Podcasts about Apple II

Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/jordan-mechner As a kid in the 80's, Eli fell in love with games on computers like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and later the Amiga and Macintosh. One of the very first games he played was called Karateka, which was inspiring for the realistic movements of its digital karate antagonists, even on a black-and-green Apple II monitor. Our guest today, Jordan Mechner, created Karateka while an undergrad at Yale University in 1984, and it went on to be a commercial success. He followed it up with the game Prince of Persia (you'll hear a clip from the soundtrack in the introduction, which Jordan's father composed and which Jordan invented a way to transpose onto the Apple II's tinny speakers before game soundtracks were widespread on the machine). Jordan documented the creation of the game in a wonderful published version of his diaries called The Making of Prince of Persia, and we spoke with him about how he taught himself the skills to build successful video games in a pre-internet era, why he journaled about his work process (and what it taught him), and about his new graphic novel Replay, a memoir recounting his own family story of war, exile and new beginnings. Book & links mentioned Journals: Steven Soderbergh, Michael Palin, Brian Eno Hobonichi Techo John August The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig Bio Jordan Mechner is an American author, game designer, comic book artist, and screenwriter, best known for creating the iconic video game Prince of Persia in 1989. He relaunched the series with Ubisoft in 2003 and wrote the original screenplay for the film adaptation produced by Disney in 2010, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. This work is considered a timeless classic and has spawned a global transmedia franchise, with over 20 million games sold to date. Since 2017, Jordan has been living in France, where he made his debut as a full author with his autobiographical graphic novel Replay. Among the albums he has written are Monte-Cristo (with Mario Alberti), Liberté! (with Étienne Le Roux and Loïc Chevallier), and Templiers (with LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland), which appeared on the New York Times bestsellers list. His latest works were first published in French, with English editions following in 2024. Jordan's video games, such as Karateka (1984) and The Last Express (1997), are recognized for their cinematic storytelling and innovative use of rotoscoping. In 2017, he received the Pioneer Award from the International Game Developers Association. Jordan also wrote and directed Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story, an award-winning documentary broadcast on PBS. He has published his development journals, The Making of Karateka and The Making of Prince of Persia, as well as an adaptation of the Persian tales Samak the Ayyar. A passionate artist, he keeps a sketchbook journal, regularly sharing his thoughts and drawings, a testament to his love for art and storytelling. *** Premium Episodes on Design Better This is a premium episode on Design Better. We release two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. Premium subscribers also get access to the documentary Design Disruptors and our growing library of books, as well as our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, and our monthly newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. Upgrade to paid ***

Stanley Trost, Electronic Arts Financial Cookbook    Stanley R. Trost wrote several books about early microcomputers, including Atari BASIC Programs in Minutes, Doing Business with VisiCalc, Multiplan on the Commodore 64, Useful Basic Programs the for IBM PC, VisiCalc for Science and Engineering, and others. He was also the creator of Financial Cookbook, which was published by Electronic Arts in 1984 (and one of only two "home management" titles released by EA, the other being Cut and Paste, "the Remarkably Simple Word Processor").   Financial Cookbook provided 32 financial calculators and decision-making tools, including understanding your marginal tax rate, living on your savings, how much life insurance you need, variable rate mortgages, and so on. Versions of the program were sold for Atari 8-bit and ST, Apple II, Commodore 64, Macintosh, and perhaps other platforms.   This interview took place on March 24, 2025.   Atari BASIC Programs in Minutes    Doing Business with VisiCalc    Financial Cookbook at AtariMania    Inverse ATASCII podcast about Financial Cookbook, including many screenshots    Video version of this interview    Support Kay's interviews on Patreon 

This week on the pod, NYU professor Laine Nooney discusses their work on gaming and computer history, how we collect material artifacts that shed light on the digital past, and how to write about a computer system that for some has already entered the realm of myth. Also, they mention their journal, ROMchip, which is currently fundraising and which is a great cause to support. Go enjoy ROMchip's stream about it this Saturday, Feb. 22:  https://donate.romchip.org/Keep the Faith STREAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuj5QT5VIn0Keep the Faith campaign: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/ffdefab3-adb6-48aa-8335-797e720c58a1/landing Beyond Solitaire is proudly sponsored by Central Michigan University's Center for Learning Through Games and Simulations, where learning can be both playful and compelling. Check them out here: https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/centers-institutes/center-for-learning-through-games-and-simulationsCheck out CMU's game offerings here: https://cmichpress.com/shop/Sign up for an online game design class here: https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/centers-institutes/center-for-learning-through-games-and-simulations/certificate-in-applied-game-designAll episodes of my podcast are available here: https://beyondsolitaire.buzzsprout.com/

Guest: Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision Blizzard; and Bing Gordon, general partner at Kleiner PerkinsIn 2020, when President Trump signed the executive order that would ban TikTok in the U.S., Bobby Kotick called his old friend Steven Mnuchin. The former Secretary of the Treasury told him that, if TikTok's U.S. operations were to be sold to an American company, Microsoft would be the only bidder.A couple calls later, he reached ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming, who said he'd rather sell to Bobby than Microsoft. Concerned about his ability to get the deal done solo, Bobby called Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and offered to make a joint bid. Nadella declined, but added, “ if the deal doesn't get done, we should sit down and talk about us buying Activision.” TikTok currently remains Chinese-owned, but three years later, Microsoft paid $75 billion for Activision Blizzard.Chapters:Mentioned in this episode: Harvard-Westlake School, Alison Ressler, Vivendi, Berkshire Hathaway, Bruce Hack and Arnaud de Puyfontaine, John Riccitiello and EA, Call of Duty, Bizarre Creations, Atari, Apple II, Commodore 64, Jean-Louis Gassée, Apple Lisa, Howard Lincoln, Philips, Magnavox Odyssey, Sutter Hill Ventures, Infocom and Zork, Toys-R-Us, Howard Hughes, E. Parry Thomas, Sun Valley, Thom Weisel, William Morris Endeavor, Guitar Hero, Davidson & Associates, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, World of Warcraft, Medal of Honor, Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton, Chris Roberts, Overwatch, Tencent, Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In, Lina Khan, Samsung, Elon Musk, James L. Jones, UFC, E. Floyd Kvamme, Toy Story 2, Procter & Gamble, Ron Doornik, John Lasseter, Xerox PARC, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, Goldeneye 007, James Bond, Barbara Broccoli, Oculus, Apple Vision Pro, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Sam Altman, Mustafa Suleyman, Spotify, Candy Crush Saga, Disney, Phil Spencer, Clarence Avant and Motown Records. Links:Connect with BobbyTwitterLinkedInConnect with BingTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Episode 142 Chapter 04, Electronic Music Composition by Process. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music  Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes. This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text. The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings.   Playlist   Time Track Time* Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 01:31 00:00 Yves Klein, “Monotone-Silence Symphony” (1947). I could not find any recorded versions of this piece, so I produced this realization of my own to capture the feel and nature of this process work. Klein conceived this as performance art in which an orchestra would only play a single note, continuously, for 20 minutes followed by another 20 minutes of silence. I've examined the score and can see that Klein also intended that the same note could be played in different octaves. The playing would have been staged so that one group of musicians could overlap another, both for reasons of fatigue but also to allow smooth transitions for the wind instruments because players would need to take a breath. My version includes electronic instruments for multiple parts, each part playing the same note, often in different octaves. The introduction of instrumental groups was planned in stages, each overlapping the previous grouping, gradually shortening in duration as the piece goes on. 40:03 01:34 Steve Reich, “It's Gonna Rain” (1965). Process piece using tape loops and phasing. 08:03 41:38 La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, “31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM” (1969). Early work employing electronic drones. Eponymous untitled album popularly known as "The Black Record" or "The Black Album" Mine is an original copy. The cover is black gloss print on matt black and very hard to read. Numbered edition limited to 2800 copies of which numbers 1-98 are dated and signed by the artists. This work “was recorded at the date and time indicated in the title, at Galerie Heiner Friedrich, München. The work “31 VII 69 10:26-10:49 PM” is a section of the longer work: Map Of 49's Dream The Two Systems Of Eleven Sets Of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery. Play this side at 33 1/3 rpm only.” Early work employing electronic drones. By the mid-sixties, Young and his partner Marian Zazeela were creating music for electronic drones as an extension of their group, The Theatre of Eternal Music. Using a Heathkit sine wave oscillator and later Moog modules as sources, they created drone pieces that employed “extended duration time signatures” and “long sustained tones, intervals, triads and chords to create the musical texture.” A reissue has now occurred on the label Super Viaduct. 22:49 49:24 Terry Riley, “A Rainbow in Curved Air” (1969). Minimalist process work for electronic organ. 18:46 01:12:08 Steve Reich, “Four Organs” (1970). Process piece for four electronic organs. 24:11 01:31:04 Brian Eno, “Discreet Music” (1975). Process piece for synthesizers. 31:35 01:55:12 David Behrman, “Figure in a Clearing” (1977). Process piece using the KIM- 1 microcomputer 19:13 02:25:30 Laurie Spiegel, “A Harmonic Algorithm” (1980). Self-generating program running on an Apple II computer. 03:08 02:44:48 Alvin Lucier, “Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums” (1990). Process piece for amplified piano and snare drum. 09:20 02:47:48 Marina Rosenfeld, “Two (Joy of Fear)” (2005). Process piece for a timed improvisational live performance. 10:22 02:56:50   Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.  

