RIP Glenn Botts AKA Glenn the 5200 Man

[+Cafeman]

It was in the early 2000s on the AA forums, reading comments about the evidently infamous Glenn the 5200 Man, that I remembered seeing that label on an A8 disk game, maybe it was Ms. Pac-man?   I just listened to his 2015 interview, linked above.   I didn't know the guy (Glenn) but he stated he graduated HS in 1979.  So, he was likely only 61 or 62 years old when he passed away, sadly.  

[+MrFish]

On 12/29/2022 at 5:06 PM, slx said:

He was a month shy of 61 and according to one report died after a protracted battle with cancer. 

 

1 hour ago, Cafeman said:

I didn't know the guy but he stated he graduated HS in 1979.  So, he was likely only 61 or 62 years old when he passed away, sadly.  

 

There's your answer.

 

[Tickled_Pink]

On 12/29/2022 at 9:45 PM, Gunstar said:

R.I.P Glenn Botts. 

 

I know most of us are within/close to the same age, 0-15 years of age from each other or about would be my educated guess. But does anyone know how old Glenn was? 

 

How old was Archer Maclean? 

 

It's very sad to see, and I think all of us here are still too young to die. I feel anyone that dies before the average death age (about 77/78 right?) dies too soon. I'm 54 and hoping for at least another 20 years of life or more myself. Or best case scenario reaching over 100 like my Grandfather. I think my Father would have lived that long too, except he died an accidental death of a blood clot after falling and hurting a knee. A week after, he was dead with no warning really. Of course his knee was hurting him, but that doesn't necessarily mean a blood clot, and it certain didn't seem a serious enough injury to him or any of us to go get it checked out. Of course now I know differently and if something similar happens to me, I'll get it checked out. But even my father died a mere week before his 80th birthday, so he lived beyond the average. Both my father and grandfather looked felt and behaved like men 10 years younger than they were, and I seem to be on that track to so far too, as does my older brother who is 5 years my senior. Of course accident or disease/virus could take anyone too soon, regardless of life expectancy, so I could still die, like any one of us at any time. I'm 49 years younger right now than the age my grandfather died, so I'm hoping for that too. I'd only be slightly more than half through my life!

WTF?? Archer Maclean? I had no idea.

He was 60 according to Wikipedia.

Sad to hear about Glenn as well. Pretty sure the hacked copy of Alternate Reality - The City I have was done by him, along with a few others. I had thought that he was primarily a 5200 to 8-bit conversion guy until that and another couple of games came my way in the mid-90s.

[+Cafeman]

Ignore, I clarified in prior post.

[+MrFish]

1 minute ago, Cafeman said:

It appears that quote was about Archer's age of 60 when he died from cancer...

Yeah, you're right. We seem to be mixing threads here. I thought this thread was about Glenn Botts, and there's another thread about Archer Maclean.

 

[Gunstar]

14 minutes ago, MrFish said:

Yeah, you're right. We seem to be mixing threads here. I thought this thread was about Glenn Botts, and there's another thread about Archer Maclean.

 

That's my fault as I was asking Glenn's age and then decided to ask Archer's age in the same post instead of going to the other thread and making another post.

[+MrFish]

3 hours ago, Gunstar said:

That's my fault as I was asking Glenn's age and then decided to ask Archer's age in the same post instead of going to the other thread and making another post.

No problem. I should have read what I was quoting a little more carefully first. I'm lacking some sleep today, due to holiday activities. At least I've got a few extra days off now...

 

[Savetz]

Glenn's Atari stuff will be on sale this Saturday, May 13 2023, in person in New Carrollton Maryland, which is near Washington D.C.

 

I had a FaceTime with his sister and got some blurry shots of what Glenn had: Atari 8-bit, ST, and Amiga hardware, lots of manuals and magazines. If you are nearby and want to buy some of this stuff on Saturday, private message me for the sister's contact info.

 

I already have dibs on all of Glenn's floppy disks, I'm buying them all in order to preserve the data. He may have source code and unpreserved Atari software. If so, I will find it.

 

-Kay

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Savetz

[cx2k]

1 hour ago, Savetz said:

Glenn's Atari stuff will be on sale this Saturday, May 13 2023, in person in New Carrollton Maryland, which is near Washington D.C.

