microbry

Hm, I noticed it isn't complete... One thing saved in my dad's collection are the full set of Compute! Insight:Atari and Insight:ST articles he wrote. Are they archived anywhere else? If not, I can help fill those gaps in later. We have some other OSS memorabilia I'll need to scan or photograph as it is.

Thank you, I really appreciate it. I'll definitely get going on the emulation soon, then.

Thank you, everyone. Lately I've been thinking I should set up some Atari emulation on my machines. I already do some emulation of vintage game consoles, but for some reason never returned much to the Atari scene, even though a lot of my favorites are from that era. Now I'm here, I'll have to look into that a bit more. More relevant to this, I'd particularly like to track down--if possible--the "Pico Adventure" that my parents wrote together that I think was included with one of the Basic (XL maybe?) toolkits. I would consider doing it with hardware, but as far as I can tell, the only piece of vintage hardware left in my dad's collection is our old 800, which is missing (as far as I have found) its power adapter and peripherals. The 800 is definitlely special, but I remember using the XL and XE hardware very fondly as well as the ST. If I knew he was going to toss that equipment (years back), I definitely would have stepped in and hung onto some of it. That said, emulation's awfully conveninent since I can put that on whatever. I remember he was pretty gobsmacked when I told him about the emulators that existed for the Sony PSP.

I'm sorry to say that Bill Wilkinson left us earlier this month. I have posted more about it in this thread: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/229656-interview-questions-for-bill-wilkinson/?p=3379121 Thank you for all your concern and well wishes. --Bryan Wilkinson (Bill's son, on behalf of the Wilkinson family)

Hi, my name is Bryan Wilkinson. I'm one of Bill's two sons. I grew up with OSS as a big part of my life as a child and teen--I tagged along for many trade shows, I helped assemble and ship out cartridges, manuals, newsletters, etc and cleaned the office in its later years (originally after Shepardson's it was located in our house's newly built extension "office" before it later moved to an actual office off of De Anza above a Chinese restaurant, then later to another one a bit further down the road). I even helped come up with some rough ideas for what became the company logos and some of the ad artwork, for what that's worth (though my mom will argue with me over which ones were her ideas first). Atari computers and the 2600 were a big part of our life and I did all my jr. high/high school papers as well as self-published an amateur anime fanzine using our Atari computers (first the 8-bits and then the ST machines). I didn't learn that he gave this interview until a couple months ago when my younger brother Eric told me about it. While some of it is a bit technical for me (alas I never really got much into programming myself, though I've been involved in the software and game industry on and off in other capacities), it was pretty nostalgic and literally close to home to hear about those times along with some of the troubles we went through at the end. It was actually recorded at a dialysis center, not the hospital--but he'd been in and out of those quite a lot the last few years, too. I drove him to and from most of his 4-hour dialysis sessions (though apparently not that one), but it hadn't come up until I asked him about it after listening to it. I hate to have to share this news, but my dad left us on November 10th. He had been fighting a rare form of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, the last two years, which had severely damaged his bones and had caused many other complications. In accordance with his wishes, we have donated his body to the University of Washington for scientific research. A memorial service hasn't been decided on just yet, but we expect to arrange something in spring. We were in the middle of helping him and my mom move to a new house when it happened, so things have been more than a bit chaotic. We've set up the new computer room/office and many of his old surviving OSS things are in there (I'll see if I can get photos once it's cleaned up some more--if someone's still looking for that Writer's Tool manual or such to archive, perhaps I can help some, though it might be a while). I'm hoping later to perhaps see if any might be of interest to an appropriate museum or to the community, but I'll post about that separately later. I shared the interview on my Facebook page (and his--though he rarely ever used Facebook) during his final days. Thanks for your kind interest and support. --Bryan (on behalf of the Wilkinson family)