Tennis for Two, la Brown Box, Pong, mais aussi Prince of Persia sur Apple II, Duck Hunt sur NES, Doom sur un écran cathodique ou Sega Rally 2 en arcade, que demander de plus ? Dans cet épisode un peu spécial, on vous propose une petite promenade dans l'histoire des jeux vidéo. Nous nous sommes en effet rendus avec nos micros à l'ancienne poste de Versailles pour découvrir l'expo Game Story montée par l'association MO5. C'est ouvert tous les jours sauf le lundi et le mardi jusqu'au 13 avril. Retrouvez toutes les chroniques de jérémie dans le podcast dédié Silence on Joue ! La chronique jeux de société (Lien RSS).Pour commenter cette émission, donner votre avis ou simplement discuter avec notre communauté, connectez-vous au serveur Discord de Silence on joue!Retrouvez Silence on Joue sur Twitch : https://www.twitch.tv/silenceonjoueSoutenez Silence on joue en vous abonnant à Libération avec notre offre spéciale à 6€ par mois : https://offre.liberation.fr/soj/Silence on joue ! C'est l'émission hebdo de jeux vidéo de Libération. Avec Erwan Cario et Patrick Hellio.CRÉDITSSilence on joue ! est un podcast de Libération animé par Erwan Cario. Cet épisode a été enregistré le 14 janvier 2025 à l'Ancienne Poste de Versailles. Réalisation : Erwan Cario. Générique : Marc Quatrociocchi. Photo : Pierrick Daul / Ville de Versailles Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Interview with Dan Bricklin, VisiCalc Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper  FutureVision Research   Hello, and welcome to episode 146 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for December, 2024.  I am Randy Kindig, your host for this podcast. This month I'm staying with the recent interview theme, as I continue to get the opportunity for interviews with some amazing icons from the early personal computer days. This month, that person is Dan Bricklin, co-developer of the iconic VisiCalc software that helped kickstart the sales of early personal computers like the Apple II and began the important spreadsheet software category that persists until today.  I published an interview with Dan's partner in VisiCalc (and in Software Arts), Bob Frankston, back in 2023, and now Dan adds to the story in his own words. Please note that I do plan to get back into producing episodes covering specific vintage computers.  I've just had an amazing run of interview opportunities in recent months, which has reduced the time I had to do the research on computers for the podcast.  Coming up in 2025 will be coverage of machines like the HP97, the Lobo Max-80, the Dragon, and the C64.  

TCW Podcast Episode 224 - D&D & Video Games 3E   In our final look at D&D & Video Games, we explore the early PC and mainframe computer scene, as well as the games created by fans of D&D. Various aspects of D&D were incorporated into these games, ranging from puzzles and light combat to full-on dungeon dives to claim treasure from the deepest levels. These games grew in popularity and led to others iterating on the aspects they enjoyed. Games on the PLATO system—such as Pedit5, D&D, and Orthanc—paved the way for reimagining these games on home computers, including the Apple II. This foundation led to the creation of seminal titles like Ultima and Wizardry, which would influence RPGs on PCs for over a decade. D&D has a long history of collaborating with different systems and ideas to create innovative forms of gaming, with the potential to continue transforming video games well into the future.   Livestream 2024 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahP86-2H8lc   Playing at the World - Jon Peterson (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/3YokLZC The Elusive Shift - Jon Peterson (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/3C8cHVq Game Wizards - Jon Peterson (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/48uCtzi   Colossal Cave Adventure: https://rickadams.org/adventure/ Play Zork Online: https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/5zyoqrsugeopel3ffhz_vq/zork TCW 170 - A Rogue's Survival Part 1: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/a-rogue-s-survival-part-1/ TCW 171 - A Rogue's Survival Part 2: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/a-rogue-s-survival-part-2/ Pedit5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedit5 M199h: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2023/10/m199h-new-findings-both-solve-and.html Everything We Know About 1970s Mainframe RPGS We Can No Longer Play: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2021/06/brief-everything-we-know-about-1970s.html Orthanc (1975): https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/11/game-123-orthanc-1977.html D&D On PLATO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdPrzb534TY Revisiting The Dungeon (1975): https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2019/01/revisiting-dungeon-1975.html Telengard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqDnYIsa-po Play Telengard: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/telengard-6w Moria: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/11/game-121-moria-1975.html Play Moria (1988 DOS): https://www.myabandonware.com/game/moria-27f/play-27f Oubliette: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-1977.html PLATO Oubliette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUmkTi5D-k TCW 016 - Early Computer Game Platforms: The Trinity, and the Disciples: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/early-computer-game-platforms-the-trinity-and-the-disciples/ Play Beneath Apple Manor (DOS 1983): https://www.myabandonware.com/game/beneath-apple-manor-256 Beneath Apple Manor Walkthrough (Apple II): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IB7j2KVFrY Dungeon Campaign: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/01/game-83-dungeon-campaign-1979.html Dungeon Campaign (Apple II): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xY7bZJ1LOQ Dragon Maze (Apple II): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7-PNdthkDw Dragon Maze Lets Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZnAmBAxgSo Starfleet Orion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_Orion Temple of Apshai Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVcDIQbwtWc Temple of Apshai (Commodore Pet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3mcwLM-l5k Ultima (Apple II): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPqUe6Ohn2A Wizardry (Apple II): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhMpPnnXMo (Ethan) Temple of Apshai (TRS 80) - The Quest Log: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiMtY5BxdM0 TCW 114 - The Wizards of Sir-Tech: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-wizards-of-sir-tech/ TCW 115 - The Return of the Sdraziw of Sir-Tech: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-return-of-the-sdraziw-of-sir-tech/ Escape (Apple II): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nvh78Dqfkg Panorama Toh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4t6A9C31h0 TCW 157 - Final Fantasy's Tale: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/final-fantasy-s-tale/   New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month!   TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com  Twitter: @tcwpodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theycreateworlds Alex's Video Game History Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com Alex's book, published Dec 2019, is available at CRC Press and at major on-line retailers: http://bit.ly/TCWBOOK1     Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode -  Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode  Outro Music: RoleMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love    Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Ryan, a senior security analyst, stresses the importance of strategic planning and risk management in cybersecurity. He pointed out that many teams are bogged down by daily alerts, leaving little time for proactive measures. Ryan advocated for the use of managed detection and response services to focus on long-term strategies and highlighted the need for a balance between strong defense and offense. He also discussed the potential of AI and machine learning in managing and analyzing large amounts of data. In a more lighthearted moment, Ryan shared his fond childhood memories with the TRS-80 and Apple II and confirmed that he still enjoys playing retro games.   Connect with Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-gregory-9bb03236/ Visit Coalition: https://www.coalitioninc.com/   Visit ShortArms website: https://www.shortarmsolutions.com/    You can follow us at: Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shortarmsolutions  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shortarmsolutions   Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ShortArmSAS

Ryan, a senior security analyst, stresses the importance of strategic planning and risk management in cybersecurity. He pointed out that many teams are bogged down by daily alerts, leaving little time for proactive measures. Ryan advocated for the use of managed detection and response services to focus on long-term strategies and highlighted the need for a balance between strong defense and offense. He also discussed the potential of AI and machine learning in managing and analyzing large amounts of data. In a more lighthearted moment, Ryan shared his fond childhood memories with the TRS-80 and Apple II and confirmed that he still enjoys playing retro games.   Connect with Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-gregory-9bb03236/ Visit Coalition: https://www.coalitioninc.com/   Visit ShortArms website: https://www.shortarmsolutions.com/    You can follow us at: Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shortarmsolutions  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shortarmsolutions   Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ShortArmSAS

Run! Go! Get to the choppa! Then load up some hostages in your helicopter and take them to the nearest USPS for express priority shipping back home. In the final Listeners' Choice 5 miniseries episode we're flying the unfriendly skies of the Brøderbund and Sega classic game Choplifter! How did this game make its way from the Apple II to the arcade? What simple foreign puzzle game did Brøderbund pass on? Is the United States Postal Service the ultimate spy cover story? Did our special guest record from a submarine sonar station? Our questions this episode include defining some often-used terms like “kneebasher” and identifying what arcade game based toy we would want that no one else would. Do you have a question? You can join the Podouken Discord by following this link and ask away in the episode questions channel: discord.gg/k5vf2Jz The new listener questions segments are also available on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@podoukenpodcast2716 Thanks to Ross (aka FrozenFear on the Podouken Discord) for the Listeners' Choice game nomination!

