Savetz Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 Darts and Sub Commander are fantastic. I'd love to hear an interview with Colin Hume, who also worked @ Thorn EMI, especially for his code for Computer War...he crammed one HELL of a game into 4K (it's an 8K cart, but only half of it is used), especially the display tricks used...i'd kill for that. -Thom He was super easy to find. I've asked him for an interview. -Kevin 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted January 30, 2018 Share Posted January 30, 2018 Just offering Kevin an ongoing "THANK YOU" for all these wonderful interviews, easily one of the best threads on here and so interesting.. Thank you for your time and work... Paul.. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted February 2, 2018 Author Share Posted February 2, 2018 Rawson Stovall, The Vid Kid newspaper column http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-327-rawson-stovall-the-vid-kid-newspaper-column As you no doubt gleaned from the clips of his appearances on CBS Morning News and The Tonight Show, Rawson Stovall was only a child when he started writing a syndicated newspaper column in which he reviewed computer games and home video games. The column, called Vid Kid, appeared in 20 newspapers around the United States. He was in fact the first nationally syndicated reviewer of video games in the country. He is author of The Vid Kid's Book of Home Video Games — a compilation of his reviews — which was published in 1984, when Rawson was 12 years old. This interview took place on January 23, 2018. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted February 14, 2018 Author Share Posted February 14, 2018 (edited) Jerry Horanoff, Carina BBS Software link Jerry Horanoff was the creator of the Carina bulletin board system software for the Atari 8-bit computers, and later, Carina II. The October 1986 issue of ANTIC Magazine wrote: "This expandable, module-based bulletin board software package is written in understandable BASIC and includes XMODEM upload/download transfer protocol, message editor with word processor-like functions and a total of 44 commands, including 17 sysop functions. It operates at 300, 1200 or 2400 baud and works with most DOSs and BASICs." Jerry also created Ultramon, a disassembler. Later he worked at ICD and Commodore. This interview took place on January 25, 2018. Edited February 14, 2018 by Savetz 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 Jerry Horanoff was the creator of the Carina bulletin board system software for the Atari 8-bit computers, and later, Carina II. Just finished listening to the interview, glad you had a chance to chat with him! We used to talk fairly often back in the Carina II days. He really did a terrific job with Carina II, it was powerful, quite flexible, and easy to modify and add to. I had a blast running a Carina II BBS (for several years) and writing software for the system, including the game RoboWar II that he briefly mentioned. Those were fun times. ..Al 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmccorm Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 Jerry Horanoff, Carina BBS Software I learned a great deal from that piece of software. It practically begged for modification... and I modified as much as I could fit in memory... and then a little bit more. Looking forward to hearing this! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmccorm Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 I learned a great deal from that piece of software. It practically begged for modification... and I modified as much as I could fit in memory... and then a little bit more. Looking forward to hearing this! After hearing the interview, I think it was probably Carnival that I had most of my experience with. I also wanted to agree with him on BBS Express and I'd throw Oasis into the same bucket as well. Those assembler-based pieces of software were pretty rock solid, fast, and reliable. But they were for the people who had a fair amount of money but weren't interested in creating any kind of customized destination. At the time, I called it "a war of the look-alikes" because, in my area, Oasis was extremely popular, and all the Oasis boards looked and acted completely alike. It really sucked the creativity/exploration/wonder of visiting BBS systems. I do remember seeing the functionality he described with Carina, though. It had a cool I/O route which made the OS believe that whatever was coming in from the modem was a local keyboard input, and any text going out to the screen was also sent to the modem. So you could write a normal program which uses PRINT statements to write to the screen, and you could accept normal input as if the user was sitting right there. That was totally awesome because it made programming telecommunications software super-easy. The downside, from what I saw, is that if/when a user was able to break out of your software (due to a hardware fault, bug, or whatever), they got access to the BASIC interpreter to do whatever they wanted. They could literally type anything on your machine. So it made your BBS potentially vulnerable. I'll assume that he eventually found a way to mitigate that. I'm going to have to look over a copy of Carina to make sure. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted February 27, 2018 Share Posted February 27, 2018 David Heller, Dr. C. Wacko http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-43-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 Atari games on disk. He also wrote for The Atari Connection magazine. This interview took place April 20, 2015. Teaser quotes: "I think they sold well over 100,000 copies of that book. And they were very successful." "A young engineer came up to me... and he says, 'You know, I am a professional software engineer now because I got so excited about writing software from your Dr. Wacko books.'" Just got a copy of Space Knights. http://www.atarimania.com/documents-atari-atari-400-800-xl-xe--books_1_8.html And here is the disk that goes with the book: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-space-knights_4835.html Allan 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted March 3, 2018 Author Share Posted March 3, 2018 Douglas Wilder, Ultimate Renumber Utility http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-329-douglas-wilder-ultimate-renumber-utility Douglas Wilder published one program though Atari Program Exchange, Ultimate Renumber Utility, which he co-wrote with his father, Justin Wilder. It first appeared in the winter 1981 APX catalog, but was featured in the catalog for less than a year: in the winter 1982 catalog, it was replaced by BASIC/XA, which did renumbering as well as other functions for programmers. This interview took place on January 26, 2018. Teaser quote: "So we got enough money off the sales of that through APX that it paid for both my father's computer and mine." 