The Atari interview discussion thread

[+DrVenkman]

 

Neil Harris: Commodore, Atari, GEnie

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-188-neil-harris-commodore-atari-genie

Neil Harris started at Commodore as a member of the VIC-20 launch team, then continued to be a writer, programmer, and product manager there. He moved to Atari, where he was from 1984 to 1988. There he was hardware products manager, director of communications, and director of publications. He worked on Atari Explorer magazine, and wrote a bit for other publications including Compute!'s First Book of Atari and STart magazine. He later moved on to the GEnie online service.

 

Listened to this one at work today. This was a great interview, Kevin. After listening to this one, and Randy's interview of Rob Zydbel last week, I wonder - have you guys tried to interview Leonard Tramiel yet? THAT story would be awesome, and worth a few hours no doubt!

[rkindig]

Yes, indeed, working on it!

 

Thanks

[+Stephen]

 

 

Allan:

 

There is a direct line between your message and this pile of documentation and source code that landed in my mailbox today.

 

Kevin

 

IMG_4575.JPG

Damn dude - you are knocking it out of the park these past 18 months or so!

[Savetz]

Chuck Gibke, Air Raid!

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-190-chuck-gibke-air-raid

Chuck Gibke, published one piece of software for the Atari computer: Air Raid!. The game first appeared in the winter 1982-1983 APX catalog, where it won second prize in the entertainment category.

This interview took place on April 22, 2016.

"Winning the contest generated a little bit of prizes you could pick from Atari stuff, which was pretty amazing. There was like $2,000 worth of stuff. ... Several boxes of stuff showing up at the house one day and I thought that was just the greatest thing."

[Savetz]

Roland Gustafsson, Print Shop Companion

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-191-roland-gustafsson-print-shop-companion

Roland Gustafsson wrote The Print Shop Companion, an add-on package for Brøderbund's popular Print Shop software, which added a printable calendar, font and page border editors, and other features. He first developed the program for the Apple ][, then ported the software to the Atari 800 and Commodore 64.

In the retro-computing community, however, Roland is best known for his work on the Apple ][, where he specialized in designing copy protection as well as the RWTS18 disk format, which squeezed extra data onto the Apple's floppy disk.

This interview took place on May 17, 2016.

Teaser quotes:

"There was a guy in Switzerland who would hack into a telephone booth ... He would phone me and talk to me and tell me, 'Oh, your copy protection is great. I enjoy breaking your copy protection more than the games.'"

"The same concepts, where you make a good decision on the design work, the framework of what you're working on, the foundation — still applies today for modern software."

[Savetz]

Just listened to the Alan Ackerman interview. Very interesting interview. It sounds like he isn't in the best of health.

 

 

Sad news — I leaned today that Alan Ackerman (co-founder of MPP and Supra) died on March 18.

 

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/alan-ackerman-obituary?pid=1000000178835925

 

-Kevin

[Savetz]

Fred Parr, MACE newsletter

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-192-fred-parr-mace-newsletter

Fred Parr was a member of MACE — the Michigan Atari Computer Enthusiasts group, and the man who printed the club newsletter. You can find scans of the newsletter at archive.org.

This interview took place on April 22, 2016. It in, we discuss Arlan Levitan, whom I previously interviewed.

"And I just marvel that something that crude, in today's perspective, could have actually given is so much enjoyment and hope about the future."

[Savetz]

Joe Decuir's presentation in Portland two days ago is now on youtube. He talks about his current projects, great stories.

 

[tschak909]

I was wondering if somebody was gonna bring up Bill Wilkinson...

[tschak909]

damn, I wish I lived closer..or had teleportation

 

-Thom

[+David_P]

damn, I wish I lived closer..or had teleportation

 

-Thom

 

Sounds like a hardware project for the Abbuc 2017 contest

[Savetz]

Joe Decuir's presentation in Portland two days ago is now on youtube. He talks about his current projects, great stories.

 

 

 

Here's the slide deck: http://www.archive.org/21/items/JoeDecuir/PortlandAtariClubR1.pdf

Edited June 27, 2016 by Savetz

[ClausB]

Could you interview John (Rick) Victor of Program Design Inc (PDI)? They were one of the first Atari software houses, specializing in educational software, and even created some launch titles for Atari. I have been in recent contact with him on FaceBook.