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Quinn Dunki, and Carrington Vanston Topic: 1977 In 1977, XMODEM, VAX, and FAT arrived. And the Atari VCS (2600). And the TRS-80 Model 1, Commodore PET, and Apple II. Topic/Feedback links: Retro Computing News: Vintage Computer(-related) commercials: Retro Computing Gift Idea: Auction Picks: A2Stream file: Feedback/Discussion: Intro / Closing Song: Back … Continue reading RCR Episode 277: Trinity →

Interview with Steve Leininger, Designer of the TRS-80- Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   0                                 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec              Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 42 sec              Intro 9 min 03 sec             bumper - Peter Bartlett  9 min 11 sec              New Acquisitions 17 min 11 sec             bumper - Ian Mavric  17 min 19 sec            Upcoming Computer Shows 21 min 53 sec            bumper - Myles Wakeham 21 min 58 sec            Meet the Listeners 28 min 37 sec            Interview with Steve Leininger 1 hr 20 min 29 sec    Closing This particular episode has a special meaning for me, personally.  You see, as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy/Radio Shack was my first home computer (even though my first programmable device was a TI58C calculator).  I recall the joy and wonder of playing with the machine (it wasn't called the Model I at that time; just the TRS-80; as it was the first of the line) in the local Radio Shack store in 1977 and 1978 and the incredible rush of owning one in 1979; after my wife purchased a Level I BASIC machine for me as a gift for college graduation.  That machine only had 4K of RAM and 4K of ROM (Tiny BASIC), as it was the entry-level machine, but it was a thing of beauty.  I felt like I could do anything with that machine, even though my justification to the wife was that we could track our checkbook and recipes on it.  I think she knew better, but went along with it anyway.  The computer came with everything you needed, including a tape drive and black-and-white monitor, which was good for a poor recent college graduate.  I quickly, as finances allowed with my new engineering job, upgraded the computer to 16K of RAM and Level II BASIC (a powerful Microsoft 12K ROM BASIC) and enjoyed the machine immensely, even using it in my job supporting the build-out of a new nuclear power plant back in those days. I eventually sold off the Model I, in favor of a computer that had color graphics and sound (the Atari 800), but have always continued to have a huge soft spot for that first computer. When I started the Floppy Days Podcast, one of the people that has always been on my bucket list to interview has been Steve Leininger, who, along with Don French while at Radio Shack designed the TRS-80 Model I, among other things.  A few years back, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Steve for the Trash Talk Podcast, when I was co-hosting that show, but an ill-timed trip to the hospital for my son meant that I was not able to participate.  While my son's health is of paramount importance, of course, I always wanted to get another chance to talk with Steve.  Not only was Steve the designer of one of my favorite home computers of all time, but he also was a fellow Purdue University Boilermaker, who graduated just a year before I started there.  The thought that I could have met Steve on campus if I'd been there just a year earlier was very intriguing to me, and fueled my desire to talk with Steve even more. In the last episode (#141 with Paul Terrell) I talked about VCF Southeast in Atlanta in July of 2024.  After I had made plans to attend that show, I was flabbergasted to find out that Earl Baugh, one of the show organizers, had somehow managed to contact Steve and get him to come to the show!  I have to thank Earl for the work he did to make that happen.  Here was my opportunity to certainly meet Steve, and perhaps even talk with him!  I prepped some questions, just in case I was able to get an interview. While at the show, I met Steve and asked him if he would be willing to do a short interview for Floppy Days while at the show.  Amazingly, he was very kind and agreed to do that.  We found a quiet room and I was able to talk with Steve for almost an hour.  This show contains that interview. Another note on this: as you'll hear in the interview, the connection to Steve is even stronger than I realized!  He not only went to my alma mater, but also grew up in some of the same towns that myself and my wife did.  We personally peripherally know some of his relatives.  Things like this really do make you think the world is small! One other, final, note: This interview even ties into the recent and continuing interviews I've been publishing with Paul Terrell.  As you'll hear in upcoming episodes with Paul, and in this interview with Steve, Steve actually worked at the Byte Shop before getting the first job with Tandy, and in fact his work at the Byte Shop directly led to him getting hired by Tandy to design the Model I. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed getting it.  I am overjoyed I finally got the chance to talk to one of my vintage computer heroes, Steve Leininger! New Acquisitions C64 Sketch and Design by Tony Lavioe - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4dZGtt2  Compute's Mapping the IBM PC and PC Junior by Russ Davies - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3yQmrlP  The Best of SoftSide - Atari Edition - https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-best-of-softside-atari-edition  ZX81+38 - https://github.com/mahjongg2/ZX81plus38  magnifying glasses - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4cBQYla  Japanese power adapter - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3XjeUW5  Upcoming Shows VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  World of Retrocomputing 2024 Expo - September 14-15 - Kitchener, ON, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/world-of-retro-computing-2024-/1493036588265072/  Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/  Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/   Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we   Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub  Interview Steve's Workbench at radioshack.com (archived) - https://web.archive.org/web/19980528232503/http://www.radioshack.com/sw/swb/   Transcript of Interview-Only Randy Kindig: All right. I really appreciate your time today, Steve.  Steve Leininger: Thank you for having me, Randy.  Randy Kindig: So let's start out maybe just by talking about where You live today, and what you do? Steve Leininger: I live in Woodland Park, Colorado, which is 8, 500 feet, right out in front of we got Pike's Peak out our front window. Randy Kindig: Oh. Oh, that's nice.  Steve Leininger: Yeah we get snow up through about June, and then it starts again about September. But it's not as much snow as you would imagine.  Randy Kindig: I've got property in Montana, and I lived out there for a couple of years,  Steve Leininger: so there you go.  Randy Kindig: We probably got more snow up there.  Steve Leininger: Hey, you asked what I did.  I'm involved with Boy Scouts, a maker space with a church based ministry firewood ministry, actually. Some people call it a fire bank. So we provide firewood to people who can't afford that.  Randy Kindig: Oh.  Steve Leininger: So it's like a food bank, but with fire, firewood.  Randy Kindig: I've never heard of that. Steve Leininger: We source the firewood. We cut it down and we split it. Lots of volunteers involved; pretty big project.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay, cool. I also wanted to mention, I'm a fellow Boilermaker.  Steve Leininger: There you go.  Randy Kindig: I know you went to Purdue, right?  Steve Leininger: I did go to Purdue.  Randy Kindig: Did you ever get back there?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, and in fact they've got a couple learning spaces named after us. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay.  Steve Leininger: We've been donating to our respective alma maters. My wife went to IU.  Randy Kindig: Oh, is that right? Oh my.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, oh my and me. Yeah, the fact that the family who's all IU, their family tolerated me was, quite a remarkable thing.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  I find it interesting because I think you graduated in 76, is that right? Steve Leininger: 74.  Randy Kindig: Oh, 74.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. I was there from … Randy Kindig: Oh yeah, you actually were gone before I started.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I was there from 70 to 73. 70 to 70 four. When I graduated in four years, I got both my bachelor's and master's degree by going through the summer. I managed to pass out of the first year classes because of some of the high school stuff yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. I started in 75, so I guess we just missed each other.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. You're the new kids coming in.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. . So I, I found that interesting and I wanted to say that. Do you keep up with their sports program or anything like that? Steve Leininger: Yeah, they play a pretty good game of basketball in fact, I ribbed my wife about it because she was from the earlier days, the Bobby Knight days at IU that were phenomenal.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. For those of you listening, I'm talking with Steve Leininger, who was the primary developer, if not the developer, of the TRS 80 Model I.. Steve Leininger: I did all the hardware and software for it. I'll give Don French credit for sticking to it and getting a project started. And for refining, refining our product definition a little bit to where it was better than it would have been if I would have stopped early.  Randy Kindig: Okay. And I have talked with Don before. I've interviewed him on the podcast, and I met him at Tandy Assembly. But I'm just curious, when you were hired into Tandy and you were told what you were going to do; exactly what were you told?  Steve Leininger: They had a 16 bit microprocessor board that another consultant had developed. And they were trying to make a personal computer out of this. It was the Pace microprocessor, which was not a spectacular success for National, but it was one of the first 16 bit processors. But they had basically an initial prototype, might have been even the second level of the thing. No real documentation, no software, ran on three different voltages and didn't have input or output. Other than that, it was fine. I was brought in because I was one of the product one of the engineers for the development boards, the development board series for the SCAMP, the S C M P, the National Semiconductor had a very low cost microprocessor that at one point in time, I benchmarked against the 8080 with positive benchmarks and ours was faster on the benchmarks I put together, but as I was later told there's lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. But so they said take a look at using that, their low cost microprocessor that you were working with. And it really wasn't the right answer for the job. Let's see, the Altair was already out. Okay. That was the first real personal computer. The Apple, the Apple 1 was out. Okay. But it was not a consumer computer. Okay. They, it was just, it was like a cookie sheet of parts, which was very similar to what was used in the Atari games at the commercial games. Okay. pong and that kind of stuff at that time. And I had been working, after Purdue, I went to National Semiconductor. There's a long story behind all that. But in the process, some of us engineers would go up to the Homebrew Computer Club that met monthly up at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We're talking Wilbur and Orville Wright kinds of things going on. Yeah. Everyone who was in the pioneering version of computing had at one time been to that meeting. Randy Kindig: It's very famous. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were basically a couple guys working out of their garage at the time. I was still working at National Semiconductor, but I also had a Moonlight job at Byte Shop number 2. The second computer store in all of California. Randy Kindig: And So you worked with Paul Terrell. Steve Leininger: I actually worked with one of, yeah, Paul, I actually worked for Paul's I don't know if it was a partner, Todd, I don't even remember the guy's name. But I just, it was.  Randy Kindig: I was curious because I'm talking to Paul right now and getting interviews. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I, I'm sure we met, but it wasn't anything horribly formal. Since it was the number two shop, it still wasn't the number one shop, which Paul worked out of. And so we had an Apple 1 there. I actually got the job because I when I When I went in there, they were trying to troubleshoot something with what looked like an oscilloscope that they pulled out of a tank, and so it had, audio level kind of bandwidth, but could not do a digital circuit. And I said what you really need is a, I told him, a good tectonic scope or something like that. He said do you want a job here? I ended up moonlighting there, which was, as fortune would have it, was a good deal when the folks from Radio Shack came down to visit. Because when they came down to visit the sales guy wasn't there. We'll let the engineer talk to them, they almost never let the engineers talk to them.  Randy Kindig: So you had to talk with them.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. It was John Roach, Don French, and it was probably Jack Sellers, okay and Don was probably the; he was the most on top of stuff electronically because he was a hobbyist of sorts. The other two guys: Mr. Sellers ran the engineering group. John Roach was the VP of manufacturing. And they were basically on a parts visit. They do it once a year, once, twice a year. And they also did it with Motorola and a couple other places. But I told him about this microprocessor and that I was writing a tiny BASIC for it. Okay. Tiny BASIC was a interpreted basic that a guy named Li-Chen Wang actually had the first thing in Dr. Dobbs, Dr. Dobbs magazine. We're talking about, we're talking about things that you don't realize are the shoulders of giants that turned out to be the shoulders of giants. And in fact, we reached out to Mr. Wang as we were working on it. We thought we had the software already taken care of because I'm jumping ahead in the story, but we were going to have Bob Uterich, and you'd have to chase that back. We had him signed up to write a BASIC interpreter for us, but because he'd already done one for the 6800, and it was included in Interface Age magazine. on a plastic record. You remember the old plastic records you could put in a magazine?  