Fred D'Ignazio, prolific writer Fred D'Ignazio wrote more than 20 computer books, including Atari in Wonderland and The Atari Playground. He hosted four television shows about computers and robots, and was the "gadget guru" on Good Morning America. He was an associate editor and columnist for Compute! magazine, where he wrote the columns World Inside The Computer and On The Road With Fred D'Ignazio. This interview was conducted April 10, 2015. Teaser quotes: "Katie and the Computer, my advance w...
Jun 09, 2015•1 hr 21 min
Cassie Maas, Atari Marketing and Tech Support Cassie Maas started at Atari as a sales order processing clerk; then as a member of the marketing team, she evaluated new product ideas; then she worked in technical support, where she was the high-end technical support for word processing, and managed a BBS for user groups. She contributed to the 1984 book "InfoWorld's Essential Guide to Atari" and wrote for Antic magazine and Infoworld. This interview occurred on April 6 and April 14 2015. Check th...
Jun 05, 2015•1 hr 48 min
Ken Balthaser, Atari Manager of Software Development Ken Balthaser stated at Atari as part of a skunkworks group where he wrote software for speech hardware, then became manager of application software development. He oversaw the creation of the SWEAT system software, which were development tools for non-programmers to make graphics and sound assets; and the creation of arcade conversions such as Centipede and Defender to the 8-bit platform. Prior to Atari, he was part of the team that created a...
Jun 02, 2015•53 min
Eunice Wlcek, Atari Quality Assurance Eunice Wlcek started at Atari as a secretary in the sales and marketing department, then moved to quality assurance where she did software testing. Later, she worked as a QA tester at Mindset, the graphics workstation company which was founded by several former Atari employees. This interview was conducted March 19, 2015. Teaser quotes: “‘You’d be a great Ms. Pac Man.’ They made me Ms. Pac Man and I always had to dress up for these events with this big Pac M...
May 29, 2015•18 min
Curt Vendel & Marty Goldberg, Atari Historians Welcome to Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast. I’m Randy Kindig, one of the hosts of the podcast, and your host for this episode. To give you a little background on this interview and where it came from, I also host another podcast on retrocomputing called Floppy Days, where I cover various vintage computers in the order that they were introduced. I recently covered the Atari 400 & 800 computers and had asked Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg, Atar...
May 27, 2015•1 hr 32 min
Tom Hudson is a name familiar to readers of A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing magazine. He worked at A.N.A.L.O.G., where we wrote articles, games, maintained the A.N.A.L.O.G. TCS bulletin board system. His game credits include LiveWire, fire Bug, and Planetary Defense. He also wrote the popular DEGAS paint program for the Atari ST; and CAD-3D, a 3D graphics package, in conjunction with Gary Yost. This interview was conducted April 17 2015. LINKS Tom’s web site Tom on Twitter List of Tom’s software on Atari...
May 25, 2015•46 min
David Kano, Hex-A-Bug David Kano wrote the Hex-A-Bug debugger which was published by Atari Program Exchange. He also wrote two educational software titles for the Atari: Monkey See Monkey Spell, and Don’t Shoot That Word, which were both published by Hayden Software. This interview was conducted March 24 2015. Teaser quotes: “I remember when I showed them the finished product they said ‘That’s great, except the monkey is too realistic. It’s too scary. Kids will be scared of that monkey.’” “It wa...
May 23, 2015•26 min
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 th...
May 21, 2015•1 hr 5 min
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 Intern...
May 19, 2015•41 min
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 des...
May 17, 2015•48 min
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 Atar...
May 15, 2015•18 min
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 wa...
May 13, 2015•36 min
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 Podca...
May 11, 2015•37 min
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 s...
May 09, 2015•21 min
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 ...
May 06, 2015•36 min
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 to arc...
Apr 29, 2015•16 min
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 hu...
Apr 27, 2015•1 hr 10 min
Hello, you are listening to Antic, the Atari 8-bit computer podcast. I am Randy Kindig, one of the co-hosts, and I’m bringing to you today an interview episode with the author of one of the best games ever released for the Atari 8-bit computer line. That would be David Fox, one of the authors of Rescue on Fractalus. David shares his memories of developing that iconic game, working for LucasFilm (later LucasArts), publishing a book about Atari graphics and much more. Please enjoy. This interview ...
Apr 25, 2015•1 hr 2 min
Charles Ratcliff, son of MAT*RAT Charles Ratcliff is the son of Matthew Ratcliff, the prolific writer for the Atari magazines. Matthew Ratcliff -- or MAT*RAT -- died in 1999. Matthew wrote for Antic, STart, Compute!, A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing, and ST-LOG. In 1986 won Antic magazine's award for Outstanding Contributor. Here's what they wrote about him: "In 1985, Missouri programmer Matthew Ratcliff was really on a roll--publishing four major Antic programs on a remarkable variety of subjects. In Mar...