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 Do you need some special software to listen to these podcasts, because they don't work at all with Firefox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted March 5, 2018 Author Share Posted March 5, 2018 Do you need some special software to listen to these podcasts, because they don't work at all with Firefox. It should work fine in any browser, no special software needed. The vast majority of people don't listen in their browser; they listen using a podcast app on their phone. Kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 your firefox probably needs script blocker to allow the website, html5 player, and cdn.jsdeliver.net make sure all are enabled in your firefox addons/scriptblocker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfoMan Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 If you have an Android device, you can listen to it with a free app I made called Retro Atari Podcasts: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andromo.dev5592.app460787&hl=en Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 your firefox probably needs script blocker to allow the website, html5 player, and cdn.jsdeliver.net make sure all are enabled in your firefox addons/scriptblocker I disabled everything and it just doesn't work under Firefox. Doesn't work under Safari or IE either. It will work using Edge on a W10 system though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 it works on all versions of firefox I use for XP on up... 46 to quantum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 it works on all versions of firefox I use for XP on up... 46 to quantum Well this machine has 43 on it. Other ones have 18 or 34. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 oh my, time for some portable installs, wow. I think quantum is #56 or so now... what are you running these on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 (edited) oh my, time for some portable installs, wow. I think quantum is #56 or so now... what are you running these on? i7-7700K, i7-2700k, i5-2500k, q9300. Just ordered an i7-8700k, guess that one can have something newer. They're all Win7 xcept the 7700, it's a W10. Edited March 6, 2018 by Alfred Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 shouldn't be any problem installing multiple instances as standalone, portable, for the different versions you might want today... give it a look over on the mozilla site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted March 7, 2018 Author Share Posted March 7, 2018 William "Ted" Farmer, Eastern Front (1941) Scenarios http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-330-william-ted-farmer-eastern-front-1941-scenarios Ted Farmer created one product for the Atari 8-bit computers, with an unwieldy name: “Eastern Front (1941) Scenarios For 1942, 1943, 1944". The disk of add-on scenarios for Eastern Front 1941 first appeared in the fall 1983 APX catalog, alongside Chris Crawford's Eastern Front (1941) scenario editor, the program that Ted used to create the scenarios. This interview took place on January 27, 2018. Teaser quote: "Some time later, I got a message on my telephone answering machine, and it was from Chris [Crawford]. It was very short. He said, 'Stop working on the article, and I can't tell you why.'" 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted April 7, 2018 Author Share Posted April 7, 2018 ANTIC Special Episode — Bits & Bytes http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-special-episode-bits-and-bytes I interviewed three people who helped create Bits & Bytes, a 1983 educational musical theater show teaching about computers. First, Michael Bigelow Dixon, co-author of the play; Diane King, the composer; and Laura Leyva, the actress who played the roll of Happy. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 It should work fine in any browser, no special software needed. The vast majority of people don't listen in their browser; they listen using a podcast app on their phone. Kevin Related to this: YouTube uploads of the podcasts would be *majorly* appreciated. It's the one unified playback method I can use across multiple devices that lets me listen pretty much anywhere - particularly in the car, via Bluetooth from my phone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted April 7, 2018 Author Share Posted April 7, 2018 Related to this: YouTube uploads of the podcasts would be *majorly* appreciated. It's the one unified playback method I can use across multiple devices that lets me listen pretty much anywhere - particularly in the car, via Bluetooth from my phone. Request noted, but realistically that's not going to happen. A podcast app does the job for 99.9% of listeners. Kevin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 Dave Comstock: E.T. Phone Home!, Superman III, Cloak & Dagger http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-316-dave-comstock-et-phone-home-superman-iii-cloak-dagger Dave Comstock worked at Atari from 1980 through 1984, first as a software and hardware tester, then as a programmer. Dave worked on three games for the Atari 8-bit computers: E.T. Phone Home!, Superman III, and Cloak and Dagger. This interview took place on November 8, 2017. Did any unique software or hardware come out of your interview with Dave Comstock? I noticed he mentions at 31 minutes into Part 1 that Atari had a special cartridge version of DDT, available to Atari employees only, that ran on an 800. He mentioned that it was one of the few things he took with him when he left, because it was a necessity for some things he had done. So, it sounds like he may still have this. Was he ever asked about dumping this cartridge? Seems like a great thing to have archived. I know I'd love to have a copy of it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savetz Posted April 7, 2018 Author Share Posted April 7, 2018 Good question. I will ask him. Did any unique software or hardware come out of your interview with Dave Comstock? I noticed he mentions at 31 minutes into Part 1 that Atari had a special cartridge version of DDT, available to Atari employees only, that ran on an 800. He mentioned that it was one of the few things he took with him when he left, because it was a necessity for some things he had done. So, it sounds like he may still have this. Was he ever asked about dumping this cartridge? Seems like a great thing to have archived. I know I'd love to have a copy of it. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.