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I did see that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, so this was called a floppy ROM when they did it. Yeah. So if you had the right software and everything you could download the software off of the floppy ROM and run it on 6800. I think he used the Southwest Technical Products thing. And so we'd signed him up to do the BASIC. This was independent of the hardware design I was doing. And he went into radio silence on us; couldn't find him. And so we get to, in parallel, I was using the Li-Chen Wang plan to do at least a demo version of BASIC that would run on the original computer. And when the demo went successfully on Groundhog Day in 1977. This is the time frame we're talking about. I I started work on July 5th, the year before it. With Tandy? Yeah. Okay. We rolled into town on the 3rd, and of course they're closed for the 4th. And on the 5th I started, and there was the wandering around in the desert at the beginning of that, and Don's probably talked about how I was moved from there to their audio factory and then to the old saddle factory. Tandy used to be primarily a leather company before they bought Radio Shack in 1966 or something like that. And anyway, when the software didn't come out, I ended up writing the software, too. So I designed all the hardware and all the software. I didn't do the power supply. Chris Klein did the power supply. And, a little bit of the analog video circuitry, but it was very little part of that. Because we were just making a video signal. I did all the digital stuff on that. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: So the software ended up being what was the level one ROM, right?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, the level one ROM started out as the Li-Chen Wang BASIC. But he had no I. O. in his software, so I was doing the keyboard scanning. I had to do the cassette record and playback. Had to implement data read and data write Peek and poke, which is pretty simple. Put in the graphic statements. Yeah, oh, and floating point. Now, floating point, luckily, Zilog had a library for that, but I had to basically, this was before APIs were a big deal, so I basically had to use their interface, To what I had written and had to allocate storage, correct? We're talking about 4K bytes of ROM. I know, yeah. Very tiny, and to put all the I. O. in there, and to make it so that you could be updating the screen, when you're doing the cassette I put two asterisks up there and blinked the second one on and off, you remember that?  Randy Kindig: Oh yeah. Steve Leininger: Sort of as a level set.  Randy Kindig: Yeah.  Steve Leininger: And someone said, oh, you should have patented that thing. And actually I have seven or eight patents, U. S. patents, on different parts of the computer architecture.  Randy Kindig: Oh, do you?  Steve Leininger: But not the blinking asterisk, which is probably a patentable feature.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I wish I'd had that on other machines, that I ended up having. So that would have been nice, yeah. I liken what you've done with what Steve Wozniak did, for the Apple II. You're somebody I've always wanted to talk to because I felt like you were one of the important pioneers in their early years. What do you have to say about that? Do you feel like what you did was ... Steve Leininger: in retrospect, yes. And I have a greater appreciation for people like the Wright Brothers. If you think about the Wright Brothers they took all their stuff from their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop down to Kill Devil Hills. We now know it as Kitty Hawk. But they would take the stuff down there by train, and then they would have to put it in horse driven wagons. Think about that. And people would ask them, what are you going to use the airplane for? It's what are you going to use a home computer for? Yeah, to maintain recipes and to play games.  Randy Kindig: Do your checkbook.  Steve Leininger: Do your check, home security. There's a whole lot of stuff that we talked about. And other giants entered the field: Multiplan, which became Lotus 1 2 3, which became Excel. Not the same company, but the idea, could you live without a spreadsheet today? Very difficult for some things, right?  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Yeah, it's ubiquitous.  People use it for everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been, I talked with David and Teresa Walsh. Or Welsh, I'm sorry, Welsh. Where they did the book Priming the Pump. Steve Leininger: That's very that's pretty close to the real thing.  Randy Kindig: Is it? Okay. They named their book after what you did and said; that you primed the pump for home computers. Can you expand on that and tell us exactly what you meant by that?  Steve Leininger: It again goes back to that shoulders of giants thing, and I forget who said that; it's actually a very old quote, I can see further because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think the thing that we brought to the table and Independently, Commodore and Apple did the same thing in 1977. There were three computers that came out inexpensive enough that you could use them in the home. They all came with ROM loaded BASIC. You didn't have to load anything else in. They all came with a video output. Some had displays. Some Commodore's was built in. One of ours was a Clip on and you had to go find one for the apple. For the Apple, yeah. Apple had a superior case. Apple and Radio Shack both had great keyboards. Randy Kindig: apple was expandable, with its... Steve Leininger: yeah, Apple Apple was internally expandable, yeah. And, but it cost $1,000. Without the cassette. Without the monitor. It wasn't the same type of device.  Randy Kindig: I was a college student. And, I looked at all three options. It was like the TRS-80; there are Radio Shacks everywhere.  You could go in and play with one; which was nice. And they were inexpensive enough that I could actually afford one. Steve Leininger: And, Radio Shack can't duck the, if you did something wrong, you had to fix it.  Randy Kindig: That's right. Let's see here. So initially the idea was to have a kit computer by Tandy? Steve Leininger: Yeah. I'm not sure whose idea that was. It made some kind of sense. Because that's the way the Altair was, and Radio Shack did sell a number of kits, but in the process of still kicking that around, saying it could be a possibility. I was one of the ones that said it could be a possibility. Within the same group that I did the design work from, they also would take kits in that people had built and troubleshoot the things if they didn't work. We had a couple engineers that would see if you connected something wrong or something.  If you didn't, sometimes it was a matter that the instructions weren't clear. If you tell someone to put an LED in, yeah. You specifically have to tell them which way to put it in. And might be an opportunity to tweak your timing. Yeah. Anyway, we get this clock in, and it was a digital clock. Seven segment LEDs probably cost 50 bucks or more. Which is crazy. But It says, put all the components in the board, turn the board over, and solder everything to the board. And, pretty simple instructions. This had a sheet of solder over the entire bottom of the board. Someone figured out how to put two pounds of solder on the back of this thing. And, as we all got a great chuckle out of that, You realize, oh, you don't want to have to deal with a computer like this. You really don't. And Lou Kornfeld, who was the president at the time, didn't really want the computer. But he said, it's not going to be a kit. All right. That, that, that took care of that. great idea. Great idea.  Randy Kindig: Were there any other times when you thought the computer might, or were there any times, when you thought the computer might not come to fruition? Any snags that you had that made you think that maybe this isn't going to work?  Steve Leininger: Not really. I was young and pretty well undaunted. Randy Kindig: Pretty sure you could,  Steve Leininger: yeah I, it wasn't any, it wasn't any different than building one at home. I'd been building kits since, night kits, heath kits, that kind of stuff, since I was a kid. And home brewed a couple things, including a hot dog cooker made from two nails and a couple wires that plugged into the wall. Don't try that at home.  Randy Kindig: No kidding.  Steve Leininger: But, it's funny if you If you look it up on, if you look that kind of project up on the internet, you can still find a project like that. It's like what's it called? Anvil tossing, where you put gunpowder under an anvil, shoot it up in the air. What could possibly go wrong? Don't,  Randy Kindig: It's very well documented in books like Priming the Pump, Stan Veit's book, which I assume you're familiar with, and Fire in the Valley, what your involvement was with the Model 1. But there was some mention of your involvement with the Expansion Interface and other TRS 80 projects. What else did you work on while you were there?  Steve Leininger: The Color Computer, the Expansion Interface. The model three to a little.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  Steve Leininger: Little bit. The model two was the big one. And point I just got tired of the management there.  Randy Kindig: Did you? Okay.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. I my mind was going faster than theirs, and they made the conscious decision to do whatever IBM has done, but do it cheaper. That, to me, that's not a. Didn't say less expensively either, so the whole thing just troubled me that, we're not going to be able to do anything new unless IBM has done it. And at about the same time the Macintosh came out and a superb piece of work. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. So what education training and previous work experience did you have at the time you got hired by Tandy that made you uniquely qualified for that project that they were looking for?  Steve Leininger: I'd been playing around with electronics since I was in the third grade. Actually, electricity.  Randy Kindig: The third grade, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. My, my mom got me a kit that had light bulbs and bells and buzzers and wire from, I think it might have been the Metropolitan Museum. They had a kit. They, they've got a, they still today have an online presence. It, of course the materials have changed, but the kit had all these parts and it had no instructions. And I don't know if that was by design or it didn't have instructions, so I had to learn how to hook up wires and light bulbs and bells and switches to make it do things. And, in the process, I found out that if you put a wire right across the battery terminals, it gets hot. And, interesting stuff to know. Pretty soon, I was taking this stuff in to show and tell in the third grade. Look, and I was very early in electronics. It's electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then my mom would take me to the library. She was quite a voracious reader, and I'd go to the library. technical section specifically the Dewey Decimal 621, which was electronics and things like that. Randy Kindig: you still remember that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And in the 590 series, there's some good stuff too. And I would usually take out a stack of books, even though I was a horrible reader because I'm dyslexic and ADD. So I have an attention span and reading problem. But the technical stuff I was reading about pipeline architecture processors while I was still in junior high. And not that was important to where I ended up, but it was important because I understood the words and data flow, and stuff like that. And between that and building the kits and things like that, I When we moved to Indianapolis, my dad moved jobs down to Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, you lived in Indianapolis?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I moved from South Bend down to Indianapolis. So I probably passed your house as . Actually we came down through Kokomo, but but yeah.  Randy Kindig: I actually grew up in that part of the state. Just south of South Bend.  Steve Leininger: Okay. So yeah La Paz, Plymouth,  Randy Kindig: yeah, Warsaw, Rochester.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I was born in Rochester.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. So that's where I grew up in that area.  Steve Leininger: Okay, there you go. My dad's from Akron.  Randy Kindig: Are you serious?  Steve Leininger: I am serious.  Randy Kindig: Akron's where my wife grew up. And I was just 10 miles from there.  Steve Leininger: The general store there, Dan Leininger and Sons, that's my great grandfather. Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: I'll be darned. Okay. Okay.  Steve Leininger: So now it all makes sense.  Randy Kindig: That's amazing.  Steve Leininger: Anyway, we started a garage band. This is before Apple's garage band. And I made my own amplifier. It basically had the sun sun amplifiers back end on the thing and a Fender Showman front end on it. Completely home brewed really loud amplifier. And I had a friend who had a guitar amplifier that was broken, and he had taken it down to the music store there. And after six weeks of not getting it back, they said we've had trouble with our technician and all that. I asked if I could go down and look at it, and in 15 minutes I had his amplifier fixed. And they said, do you want tom so you want a job? All right. Yeah, because I'd been doing, I'd had a paper route before and I don't think I was doing anything since we'd moved and ao I started working in a music store and they ended up with two music stores and then an organ store next door and I started repairing that kind of stuff. And this was the end of my first year in college. Went to the extension in Indianapolis.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. And Was that I U P U I?  Steve Leininger: IUPUI, yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I U P U I.  Randy Kindig: Huh. I went there as well.  Steve Leininger: Yeah and learned Fortran there, got all my first year classes out, and then moved on up to the campus. And because we'd always go to the library, and because my mom would often take me to the library, the newsstand not too far from the library, and she'd get a couple magazines, but she let me get an electronic magazine. And, I didn't understand these things, pretty soon you start understanding the pic, you start understanding it. This is a resistor, I built a little shocker box based on a design in probably elementary electronics. And It's like a handheld electric fence.  Randy Kindig: Oh, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Think hot dog cooker. Anyway, so I learned some electronics that way. A lot of that was self taught. I learned quite a bit more by working in the music store, again, this was before I was taught any formal electronics. And actually when I moved up to campus on Purdue, I thought I was going to be a world class guitar amplifier designer. That's where I thought. And it turns out my analog gut feelings aren't, weren't as good as other people's. Paul Schreiber does a much better job with electronics, with analog electronics than I do. But digital electronics, I understood this stuff. I would hang out in the library and I'd read the trade magazines. So I was up to date on, I was way more up to date than a typical professor would be on current electronics. And in 1973, which was the end of my junior year, Electronics Magazine had an article on the Intel 8008. And I said, Oh, I understand this. See, I'd already been taking assembly language. Now they didn't teach assembly language programming in the electronics school. They had Fortran, but there was no way to get from Fortran to ..they weren't teaching programming languages. I had to go to the business school where I learned assembly language on the school's CDC 6600 mainframe.  Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Through the business school?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And for those of you who have never tried assembly language programming, it looks like a foreign language until you just internalize it in your brain: there's ADD, A D and A D C for ADD with carry, and there's a whole bunch of different things. There's different ways to move data around, but you're only doing a few really basic things, and if you do it fast enough, it looks like it's instantaneous. That's the way even your phone works today. It's because you're doing it fast enough. It fools you.  Randy Kindig: Yep. Wow. Do you ever look back at these days, at those days, with amazement? As far as how far the industry has come?  Steve Leininger: Oh yeah. And, it's funny because you wouldn't, you couldn't probably, but you wouldn't start over again. I had to learn, I had to learn digital video. Actually the giant that I, whose shoulders I stood on there was the late Don Lancaster. He had a book called TV Typewriter Cookbook. And actually that came out a little bit later, but he had a TV typewriter series in Radio Electronics Magazine. And basically alphanumeric display. If you think about it, just the glass teletype, the keyboard display and a serial interface at the time that the RadioShack computer came out was selling for 999. Another 400 on top of what we were selling the whole computer for. Because we had a microprocessor in there. We didn't have a whole lot of options. We didn't have a whole lot of fluff. In fact Motorola said, send this to your schematics and your parts list and let's see if we can minimize your circuit. And after two weeks they sent it back. He said, you did a pretty good job here. . .  Randy Kindig: Okay. Huh. You still stay in touch with people at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: A few of them. It's actually been more lately. Because it's almost more interesting now. It's like the, I don't know whatever happened to Atwater and Kent, of the Atwater Kent radio. But, that's an old school radio that now you've got people that rebuild them and got them all polished up and all this kind of stuff. But for a while they ended up in the dump. I'm sure, there are some trash 80s that ended up in the trash.  Randy Kindig: I'm sure.  Steve Leininger: Yeah but I've gotten rid of lots of PCs that don't meet my needs anymore, right? Randy Kindig: Sure. Yeah, we all have, somewhere along the way. It seemed like you were really quiet there for a long time and that you were difficult to get in contact with. Steve Leininger: I wasn't really that difficult. I didn't maintain a social media presence on the thing, but things that I had my own consulting company for quite a while. I actually came back to Radio Shack two more times after I left. One was to come back as a technologist there. The politics still didn't work out well. Then I came back as a contractor to help them with some of their online things. I actually had a website called Steve's Workbench. Steve Leininger: And you can find it on the Internet Archive. The Wayback Machine. And it had some basic stamp projects. And we were going to do all sorts of other things. But I managed to upset the people at RadioShack. com. They didn't have a big sense of humor about someone being critical about the products that they'd selected. And I, I did a... I was going to start doing product reviews on the kits, how easy it was to solder, whether it was a good value for the money and all that kind of stuff. And I gave a pretty honest review on it. And Radio Shack didn't appreciate the power of an honest review. It's what makes Amazon what it is, right? You go in there and if there's something that's got just two stars on the reviews, Yeah, you really got to know what you're doing if you're going to buy the thing, right? And if you see something that's got a bunch of one star and a bunch of five star reviews Yeah, someone's probably aalting the reference at the top end. And so I mean they had such a fit that when they changed platforms For RadioShack. com, they didn't take Steve's Workbench with it And I basically lost that position. Radio Shack should own the makerspace business right now. They at one time, one time I suggested, you ought to take a look at buying Digikey or maybe Mouser. Mouser was right down the street from us. They already had their hands into Allied, but these other two were doing stuff, more consumer oriented, but they didn't. They were making, they were flush with money from selling cell phone contracts. And they thought that was the way of the future until the cell phone companies started reeling that back in. At a certain point, you don't want to be paying your 5 percent or 10 percent royalty to Radio Shack for just signing someone up.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize you had ever gone back and worked for them again.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, twice,  Randy Kindig: and so I'm curious, did you meet any other famous figures in the microcomputer revolution while you were working at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: At Tandy, let's see.  Randy Kindig: I'm just curious.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, Bill Gates, of course. I went out when we were working on level two BASIC. And Bill Gates I think was probably a hundred- thousand- aire at that time. And, working in a, thhey had a floor in a bank building in Seattle. He took me to the basement of his dad's law firm, and we had drinks there, and I went out to his house on the lake. This was not the big house. I've never been there. It was a big house on the lake, but it wasn't the one That he built later on. So I knew him early on run across Forest Mims a couple times. And of course, he's the shoulders upon which a lot of electronic talent was built and some of the stuff is lost. Jameco is actually bringing him back as a… Jameco is a kinda like a Radio Shack store online. It's yeah it is, it's not as robust as DigiKey or Bower, but they've held their roots.  Someone I've not met Lady Ada from Adafruit would be fun.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Would, yeah.  Steve Leininger: I, that, that's another thing that, if we had something along those lines, that would have been cool, but the buyers weren't up, up to the task and they when you don't want criticism at a certain point you've got to quit doing things if you don't want to be criticized.  Randy Kindig: Sure. When you finally got the Model 1 rolled out and you saw the tremendous interest, were you surprised in the interest that it garnered?  Steve Leininger: I wasn't. I wasn't. In fact, there's a quote of me. Me and John Roach had a discussion on how many of these do you think we could sell? And, this is actually quoted in his obituary on the, in the Wall Street Journal. I, Mr. Tandy said you could build 3, 500 of these because we've got 3, 500 stores and we can use them in the inventory. And to take inventory. And John Roach thought maybe we could sell, up to 5, 000 of these things in the first year. And I said, oh no, I think we could sell 50, 000. To which he said, horseshit. Just like that. And that, now I quoted that to the Wall Street Journal, and they put that in his obituary. Yeah I don't know how many times that word shows up in the Wall Street Journal, but if you search their files you'll find that it was me quoting John Roach. So … Randy Kindig: I'll have to, I'll have to look for that, yeah, that's funny. So you were not surprised by the interest,  Steve Leininger: no, it, part of it was I knew the leverage of the stores I'd been working, when we introduced the thing I'd been working for the company for just over a year. Think about that. And it wasn't until just before probably, it was probably September or October when Don and I agreed on the specs. I'd keep writing it up, and he'd look at it. Don actually suggested that, demanded, he doesn't, in a, but in a good natured way, he made a good case for it, that I have, in addition to the cassette interface on there, that I have a way to read and write data. Because if you're going to do an accounting program, you got to be able to read and write data. I actually figured out a way to do that. There were a couple other things. John Roach really wanted blinking lights on the thing. And my mechanical, the mechanical designer, there said that's going to cost more money to put the LEDs in there. What are you going to do with them? And, Mr. Roach was, you know, familiar with the IBM probably the 360 by then? Anyway. The mainframes. Yeah, mainframes always had blinking lights on them.  Randy Kindig: Exactly.  Steve Leininger: And since it's a computer, it should have blinking lights. And Larry said, Larry the mechanical guy said what are you going to do with them? I said, I can't, I said I could put stuff up there, It's… Randy Kindig: What are they going to indicate?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And then, he said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to make the case without holes for the lights and just don't worry about it. That was the end of the discussion. Mr. Roach was probably a little disappointed, but yeah, no one else had them,  Randy Kindig: it's funny to think that you'd have blinking lights on a microcomputer like that. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any aspect of the Model one development you would do differently if you were doing it today?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I would, I would've put the eighth memory chip in with the, with the video display so you get upper and lower case. Randy Kindig: Yeah, there you go. Okay.  Steve Leininger: Might've put buffers to the outside world. We had the, the microprocessor was buffered, but it was, it was very short distance off the connector there. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot I would have changed. Software could have been written a little better, but when one person's writing all the software the development system that I had was a Zilog development system. And 30 character percent a second. Decorator, line printer. The fact that I got it done is actually miracle stuff.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, and you got it done in a year, right?  Steve Leininger: And it was all written in assembly language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it all done in a year.  Randy Kindig: That's a good year's work. Steve Leininger: It is.  Randy Kindig: Building a computer from scratch, basically, and then getting it...  Steve Leininger: and back then we had to program EEPROMs. We didn't have flash memory. Okay. Didn't hardly have operating systems back then. Not that I was using one. There was something in the Zilog thing, but yeah we were so far ahead of things, we were developing a product rather than a computer. And maybe that's the whole difference is that we had a product that you pull it up, plug it in, and it says these are TRS 80 and it wasn't the Model 1 until the Model 2 came out.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. It was just the TRS 80. Yeah. So I have to know, do you have any of the old hardware? Steve Leininger: I've got a Model 1. I don't use it except for demonstrations now. I actually have two. I've got one that works and one that's probably got a broken keyboard connector from taking it out of the case and holding it up too many times.  Randy Kindig: Were these prototypes or anything?  Steve Leininger: They are non serial production units. I've got the, I've got a prototype ROM board that's got the original integer basic that I wrote. I don't have the video boards and all that kind of stuff that went with it when we did the original demonstration. Let's see we had four wire wrapped, completely wire wrapped industrial wire wrapped versions that we used for prototyping the software. One went to David Lein, who wrote the book that came with the thing, the basic book. One I had at my desk and there were two others. Yeah. And they got rid of all of those. So a cautionary tale is if you do something in the future where you've got that prototype that was put together in Tupperware containers or held together with duct tape, you need to at least take pictures of it. And you might want to keep one aside. If it turns out to be something like the Apple III, you can probably get rid of all that stuff. If it turns out to be something like the Apple II, The RadioShack computer, the Commodore PET, you really ought to, enshrine that. The original iPhone. Apple did stuff that was, what was it, can't remember what it was. They had a they had a thing not unlike the... 3Com ended up getting them. Anyway the hand of the PDAs, no one knows what a Personal Oh, digital assistant. Yeah. Yeah. We call that a, we call that a phone ...  Randy Kindig: Palm Pilot. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Palm Pilot. That's the one. Yeah. I've got a couple of those. I've got three model 100's. I've got one of the early… Randy Kindig: Did you work on the 100s? Steve Leininger: I used it, but I didn't work on it. The design. No. Okay. That was an NEC product with Radio Shack skins on it.  Randy Kindig: Oh, that's right. That's right.  Steve Leininger: Kay Nishi was the big mover on that. Yeah. Let's see I've got an Altair and an ASR 33 Teletype. Yeah, we're talking about maybe the computer's grandfather, right? I've had a whole bunch of other stuff. I've probably had 40 other computers that I don't have anymore. I am gravitating towards mechanical music devices, big music boxes, that kind of stuff.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Cool. Interesting. Steve, that's all the questions I had prepared. Steve Leininger: Okay.  Randy Kindig: Is there anything I should have asked about that?  Steve Leininger: Oh my,  Randy Kindig: anything you'd want to say?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I, I've given talks before on how do you innovate? How do you become, this is pioneering kinds of stuff. So you really have to have that vision, man. The vision, I can't exactly say where the vision comes from, but being dyslexic for me has been a gift. Okay and this is something I tell grade school and middle school students that, some people are out there saying I, I can't do that because, it's just too much stuff or my brain is cluttered. Cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk the sign of? Embrace the clutter. Learn a lot of different things. Do what you're passionate about. Be willing to. support your arguments, don't just get angry if someone doesn't think the way you do, explain why you're doing it that way. And sometimes it's a matter of they just don't like it or they don't have the vision. The ones that don't have the vision, they never, they may never have the vision. I've quit companies because of people like that. But When you've got the vision and can take it off in your direction, it could just end up as being art. And I shouldn't say just art, art can be an amazing thing. And that behind these walls here, we've got a pinball machine and gaming conference going on. And it is nutcase. But is there stuff out there you look at and say, Oh, wow. Yeah. And I do too. Keep it a while going. Randy Kindig: Very cool. All right. That's a great stopping point, I think. All right. I really appreciate it, Steve taking the time to talk with us today.  Steve Leininger: Thanks, Randy.  

