ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast
Walt Klappert, Atari Advanced Development Group/WCI Labs Walt Klappert worked at Atari's Advanced Development Group/WCI Labs in New York, and later at Take One Enterprises in California. He worked with Nancy and Steve Mayer on a variety of projects with a concentration on creating software for girls. He is credited as Director of "Fisher Price Dance Fantasy", a dance choreography game for small children. He also worked on a system for authoring CD+G, an enhancement to the compact disc spec that allowed graphics and lyrics to be displayed synchronized with music. This interview took place on...
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ANTIC Episode 130 - The Tongue-Twister Episode In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… We trip all over our own tongues trying to bring you all the news fit to print in the Atari 8-bit computer world… READY! Recurring Links Interview index: What we’ve been up to Diskmenu manual - 30th anniversary of Classic Computer Magazine Archive - : Discussion - Atari Yahoo Groups archives: Atari Usenet group archive additions - MPP MicroportXL board manual -...
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Steve Bryson, game programmer Steve Bryson was a programmer for EPYX and The Connelley Group, where he ported many games to various 8-bit systems. He ported Dragonriders of Pern, an action/strategy game based on the Anne McCaffrey novels, to Atari and Commodore 64. He ported Jumpman to the Apple II, and Lower Reaches of Apshai, Upper Reaches of Apshai, and Temple of Ra to the C64. This interview took place on August 5, 2026. Video version of this interview: Steve's personal web site: Randy Glover, Jumpman interview: Tom Zimmerman, AMY chip interview: Jon Freeman, Freefall...
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Bob Fraser, APX Insomnia, Supersort, De Re Atari Bob Fraser worked at Atari for four years: he worked on the early CX70 light pen, helped write the specs for an unreleased database manager for the Atari 8-bits. and later moved into Atari's Games Design Research Group under Alan Kay, where he experimented with 3-D graphics. He wrote a chapter of De Re Atari — chapter 7, all about sound — and two applications that were published by Atari Program Exchange: Supersort, a data sorting routine; and Insomnia, a sound editor. Supersort was APX catalog number 20030, and was for sale starting...
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James W. Burley, APX Data Base/Report System James W. Burley is the programmer of Data Base/Report System, which was sold by Atari Program Exchange beginning with the Summer 1982 APX catalog. It was catalog number 20134 with a price of $22.95. APX sold it for about a year, through the Summer 1983 catalog. APX awarded Data Base/Report System first prize for new software in the "Business & Professional Applications/Personal Finance & Record Keeping" category: for that, James was awarded an Atari Star plaque and $2000 prize. (He received the plaque, but says he never received the...
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Tim Jenkins, Cheating at Roulette with an Atari Computer Tim Jenkins is the author of several humorous memoirs: "Missions Accomplished: And some funny business along the way", "More Missions Accomplished: And a lot more funny business", and "Business Missions Accomplished: Silly travel tales on the corporate dime". I wanted to talk to Tim about one chapter in his 2018 book More Missions Accomplished: the chapter is titled "Gaming the System" and it tells the tale of him trying to cheat a roulette using his Atari 800 computer. A brief excerpt from that chapter: "Las Vegas — 1989. Shortly...
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Mike Lorenzen: Atari Program-Text Editor, Pitfall II Mike Lorenzen worked at Atari, Activision, and Accolade, creating games for the Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit, and Commodore 64 computers. At Atari, Mike coded Golf and Circus Atari for the Atari 2600. For the 8-bit computers, he wrote MEDIT (which he told me stands for Mike’s EDITor.) Atari got a lot of mileage from MEDIT, using versions of that text editor in several products: first, in Atari Program-Text Editor (which was bundled with Atari's Macro Assembler), and in two Atari Program Exchange products: APX 20075, Atari Program-Text Editor;...
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ANTIC Episode 129 - SDX and FNSlots In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast…Brad plays around with SDX, Kay and Randy bring you news from some vintage computer shows, we drool over all the new hardware news, and we bring you FujiNet news, including FNSlots… READY! Recurring Links Interview index: What we’ve been up to Box of stuff from Bob Fraser Light pen - Disks! Six early versions of MEDIT - Prerelease version of DOS 2.0S - INIT HELLO at System Source Computer Museum Print...
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Allan Bushman, Atari Archivist If you've ever looked up an Atari computer manual at Internet Archive, chances are you've come across some of Allan Bushman's scans. For well over 13 years, Allan has been uploading scans of Atari-related catalogs, manuals, and books to the archive. Before that, since 1995 or before, Allan contributed to and AtariMania. With a particular emphasis on finding and archiving Atari Program Exchange manuals, Allan has helped save the vast majority of the APX library. This interview took place on April 19 2026 at Vintage Computer Festival East. As of this recording,...