 

I had a FaceTime with his sister and got some blurry shots of what Glenn had: Atari 8-bit, ST, and Amiga hardware, lots of manuals and magazines. If you are nearby and want to buy some of this stuff on Saturday, text Brenda at (301) 717-0846 for the address.

 

I already have dibs on all of Glenn's floppy disks, I'm buying them all in order to preserve the data. He may have source code and unpreserved Atari software. If so, I will find it.

 

-Kay

 

Kay,

 

Did you also get the paperwork? He very well might have had documents related to his conversion work or contacts he was dealing with.

 

John

 

[_The Doctor__]

I am close about 3 or so hours away, I will attempt to arrange or do what I can.

I was just getting my gear back together to image some disks for another person who's been waiting. So if the disks are already being handled that's a plus, thanks to Savetz handling it. If I can't make it Sat. I'll give a heads up. Very short time frame here.

Edited May 11, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[Savetz]

12 hours ago, cx2k said:

Kay,

 

Did you also get the paperwork? He very well might have had documents related to his conversion work or contacts he was dealing with.

 

John

 

I might be able to get some paperwork, but there's a lot of printed material and the family doesn't necessarily know what is potentially interesting. 

 

-Kay

[+Allan]

Did anybody go to this?

[_The Doctor__]

It's possible in the future but currently unlikely anything of note will be available in the near term. If the sister were to change her mind in the future. Right now it's like this...

Even though Glenn said he would probably dig the stuff up and put it out there... and that is also on the Podcast interview... as I have listened to it now in it's entirety.

The sister did not allow even hand written notes about general and common programming in his hand writing go. No hard drives, and that includes even Broken ones labeled as such that I would use for parts were allowed to be purchased. I would say an over abundance of caution was exercised. Most of the 8 bit goods of note, like memory upgrades and duplicator/happy drives were reserved to immediate friends who were present and helping out. I had a chance to buy his 800 but all of the cartridges and even commercial software were off limits and the 800 was missing it's return key as well as the memory appeared removed, so I passed on it and the the 810 disk drives.They were using ebay as a price guide for the 8 bit stuff so I passed on that as well. My wife did not think it was a good move and refused to respond in a positive way when we finally spoke about it. It's a shame because I would have bought the hard drives even if they were blanked, but they had not done such things so even if they accidentally left them in the for sale room, the purchase was refused.

 

The Atari ST's were allowed to go cheap enough sans hard drives.

 

But if you were a Commodore Amiga fan... you got to buy everything very inexpensively, including monitors, hard drives, modems .... I mean everything! Software disks you name it. One fellow bought the entirety of the Complete with all the trimmings Amigas 2000's 2500's et el. I was completely taken aback, and didn't know how to proceed. They were fully loaded AMI's, video cards, hd's, possible toasters and he got them for less than 400 a piece. All the manuals and papers too.

 

Maybe they were tired of searching papers by the time they got to check him out, 3 people searched my pile of paper stuff at least twice. I checked my purchase for odds and ends as well. I found nothing.

Edited May 16, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[+Allan]

To me, the real valuable stuff was the data, digital and paper. There seemed to be (from Kay's pics) lots of manuals, papers, etc. Hopefully Kay at least gets the 8-bit disks and there are some rare things on them. Thanks for going @_The Doctor__.

[_The Doctor__]

Having been a hub for distributing his work on our BBS, and the occasional message through the BBS, I really didn't think there was a great barrier other than he didn't want to be pestered by the general public with requests and such. He did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it and many people were very grateful for that. I just hope that because there aren't any tidbits to keep the conversation going every so often, that he wont just slowly be forgotten. As we all forget or pass away, it would be a shame for a talented and reserved fellow to fade away like that. I kind of hoped he wouldn't become just another name on a game, like a software pirate because he did more than that.

 

Who knows, anything is possible... you can always hope for the best.

 

I thought about buying his avatex 1200 modem, because we both had one at a point in time. blue button stood out and I knew what it was instantly and that took me back to a time I really didn't know still existed in memory. Points of contact and things of that nature really can restore those details in your mind.