[Savetz]

Gary Yost, The Catalog and Cyber Studio

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-193-gary-yost-the-catalog-and-cyber-studio

Gary Yost worked at Antic magazine, in product development. He was the man behind The Catalog, Antic's catalog of third-party software. When Atari Program Exchange was shut down, he contacted programmers from APX to re-publish their works in's Antic's Catalog.

Gary was instrumental in creating CAD 3-D (written by Tom Hudson), Cybermate, and the Cyber Studio graphics suite — which were all published by Antic — and in commercializing the StereoTek 3D Glasses, which provided a 3-D view of the Atari ST’s screen.

After Antic, he went on to form The Yost Group which created and licensed a number of products to Autodesk, including Autodesk Animator, Autodesk 3D Studio, and Autodesk 3DS MAX.

This interview took place on May 16, 2016. In it, we discuss Ted Kahn, Jim Capparell, and Tom Hudson, all of whom I have previously interviewed.

[Savetz]

Could you interview John (Rick) Victor of Program Design Inc (PDI)? They were one of the first Atari software houses, specializing in educational software, and even created some launch titles for Atari. I have been in recent contact with him on FaceBook.

 

Please put me in contact with him. I'm on Facebook as Kevin Savetz.

 

K

[FifthPlayer]

I would very much be interested in one of the "mini-PCS" systems that Joe Decuir would like to build. A new Atari 8-bit computer with modern affordances such as SD, USB, Bluetooth, Wifi and HDMI built-in? Sign me up.

Edited June 27, 2016 by FifthPlayer

[Savetz]

Jerry White emailed me today, he sounded a little sad that he hasn't heard from any Atari people since his interview was published in January.

 

Maybe some of you want to reach out and say hi: jplogical at msn.com

 

(Jerry White was a prolific Atari software developer and writer. He published Player Piano, Bowler's Database, and other software for Atari Program Exchange. He wrote Poker S.A.M. and Chaterbee, two talking programs distributed by Don't Ask Software. He was co-author of the book The Atari User’s Encyclopedia, and wrote dozens of articles for Antic, A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing, Compute! and other magazines. He wrote two lessons in the Tricky Tutorial series, and was the founder of the Professional Atari Programmers Information Exchange (PAPIE). http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-124-jerry-white-atari-author-and-programmer)

[tschak909]

Sent Jerry a great big thank you note. (absolutely in all seriousness.. his name kept popping up all over in title after title of things that I liked and played/used)

 

-Thom

[Savetz]

This has become one of my favorite interviews. Covers Atari, Commodore, pinball, arcade games.

 

David Thiel, musician and interactive audio

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-194-david-thiel-musician-and-interactive-audio

David Thiel is a musician and interactive audio designer. At Gottlieb, he did the sound for arcade games including Reactor, Q*Bert, and Mach 3. At Action Graphics, David created the sound for Artillery Duel for the Atari 2600, and Beamrider and Pitstop for the Atari computers. And at Free Radical Software/Incredible Technologies, he worked on Winter Games for the Amiga and Atari ST. He has created the sound and music for dozens of other computer games and pinball games.

This interview took place on May 17, 2016.

Teaser quotes:

"In coin op, I had a sound board. I had a processor. It's my sandbox, I can do anything I want. But the minute you're doing console work, you're now seen by the programmer as a parasitic element that eats CPU and storage, and poops out sound."

"I think, ultimately, doing the Q*Bert voice was the finest destiny of that technology."

Edited June 29, 2016 by Savetz

[Savetz]

Kathy and Phil Bergh, I'm Different!

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-195-kathy-and-phil-bergh-im-different

Kathy and Phil Bergh published one program through Atari Program Exchange: I'm Different!, which first appeared in the inaugural APX catalog, winter 1982-1983. The program won third prize in the Education category in that catalog. It was one of the few commercial programs developed in the PILOT language. Kathy and Phil also wrote three articles — also about PILOT — for ANTIC magazine.