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Atari at the Science Fair: Lisa Link Melville, Weather Prediction The Herald Times newspaper, April 17 1984: "March 24 proved to be an exciting day for several area students participating in the South Central Indiana Regional Science Fair which was held in Bloomington. Lisa Link, an Edgewood High School junior, and Maxwell Brothers, a Bloomington North senior, took top honors in the advanced division. Programming an Atari 800 computer to forecast the weather was Link's project. The computer's entire 48K memory system was needed to develop the long and complicated program which predicts...
info_outlineANTIC Episode 118 - Trigger Warning
In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast…we have lots of user feedback and user projects to report on, we talk about a postage stamp-sized Atari computer, and (trigger warning!) there are a couple of Commodore references…
READY!
Recurring Links
New Atari books scans at archive.org
Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge
Interview index: here
Links for Items Mentioned in Show:
What we’ve been up to
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Photos from the Capital Children's Museum Communications Exhibit which opened November 1981 - https://archive.org/details/ccm-communications
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Narrascope 2025 - https://narrascope.org/
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Learning about print shop font and border formats with Michael Sternberg - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/324752-print-shop-atari-related-graphics/#findComment-5667327
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“Unofficial Atari: a Visual History” by Darren Doyle - https://www.greyfoxbooks.com/shop/books/the-atari-a-visual-history/
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Interview with Darren Doyle on ANTIC - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-episode-10-the-atari-8-bit-podcast-darren-doyle-michael-current
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Atari800 emulator and FujiNet on Mac - Andy Diller - https://www.atariorbit.org/2025/06/19/fujinet-and-atari800-emulation/
News
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The Retroist Podcast covers the Atari XEGS - https://www.retroist.com/p/retroist-atari-xegs-podcast
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Atari 800 red keyboard - https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15fZrXoP24/
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Atari 800 drum scanner project (Dave Porter) - https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15rS9dcyzr/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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Atari home automation (Mike Hogan) - https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16rNS2AZnv/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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Polish engineer creates postage stamp-sized 1980s Atari computer - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/polish-engineer-creates-postage-stamp-sized-1980s-atari-computer/
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Antonia2 interest post by Simius - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/382122-antonia2-interest/
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Thomas Cherryhomes will be writing a monthly FujiNet column for the upcoming Compute!’s Gazette reboot - https://fujinews.substack.com/p/thomas-cherryhomes-named-monthly
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New game (news comes from Atariteca) - "Quadbination" for Atari 8-bit - https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2025/06/reflejos-estrategia-y-paddles.html
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The story of how Boulder Dash was created:
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https://spillhistorie.no/2025/06/06/how-boulder-dash-was-created/
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Kay Interviewed Peter Liepa in 2015 - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-66-peter-liepa-boulder-dash
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June Atari Insights Newsletter - https://ataribasics.com
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Trigger Warning: Commodore news
Upcoming Shows
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Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - July 31-Aug. 3 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2025-se
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VCF West - August 1-2 - Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/2025/03/05/vcf-west-2025-save-the-date/
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Fujiama - August 11-17 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2025/
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VCF Midwest - September 13-14, 2025 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/
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Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 17-19 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/
YouTube Videos
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Fixing bad key switches all at once (Atari 800XL AWC Type 2) - Adrian’s Digital Basement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsSiEtSomQI
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Fixing a dead and dirty Atari 800XL - Adrian’s Digital Basement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljBofLMPIeA
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Repairing a smashed-up Atari 400 computer - Adrian’s Digital Basement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H4v-LVztk0
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Atari 8-Bit Reborn Smaller Than a Quarter—It Actually Works! + More Retro News! - Bit By Bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT3kTi-hX_o
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Connecting a 15KHz CRT monitor to a Sophia 2 Atari 8-bit via the DVI-I jack - FlashJazzCat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaFCzydsUTI
New at Archive.org
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https://archive.org/details/clevatari-newsletter-issue-77-dec-1987
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https://archive.org/details/transdisk-iv-version-4-2-manual-page-6-software/
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Dutch “Atari Users Foundation” - https://archive.org/details/escape2_202506/
New at Github
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CP/M on the Atari 8-bit - https://github.com/davidgiven/cpm65/blob/master/README.md
Feedback
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(Kevin Lund) VCF-W exhibit page with Atari entry write up - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/vcf-west-exhibits/
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Dropcheck’s 1450XL Replica PCB - https://www.bitsofthepast.com/1450XL_Replica.html
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B & C ComputerVisions - Atari Sales & Service - https://www.myatari.com/
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Best Electronics - https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/
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Video61 and Atari Sales - http://www.atarisales.com/main.html
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Eight Bit Fix (Paul Westphal) - https://www.eightbitfix.com/