Edited May 17, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[_The Doctor__]

I did get a bunch of actual manuals and print outs, some of which he may have downloaded from a number of other BBS's and maybe ours as well. It just wasn't anything of the actual conversions or snippets of code etc. Simply books and manuals etc. No commercial game manuals either.

[Savetz]

5 hours ago, Allan said:

To me, the real valuable stuff was the data, digital and paper. There seemed to be (from Kay's pics) lots of manuals, papers, etc. Hopefully Kay at least gets the 8-bit disks and there are some rare things on them. Thanks for going @_The Doctor__.

The family has decided to destroy all of Glenn's disks.

 

-Kay

[adam242]

8 minutes ago, Savetz said:

The family has decided to destroy all of Glenn's disks.

 

-Kay

I seriously doubt that's what Glenn would have wanted.

[_The Doctor__]

If Glenn wanted them destroyed, he would have done so himself.

 

I guess it's time to just stop talking about Glennthe5200man. Maybe they wish him forgotten or aren't proud of what he did. I can't figure it out. It's just strange but it is what it is. People can be peculiar when there is stress and grief. They do things that in retrospect may not make sense to themselves later on. We can't know what they're thinking. I thought it would be a more pleasant way to see Glenn remembered from time to time as maybe a little bit of info was uncovered or shared. Those thoughts seem to matter very little at the moment. So there is little to do, since we can't honor Glenn's wishes, maybe we can simply honor the sisters wishes and let it fade away.

Edited May 17, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[+MrFish]

3 hours ago, Savetz said:

The family has decided to destroy all of Glenn's disks.

 

2 hours ago, adam242 said:

I seriously doubt that's what Glenn would have wanted.

 

And this, my friends, is exactly why arrangements need to be made, if you don't wish your Atari belongings to suffer a similar fate.

 

From our side, nothing worse could happen to such materials; from the family's side, lack of knowledge leads to fear that produces this kind of outcome.

 

[Irgendwer]

6 hours ago, Savetz said:

The family has decided to destroy all of Glenn's disks.

Understandable.

While there are maybe things on them for historic/public interest, have you ever thought that they carry private information which isn't meant to be disclosed to the public?

Without browsing through the disks and estimating the contents, e.g. opening documents with various (old) programs, how should the family know what's on them? (And even if you are familiar with various file formats this doesn't sound like a fun task to me, let alone to someone without deeper knowledge of the platform.)

 

I would just assume, if Glenn liked to publish things then he already did. Otherwise just respect his privacy.

 

...and if you are unsure how your disk/document legacy should be handled: Use tags on them like: destroy/sell/donate...

Edited May 17, 2023 by Irgendwer

[BIGHMW]

WOW, TWO Atari legends, gone before their time, on the 5200 side, Curt Vendel, and now the iconic Glenn The 5200 Man.

 

R.I.P. to both of them and may both their legacies as well as their contributions to the Atari 8-bit communities that both we 5200 and A8/XL/XE/XEGS owners are proud to be a part of live on for all time.

 

THANKS TO BOTH OF YOU!!!

[Rybags]

More than that actually.  Sal, Raster, TMR, Stephen Carden and at least one more that I can't remember at the moment.

[+mytek]

10 hours ago, Savetz said:

The family has decided to destroy all of Glenn's disks.

Wow that seems like a rash decision, and one they may regret in the future. I totally understand not wanting private information to be released, as well as not knowing how to access the disks, but it would make more sense for the family to box it up and store it themselves for the time being. Because you never know how you will truly feel after the grieving has passed.

 

I know when my dad passed my brother and I gave a way a lot of the stuff still left in the house without taking the time to really go through all of it. I now regret that decision since there are many mysteries that could have been possibly answered if we had only held off on doing that until a later time when we both felt better able to deal with it properly.

[Hawkeye68]

11 hours ago, Savetz said:

The family has decided to destroy all of Glenn's disks.

 

-Kay

So unfortunate.  One of the most interesting and poignant things I've seen are your scans of the late Matt Ratcliff's notes provided by one of his sons.  Many of us dreamed of the glory of a published article back-in-the-day.

 

https://archive.org/details/MatthewRatcliffAtariDocumentsCollectionImages