Are you tired of rubbing barely clothed monster girls on your PlayStation Vita? Do you miss the stark, monochrome glow of an Apple II running Wizardry?  Dalandar, SpareHombres, and Wheels join the dungeon crawler support group, and have a good cry as their cleric turns to ash. The post RPG Backtrack 315 – Dungeon Crawlers Anonymous appeared first on RPGamer.

In this episode of Double Tap, hosts Steven Scott and Shaun Preece are joined by Brett Hallie, a retired software engineer with a background in working at Apple. Brett shares insights into his journey at Apple, starting from his hardware engineering work with the Apple II to his involvement in the development of software like Mac OS X and Final Cut Pro. He discusses the challenges and successes of transitioning Apple's operating system, the pressure of working under Steve Jobs, and the importance of prioritizing accessibility in software development. Brett highlights the significance of user feedback in improving accessibility features and emphasizes the benefits of making software accessible for all users. He shares his personal experience with VoiceOver and offers advice on approaching software accessibility challenges with patience and a problem-solving mindset. Brett also delves into the culture at Apple, where product excellence was prioritized over short-term financial goals, leading to the company's success. The conversation touches on the evolution of technology, the democratization of video editing through software like Final Cut Pro, and the impact of making products accessible on a broader scale. Brett's insights shed light on the importance of user feedback, creativity in problem-solving, and the long-term benefits of prioritizing product quality over immediate financial gain. Keep in touch by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also find us across social media.

