8BIT 1337 Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 @bbking — I've already done the interview, but I did ask many of those questions. Not about Pablo Escobar though I'm mostly a lurker here these days but I have been listening to the show since Episode 1 (although much less often now that I don't have to commute from Kitchener to Mississauga anymore). Anyway, I'm jumping out of my shell just to say thank you for this. Whomever he is, Glenn was a big part of my childhood much like everybody else's. I'm really looking forward to that interview, so thank you for putting the time and effort into tracking him down and sitting down to talk with him, as well as the effort you put in each month to the show. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 @Bryan — definitely. One already done, the other planned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiliteZoner Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Kevin, is this going to lead to more pirate interviews? Was Glenn a pirate or on the cutting edge of software preservation? Hopefully we find out when Kevin posts the interview. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 Glenn was one of my "heros"... most because of Centipede 5200 which is far best Centipede version compared to the weak A8 version. btw... most Atari games were not THAT hard to "crack" actually. I bought many games and for educational reasons tried to get them copied. I only remember that - International Karate PAL was little bit difficult (but mainly I only changed one branch basicly after the encryption). - Alternate Reality: The City - Alternate Reality: The dungeon most tape based games were more easy but always tricky because if they used a lot RAM. I wrote some custom loader and then by pressing START I did a dump on disc. then getting a boot disc or a file was easy. If I remember I copied International karate to a unprotected 5,25... then of course booting failed but I could play around with the boot loader there. after that I could inject my decrypter and voila... ready to go. The disc editor of choice I used I can not remember the name (something HMaster?) which was able to AND,EOR,ORA sector data... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted September 21, 2015 Share Posted September 21, 2015 @Bryan — definitely. One already done, the other planned. Cool. I'd love to hear as much about the old scene as possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbking67 Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 well I just listened to the interview and it was awesome. I was surprised that Glenn didn't dump the roms himself... he was provided the roms. I always imagined that he'd have some contraption to read the data to the Atari through a joystick port or something like that. But I guess it would have been pretty easy for anyone with access to an EEPROM programmer to have dumped the roms. It's also amazing how quickly the roms got around--I remember the 5200 conversions being passed around on diskette long before BBS's were mainstream. Along with the leaked Lucasarts games and unreleased Atari prototypes, the Glenn conversions were some of the greatest warez memories of the beloved Ataris. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Glenn unveiled! The interview is here: ANTIC Interview 90 - Glenn the 5200 Man 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiliteZoner Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Listening to it now Kevin. Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Thanks! Nice to hear the first ever reveal and interview with Glenn the 5200 Man! I appreciated hearing Glenn's thoughts on Star Raiders, talking about how he misses the old style of games. He said nobody has really ever duplicated the game. Today's games are often huge, massive 3D games, and he misses the more simple games of the 80's. I agree! That's why we keep playing them even in the 21st century. He prefers the simple joystick over the keyboard use . My jaw dropped when he admitted it only took him about a day to mod each 5200-to-A8 game, once he got going. It sounds like Glenn hasn't kept up with the emulation & community. Wasn't aware of Altirra or Atari800 emulators, or SIOPC utilities, and also didn't know that there are 7800 emulators out there. I wonder if he is aware of the homebrew games for Atari consoles and computer line? Once he loads up all his emulators onto his PC, he might get a kick out of some of those. It is kind of exciting to hear he owned a 7800 and acquired unreleased ROMs of games for it, and that he might have unreleased 7800 games on disk somewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Glenn sounds like a real OLD DINA SUAR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Yeah, I expected a few more "Aaaarrrrrrrrr's" Time to bring Glenn into the present with an SIO2PC. At least he didn't tell us to get a life! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinroh Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Sweet! Have it queued up to listen on my commute home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 AWESOME INTERVIEW!! Hopefully, Glenn will become an AtariAge member, buy an SIO2PC, and then crack those MECC disks!!!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 I'm sat in the waiting room of a dance school and the only thing keeping me sane around all this women's chatter is this interview drowning out all of the drivel. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 Glenn unveiled! The interview is here: ANTIC Interview 90 - Glenn the 5200 Man Amazing! As much as I love the Atari computers, somehow this is only my first time listening to this podcast. From looking over the list of episodes, I see that I've got some serious catching up to do! Thanks for all your hard work on it. Yes, my family had a few of Glenn's 5200 conversions in our respective collections. I'm almost positive that my uncles (who owned an Atari 800 and 800XL) originally got them from a friend who lived next door and who had access to a BBS; I can still remember them, circa 1984, shuttling floppy disks back and forth. I don't think I was even aware of the 5200 at the time, or that these games were never "officially" released by Atari for the computers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 It is kind of exciting to hear he owned a 7800 and acquired unreleased ROMs of games for it, and that he might have unreleased 7800 games on disk somewhere. I hope we can find out something about this soon. Any chance of finding unreleased games is always intriguing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 Glenn sounded like most of the hackers I knew, a nerd...Bless Him... Mike who did almost all the EA stuff who was a Doctor was just like that, very serious only spoke about code most times you met him and was all about the computer, Don't get me wrong, he was a great guy but he was not the life and soul of a party but this man knew his stuff. That's exactly what Glenn sounded like, a real code hound. Was great to hear his thoughts on today's gaming, many are simple eye candy with no game play BUT there are some crackers too. But like many I still enjoy the simple stuff, AtariNet is great, Spelunker, Jump Man and Bounty Bob still make me smile and get good play....Can't say better than that. Really nice interview, his memory of locations was great given that he got out of the Atari such a long time ago and his conversion speed was wonderful, he made it sound so easy but there's a load of code shuffling going on. Making a conversion in 2hrs is awesome, mind you look at Avery's 2600 stuff, he pops off one night and comes back with a fully ported game Thank you Glenn, you really added to the Atari range, I'd not call him a pirate, more of a very creative programmer.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 I would love to see an animated map of how quickly cracked games spread in the 8-bit days. It's too bad there's no data to base one on. There would be a blip where the game is cracked, then it would be handed off to someone who puts it online, then a line appears between the BBS and another city, etc... Another interesting data point would be the moment the publisher discovers the cracked version or a BBS adds a loader screen or when some lamer edits his own fake cracking credentials into the file. Ah, the days when having your computer connected to a far off place was freakin' magical. Nascent technology is so much cooler than ubiquitous technology. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 I would love to see an animated map of how quickly cracked games spread in the 8-bit days. It would look like an explosion, firing out in all directions quickly! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 I would love to see an animated map of how quickly cracked games spread in the 8-bit days. It's too bad there's no data to base one on. Well, there is some secret service in the US that surely has this data available and there is also a secret service in the UK that has it available too. Write them a gently E-Mail, maybe they will reply with the data you are looking for... Besides, copyright still exists (even for 30 year old games) - so can Atari still sue Glenn ?!? I think today`s Atari only exists for sueing people, they are a bit like zombies... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 Besides, copyright still exists (even for 30 year old games) - so can Atari still sue Glenn ?!? I think today`s Atari only exists for sueing people, they are a bit like zombies... Whilst probably technically possible, don't they have that statute of limitations in the US? (Can't prosecute after a certain amount of years after the original offence), I'm not sure if all of the US has such rules. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiliteZoner Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 Whilst probably technically possible, don't they have that statute of limitations in the US? (Can't prosecute after a certain amount of years after the original offence), I'm not sure if all of the US has such rules. I believe its 3 years. So I think Glenn is safe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 I believe its 3 years. So I think Glenn is safe. I dunno. The current "Atari" will go after anyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted October 19, 2015 Share Posted October 19, 2015 Without Glenn I never had a chance to play Centipede 5200 for hours and hours... the A8 original version is so weak against the 5200 version... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fletch Posted October 19, 2015 Share Posted October 19, 2015 Though I don't own this, according to Atarimania, Glenn's version of Centipede was included on the Compilation A Cassette from Atari UK. That would be pretty funny if its legitimate. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-compilation-a_7025.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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