Apr 23, 2015•29 min
Michael Phillips, Atari Bench Tech Michael Phillips worked as a bench technician at Atari from February 1981 to June 1984, doing component level repair of Atari video game systems, personal computers, and peripherals. Because Michael is a lifelong stutterer, he didn’t want to do a voice interview — but he was willing to be interviewed by email. Because this is an audio podcast, I’ve enlisted Randy Kindig to read Michael’s responses. You can also read the original written version of this intervie...
Apr 21, 2015•28 min
Ian Chadwick Ian Chadwick is the author of Mapping The Atari, which was -- and remains -- the ultimate memory map for the Atari 8-bit computers. Mapping was published in two editions: the original was for the 400/800 computers, then an updated version was later released for the XL and XE machines. Ian also did a lot of documentation writing behind the scenes, including many of Antic's software manuals, and several manuals for Batteries Included and other companies. This interview was conducted o...
Apr 19, 2015•48 min
Louis Massucci, Atari Bench Tech Lou Massucci was a bench technician for the Atari 800 line, repairing 8-bit computers and peripherals in Somerset, New Jersey. Later, he was was promoted to field service representative for the southwest territory. This interview was conducted on March 2, 2015. Teaser Quotes "Actually, that's what was causing some of the failure modes because the debris left behind by the cockroaches is very acidic and would actually eat through the PC board traces." "And it kind...
Apr 17, 2015•48 min
On this episode of ANTIC the atari 8-bit podcast: a plethora of news about new atari software and podcasts Randy tells us all about the “other” official basic, Microsoft BASIC for the Atari and we de-brief about all of the recent interviews. Yoomp will have a great time listening! 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 the Atlanta Historic...
Apr 14, 2015•1 hr 58 min
Al Alcorn, Atari Employee #3 Welcome to Antic, the Atari 8-bit computer podcast. I’m Randy Kindig and this is an interview-only episode of Antic. My guest for this interview was employee #3 at Atari where he created the world's first commercially successful video game: Pong, Mr. Al Alcorn. Al was a very influential figure in the early Atari and has a lot of great stories to share about those early days. He tells us about Steve Jobs stealing employees from Atari, his opportunity to buy into Apple...
Apr 12, 2015•51 min
William Volk William Volk wrote three Atari games for Avalon Hill: Conflict 2500, Voyager 1, and Controller. He also wrote Forth Turtle Graphics Plus, a 3-D graphics library for the Forth language that was released by Atari Program Exchange; ValGraphics for Valpar International; and Super Smart Terminal, an 80-column terminal application which -- may have been released by APX? He later went on to work on Return To Zork for Activision. This interview was conducted March 25 2015. Teaser quotes: "T...
Apr 11, 2015•50 min
Jerry Jessop Jerry Jessop worked at Atari from 1977 through 1985 where he did many jobs - including lead of production repair, customer service supervisor for the Atari 400/800, and he worked with the secret skunkworks group that was creating the Amiga, when it still could have been an Atari product. In this interview he shares great stories, including how he hand-assembled Atari 800s on the production floor, and fired up the very first 800XL prototype the very first time. This interview was con...
Apr 08, 2015•1 hr 40 min
David Cramer - Western Design Center David Cramer is the VP of Business Development at Western Design Center, the company that still, today, manufacturers and sells the 6502 chip, the CPU that's at the heart of the Atari 800, Apple ][, Commodore 64, and many other classic computers. In fact, the 6502 is used in many modern applications like pacemakers, and it's also available in development kits for hobbyists, as David explains. This interview occurred on March 27, 2015. LINKS Western Design Cen...
Apr 05, 2015•36 min
Rich Pasco Rich Pasco was Manager of VLSI Development where he worked on the FREDDIE memory management chip used in the Atari XL and XE series computers. He worked at Atari from November 1982 through May 1983. He lobbied management to create some products for the Atari 8-bit line -- including a mouse and an 80+ column display system -- which were not developed. Prior to his time at Atari, he was a member of the research staff at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). This interview took place o...
Apr 03, 2015•52 min
ANTIC Episode 20 - Visicalc, Choplifter LINKS: Virtual Apple ][ Drop 300 Inches Podcast
Apr 01, 2015•2 min
Peter Dell, WUDSN and THE!CART Studio Hello, welcome to another interview-only episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast. My name is Randy Kindig and today I’ll be talking with Peter Dell, also known as JAC! on AtariAge. Peter is the developer of the outstanding WUDSN product for developing Atari 8-bit software and also is the developer of another product called THE!CART Studio, which is used to put software onto the flash cartridge product known as THE!CART. Peter is doing some amazing work for...
Mar 29, 2015•51 min