ANTIC Episode 108 - Randy's Eyes Are Bleeding!  In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… Kay visits VCFSW and the National Videogame Museum, tapes from the famous Computer Cafe are found, Atari acquires Intellivision, and Randy's eyes start bleeding from watching YouTube videos 24x7… READY! Recurring Links  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kay's Book “Terrible Nerd”  New Atari books scans at archive.org  ANTIC feedback at AtariAge  Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  Links for Items Mentioned in Show: What we've been up to VCF SW, National Videogame Museum - https://nvmusa.org  Titan - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/?do=findComment&comment=5472194  Development disk for Tom Hudson's "Adventure at Vendenberg A.F.B." - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/?do=findComment&comment=5472339  Sunday Driver - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/234684-atari-8-bit-software-preservation-initiative/page/110/#comment-5473357  Famous Computer Cafe - https://archive.org/details/famous-computer-cafe https://www.gofundme.com/f/digitizing-the-famous-computer-cafe  Steve Roberts - https://microship.com/  A8PICO by Electrotrains - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/351546-a8picocart-unocart-on-a-raspberry-pi-pico/  USB-C power supply adapter from Mozzwald - https://mozzwald.com/product/atari-8-bit-usb-c-power-adapter/  Atari photo shoot at IVCC - https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndyVCC  Recent Interviews ANTIC Interview 437 - Dr. Kristina Hooper Woolsey, Atari Research Labs and Apple Multimedia Lab - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-437-kristina-hooper-woolsey-atari-research-labs-and-apple-multimedia-labs  News FujiNet RAPID 7& 8 - Andy Diller - https://www.atariorbit.org/rapid/  video on using CONFIG-NG the alternative CONFIG for Atari - video by Andy Diller - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2is_kDYQHpA  How Google's Rampant Sunnyvale Expansion Is Erasing Atari's History - https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/04/how-googles-rampant-sunnyvale-expansion-is-erasing-ataris-history  https://www.facer.io/u/atari - Atari watch faces for smart watches  AtariAge thread on the RetroScaler from AliExpress - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/366479-aliexpress-retrotink-equivalent-2x-scaler-with-hdmi-output  Revive RM 800XL box design! X - @rm_800xl https://revive-machines.com/index-en.html  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/rm800xl/posts/pfbid0qBHXgugtivW3bxNdi7Xgem47UJ4qvHZ21R1KVoE2CBih8kQ6CWffYza2VeHSvF2al  Mastodon - https://mastodon.world/@Philsan/112496346203027800  Atari acquires Intellivision! - https://x.com/atari/status/1793616648890470410  Living Computer Museum is dead: https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/paul-allens-living-computers-museum-and-labs-to-be-auctioned/  https://web.archive.org/web/20240601173624/https://livingcomputers.org/  New game “Shift” - https://h4plo.itch.io/shift  Atari 50 Update - https://www.engadget.com/ataris-50th-anniversary-collection-is-getting-a-hefty-update-with-nearly-40-additional-games-150827022.html  Wireless tape player interface from Piotr Bugaj: https://www.facebook.com/100001704984361/videos/1625370131610834/ https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2024/06/nuevo-dongle-inalambrico-para-atari-8.html  Thanks to @TheTime, Tandy Trower's Character Set Editor published by APX is finally available after all these years: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/236768-the-atari-interview-discussion-thread/?do=findComment&comment=5460894 https://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-character-set-editor_30042.html  Kay's 2015 interview- http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-77-tandy-trower-atari-product-manager  1050 mini. Brand new floppy drive for Atari XL by Piotr Bugaj: https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/64347  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCd96Mcosqo  New 576NUC+ 4-in-1 Expansion Module - The NUCplus4 - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/355107-new-576nuc-4-in-1-expansion-module-the-nucplus4/  Upcoming Shows KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 (in-person), July 27-28 (virtual) - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/  Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21,  2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/  Nottingham Video Game Expo - July 20-21 - The Belgrave Rooms, Nottingham, U.K. - https://www.nottsvge.com/  Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/   Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/   Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-18 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se   VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we  YouTube Videos Atari 800XL with GTIAdigitizer and RGB2HDMI - FlashJazzCat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG3qhwUELaY  Atari 810 drives with issues - Adrian's Digital Basement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfU0w883jGE  A8PicoCart for the Atari 8-bit machines - Building and testing - Arctic Retro - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTWXNF7n6Xw  Soldering-Up an A8PicoCart for your Atari - The VintNerd - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8cQarAvKoU  Atari 400 Mini cartridges and disk drive - GameRoomOfThrones - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7A_aiusVY94  Atari 8-Bit: Mikie (Final), Missile Command Arcade w/ Trak-Ball (Final), Shift (Exclusive Final) - ZeroPage HomeBrew - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaPlb47Fbk0  New at Archive.org  Atari Technische Informatie NR 12 Printer-Problemen - https://archive.org/details/atari-technische-informatie-nr-12-printer-problemen  James Copland on the Computer Cafe - https://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-02-08_James_Copland  Jersey Atari Computer Group Newsletter, July, 1985 - https://archive.org/details/jacg-newsletter-1985-july-vol-4-no-11  JACG newsletters scanned spreadsheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RkznDDlOL2O_K-RrbkajIuo6DvYof6Ajrn7j9NTcoDM/edit?usp=sharing  Scene World podcast Ep. #189 - THE400 Mini with Darren Melbourne - https://archive.org/details/scene_world_podcast_episode189_april_2024  AtariUser Magazine Summer (July) 1992 - https://archive.org/details/atari-user-1992-07  Feedback 8 Bit Workshop website - https://8bitworkshop.com/dithertron/#sys=atari8.d'image=seurat.jpg

