served admirably as an introduction to the power and versa-

tility of inexpensive home computers as data collectors and

handlers but suffers from significant disadvantages. The

most obvious is the limitation to 8 bits of information; one

would like to be able to obtain better precision than this

provides (at half scale we can expect roughly 1% reproduc-

ibility). Another is the requirement that the resistance of the

transducer used be consistent with that of the game paddle it

replaces.

It is possible, without spending inordinate sums of money,

to convert one of these home computers into a research-

grade instrument with a resolution of 1 bit in 4096, if one

knows a little about digital electronics. This article describes

an interface for the Atari 800XL computer based on a 12-bit

analogue-to-digital converter (ADC). We have incorporated

six of them into “computer stations” in our upper track

freshman laboratory. In general, the variables in question

(e.g., temperature vs. time for coffee cup calorimeter experi-

ments, pH vs. volume titrant) are plotted in real time on the

monitor screen, and after collection of the data, a hard copy

of the plot is produced on a printer, along with a table of the

data. We use similar stations in our physical chemistry lab-

oratory, where more sophisticated curve-fitting routines are

included."

This interview took place on July 9, 2018.

"Once the thing is able to read a DC voltage, you have all kinds of opportunities. ... I mean the most obvious one is to use a pH meter to do acid-base titrations."

 

wonderful, and the fun is we can build this... what other uses can be made from such things... love it

keep it coming, these are pure gold in my book!

[Savetz]

Bob Ertl, REWRITE Word Processor

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-361-bob-ertl-rewrite-word-processor

In 1987, Bob Ertl’s master's thesis was titled "Narrowing the Gap Between the Word Processing Needs of Teachers and the Capabilities of Word Processors for Atari 8-bit Computers." As part of that project, he created a word processor for the Atari computers, aimed at the needs of math teachers. The word processor is called REWRITE and was never widely available. It was only used by a handful of teachers.

Bob has released two versions of the word processor in ATR format, along with the Mac/65 source code and the manual. I scanned his thesis. All of this is available at Internet Archive.

This interview took place on July 10, 2018.

"My wife would help me with this. The way she would help me is she was patient enough to let me explain what my assembly language code was supposed to do. So I had to say it clearly enough for her to be able to follow it, and in doing so I was often able to find the errors that I was looking for."

[Savetz]

Tom Snyder, educational software

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-362-tom-snyder-educational-software

Tom Snyder was the founder of Computer Learning Connection, which was later renamed to Tom Snyder Productions, a company that created many educational software titles for the school and home computer markets.

The company's home software included Agent USA and Bannercatch (published by Scholastic,) Halley Project (published by Mindscape,) Run For the Money (published by Scarborough Systems,) and In Search of the Most Amazing Thing (published by Spinnaker.) Snooper Troops I and II, both published by Spinnaker, were the first educational software to make the industry's bestseller list. The company made many more software products that it sold directly to schools, including Decisions Decisions and The Other Side.

This interview took place on July 2, 2018.

"I think my favorite memories of all the programs I designed was sitting in bars with a legal pad writing the design out, you know, long before you write code. It was all on paper ... And the longer you can wait before you start programming, the better off you are."

[_The Doctor__]

 

Tom Snyder, educational software

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-362-tom-snyder-educational-software

Tom Snyder was the founder of Computer Learning Connection, which was later renamed to Tom Snyder Productions, a company that created many educational software titles for the school and home computer markets.

The company's home software included Agent USA and Bannercatch (published by Scholastic,) Halley Project (published by Mindscape,) Run For the Money (published by Scarborough Systems,) and In Search of the Most Amazing Thing (published by Spinnaker.) Snooper Troops I and II, both published by Spinnaker, were the first educational software to make the industry's bestseller list. The company made many more software products that it sold directly to schools, including Decisions Decisions and The Other Side.

This interview took place on July 2, 2018.

"I think my favorite memories of all the programs I designed was sitting in bars with a legal pad writing the design out, you know, long before you write code. It was all on paper ... And the longer you can wait before you start programming, the better off you are."

 

is there some way to filter or correct the audio of this pod cast such that we can 'brighten' the interviewee... I can't hear him properly, very muffled and or tonally depressed recording at times, possibly due to level or swallowing of microphone or some such thing...

[Savetz]

Greg Gibbons, Automated Library II

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-363-greg-gibbons-automated-library-ii

Greg Gibbons was the creator of Automated Library II, software for running school libraries, which was available for the Atari 8-bit and Apple II computers.

There's an article about the software in the April 1985 issue of American Libraries:

“The Automated Library II is a bar-code circulation system that runs on the Atari line of microcomputers. The program, designed for school libraries circulating 30 to 500 items per day, checks books in and out, compiles overdue lists, and prints class records and daily circulation summaries by Dewey Decimal numbers.

Software developer Gregory Gibbons studied the day-to-day activities of a junior high school librarian and then designed a system to automate as much of the repetitious work as possible. The program was extensively tested in a Los Angeles school for over a year before its release.

All inputs are prompted with simple English. The system is so easy to use that the test library used students to perform most of the operations.

The program produces bar codes for the books in the library and student-ID bar codes, which are entered into the computer and attached to books and student IDs. … If the student is authorized to check out books the computer will make a short beep and print ‘OK to check out books’ on the screen. If the student is on the overdue list, the computer makes a different noise to alert the staff.

At the end of the day, the librarian instructs the computer to perform a daily update, which incorporates all transactions into the database. The update takes about 15 minutes per 1,000 students, and automatically generates a new overdue list that can be printed at any time.

The program works best with 200 to 3,000 students, although a larger number of students will simply cause the program to take a little longer to update each day.

The Automated Library II runs on the Atari 800, 800XL, and 1200XL computers…The system costs $700, including the light wand.”

This interview took place on May 24, 2018.

[Savetz]

Carlos Reyes: Quick Menu, Rent Wars

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-364-carlos-reyes-quick-menu-rent-wars

Carlos Reyes wrote the game Rent Wars for the Atari 8-bit computers for First Star Software, which was never officially released but found its way onto the Internet years later. He also wrote Quick Menu, a 384-byte program that would display a menu of programs on a floppy disk and let the user choose one to run. The program was designed to fit into a floppy's three boot sectors, so it didn't eat into any of the usable space on the disk. The program was a popular interface to distribute disks of pirated programs, but most people didn't know that Carlos was the author — there was no room for his name in the tiny program. Carlos has found the source code and released it into the public domain.

This interview took place on August 3, 2018. In it, we discuss Jerry White, Fernando Herrera, and Bill Wilkinson, whom I have previously interviewed.

[+Nezgar]

Tom Snyder, educational software

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-362-tom-snyder-educational-software

 

Great Interview. Loved his A8 Games. He talked about a lot of titles, I think The Halley Project was forgotten to be mentioned. I'm curious if you could ask him to comment on that one? Maybe just a followup e-mail.

 

It was a monumental game in my Childhood, took many days/weeks and a lot of research in encyclopedias my be and my family and space books to figure out all the information required to complete it! Maybe the actual development of it wasn't quite as monumental. I'd be curious how many people completed it and mailed in for the certificate or something. ( I can't remember)

[Savetz]

Jon Williams: Jet Boot Jack, Timeslip

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-365-jon-williams-jet-boot-jack-timeslip

Jon Williams created several programs for the Atari 8-bit computers, including Jet Boot Jack, Timeslip, Atari Cassette Enhancer, and Linkword.

This interview took place on August 6, 2018.