This interview took place on May 24, 2016.

Teaser quotes:

"'Consumer Reports Tests Educational Software' and so he made a big production of 'Let's see if our game is in it.' ... and it turns out, Consumer Reports did indeed review our game."

"They must have sold a few because I remember getting a check for $12."

[NorthWay]

Joe Decuir's presentation in Portland two days ago is now on youtube. He talks about his current projects, great stories.

Great stuff!

I see that he talked about coming back - do you think you could try to see if he would briefly touch upon a "what did we learn form the third project" thing? And if he thought that was being applied to the Lynx/3DO?

 

Thanks.

[Savetz]

Frank Paris, Mathlib for Deep Blue C

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-196-frank-paris-mathlib-for-deep-blue-c

Frank Paris wrote Mathlib for Deep Blue C, a library of floating-point functions for use with the Deep Blue C programming language. Mathlib first appeared in the fall 1983 APX catalog, where it won second prize in the systems/telecommunications category. The Deep Blue C compiler was written by John Palevich, whom I previously interviewed.

You can contact Frank at: frankparis at comcast dot net. (He would like to hear from users of his software.)

This interview took place on May 27, 2016.

Teaser quote: "6502 assembly language, it was just a dream come true for me. I mean, it was just so simple compared to the languages I was used to."

[Savetz]

Max Manowski, Wizard’s Revenge

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-197-max-manowski-wizards-revenge

Max Manowski wrote Adventure, a text adventure game that he released into the public domain to Atari users groups. Later, he modified Adventure and called it Wizard's Revenge, which was published by Atari Program Exchange. Wizard's Revenge was available in the fall 1981 APX catalog, the very first APX catalog.

This interview took place May 27, 2016.

Teaser quote: "In this adventure, each node that you went to was a separate file. And if you went to a node that didn't exist, then you could write the node as you were playing. You could write the node and say what happened."

Eric Freeman: Bootleg and Weakon

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-198-eric-freeman-bootleg-and-weakon

Eric Freeman published two programs through Atari Program Exchange: Bootleg and Weakon.

Bootleg first appeared in the summer 1983 APX catalog: the catalog called it "a search-for-booty maze game submitted from New Zealand," and it received a rare full-page description in that catalog. Weakon was only available in the final APX catalog, winter 1983. That game was later published by Antic software.

This interview took place on May 26, 2016 — for me — May 27 for Eric in New Zealand.

Teaser quote: "I actually took both of the games on an overseas holiday with me and knocked on the door at Atari. This would have been in March of 1983. And someone from the Atari Program Exchange came out to meet me."

[Savetz]

Bob Alkire and Steve Saunders, Rainbow GPU

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-199-bob-alkire-and-steve-saunders-rainbow-gpu

Bob Alkire and Steve Saunders worked in Atari's Corporate Research lab under Alan Kay, where they worked on the Rainbow GPU. Rainbow was a next-generation graphics chip (after ANTIC) which was never released.

This interview took place on June 10, 2016. The first voice you hear is that of Bob Alkire.

Teaser quotes:

Steve: "And they basically went around the table and said, 'This computer project has software in it, therefore it belongs in my division.' — 'No, this project has hardware in it, therefore it belongs in MY division.'"

Bob: "But he has a Kermit The Frog tie tack. I say, 'Nice tie tack.' He says, 'This is a close personal friend of mine.' I look up, and it was Jim Henson."

Steve: "A trunk of the research lab had a completely fictional manager named Arthur T. Fishel."

[gozar]

Bob Alkire and Steve Saunders, Rainbow GPU

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-199-bob-alkire-and-steve-saunders-rainbow-gpu

 

Bob Alkire and Steve Saunders worked in Atari's Corporate Research lab under Alan Kay, where they worked on the Rainbow GPU. Rainbow was a next-generation graphics chip (after ANTIC) which was never released.

 

I think you need a way to submit follow up questions.

 

After finishing the podcast, I was curious on how the Rainbow GPU compares to what ended up in the ST. And, if the Rainbow GPU was better, did the Tramiels even know it existed?

 

 

 

 

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