This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on June 28th, 2024.This podcast was generated by wondercraft.ai(00:34): Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrineOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820949&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(01:41): Is Clear Air Turbulence becoming more common?Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40819784&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(02:57): New ways to catch gravitational wavesOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820063&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(04:14): A Eulogy for DevOpsOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40826236&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(05:22): Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to knowOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820311&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(06:43): Open source 'Eclipse Theia IDE' exits beta to challenge Visual Studio CodeOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40825146&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(07:49): Parkinson's Link to Gut Bacteria Suggests Unexpected, Simple TreatmentOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40818987&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(08:54): The Rhisotope Project: Insertion of radioisotopes into live rhinocerosOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40819617&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(10:05): Two million checkboxes (written in Elixir)Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40819184&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(11:14): Supreme Court overrules Chevron deference [pdf]Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40821007&utm_source=wondercraft_aiThis is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC. Text and audio generated using AI, by wondercraft.ai. Create your own studio quality podcast with text as the only input in seconds at app.wondercraft.ai. Issues or feedback? We'd love to hear from you: team@wondercraft.ai

Episode 140 - Interview with Paul Terrell, The Byte Shop - Part 1 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   Hello, and welcome to episode 140 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for June, 2024.  I am Randy Kindig, your guide to this journey through vintage computer goodness. This month I'm bringing you another interview episode.  Paul Terrell is a name well-known in the annals of computer history; probably most famously for his kickstart of Apple Computer through the purchase of one of Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's first batches of Apple I computers for his Byte Shop.  The Byte Shop was a very early computer store that was one of the few that existed in the world, at the time.  I've had an earlier introductory interview with Paul where numerous topics were covered in a more general manner.  I also talked with Paul about his time at Exidy working on the sorcerer computer.  In this interview, we focus primarily on The Byte Shop, how it got started, what it was like, and much more.  Through several conversations with Paul, the interview ran quite long, so this is part I of The Byte Shop discussion.  If you want to know what it was like to run a computer store in those early days, this is the interview for you!  Along the way, you'll learn even more about just what the home and hobby computer scene was like in those days. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To American Computer and Robotics Museum - https://acrmuseum.org/  Vtech Pre-Computer Unlimited - https://vtech.fandom.com/wiki/PreComputer_Unlimited  USB-C Power Adapter for Atari 8-bit - https://mozzwald.com/product/atari-8-bit-usb-c-power-adapter/  USB-C Power Adapter for Apple IIc - https://mozzwald.com/product/apple-iic-usb-c-power-delivery-adapter/  Upcoming Shows Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule)  KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 (in-person), July 27-28 (virtual) - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/  Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21,  2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/  Nottingham Video Game Expo - July 20-21 - The Belgrave Rooms, Nottingham, U.K. - https://www.nottsvge.com/  Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/   Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/   Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-18 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se   VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/  Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/   Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we   Meet The Listeners Brian Cox's site FVResearch.com - https://www.fvresearch.com/   

Chapter 1:Summary of Book Steve jobs"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson is a comprehensive biography that delves into the life and work of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc., and a key figure in the digital revolution. The book, based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—along with interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—paints a detailed portrait of a complex and visionary leader.The biography traces Jobs' life from his early days in Silicon Valley, where he was raised by adoptive parents, through his co-founding of Apple in the garage of his parents' house with Steve Wozniak. It explores his innovative work in making computers more accessible and visually appealing to the general public, starting with the Apple I and the more successful Apple II.Isaacson discusses Jobs' forced departure from Apple after power struggles with the board and then delves into his ventures during this period, including the founding of NeXT, the purchase of what would become Pixar Animation Studios, and his eventual return to Apple.Upon returning to Apple, Jobs revitalized the struggling company with a series of groundbreaking products, including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Isaacson describes Jobs' hands-on approach to product design and development, his obsession with quality and detail, and his visionary leadership style, which were simultaneously admired and criticized.Jobs' personal life, including his relationships and his battle with pancreatic cancer, is also covered in the book, providing insight into his driven personality and complicated relationships.Throughout, Isaacson explores the contradictions that defined Jobs' character and career—his passion for perfection versus his often harsh treatment of colleagues, his countercultural beliefs paired with a fierce desire for control, and his deep involvement in aesthetics while revolutionizing industries focused on function.The book captures not only the life of Steve Jobs but also the spirit of innovation and the profound influence Jobs had on the world around him.Chapter 2:The Theme of Book Steve jobs"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson is an authorized biography that provides an in-depth look into the life and career of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. This detailed biography was based on more than forty interviews with Jobs over two years, as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues. Here are some of the key plot points, character developments, and thematic ideas explored in the book:Key Plot Points:1. Early Life: The book outlines Jobs's adoption, his early interest in electronics and technology, and the strong influence that his adoptive parents had on his later endeavors.2. Forming Apple: The story transitions into how Jobs, in partnership with Steve Wozniak, founded Apple in his parents' garage, emphasizing the assembly and sale of their first computer model, the Apple I, and later the more successful Apple II.3. Departure from Apple: Isaacson goes into detail about the internal conflicts at Apple that led to Jobs's ousting from the company in 1985, highlighting his struggles and the creation of NeXT and Pixar.4. Return to Apple: Returning to Apple in 1997 after it acquired NeXT, Jobs revitalized the company from near-bankruptcy to profitability by streamlining product lines and introducing innovative products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.5. Battle with Illness: The biography doesn't shy away from describing Jobs's battle with pancreatic cancer, discussing his initial reluctance to undergo conventional medical treatment and how it impacted his health and work.Character Development:1. Driven and Determined: Throughout the biography, Jobs is portrayed as...

TCW Podcast Episode 212 - The Exidy of the 70's   Following our examination of Ramtek, we now turn to Exidy, founded by Pete Kauffman and Samuel Hawes. Exidy began by producing Pong variants during the Pong boom. John Metzler joined in 1975, creating Destruction Darby, later licensed to Chicago Coin as Demolition Derby. After Metzler left, Howell Ivy revamped the game into the notorious Death Race '98, the first nationwide controversial video game for violence. Exidy's first microprocessor-based game, Car Polo, wasn't a major hit but was ahead of its time, foreshadowing Rocket League's concept of cars pushing a ball into a goal. They continued innovating with popular games like Circus, a precursor to Breakout. We finish our look at Exidy in the 70s with their venture into the computer market with the Exidy Sorcerer, which showed promise but was overshadowed by VisiCalc's release for the Apple II.   TCW 211 - Ramtek: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/ramtek/ Art Bell Interview Malachi Martin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O8-t9M7xDc Larry King Coaches Conan On His Interview Technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I02Y8hRzpqE Soft Questions? Larry King Explains His Interview Style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YqNyfeIyNc Sean Evans Reveals His Secret Interviewing Technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq5CWKTUNCQ 'Hot Ones' Guest Impressed by Sean Evans' Questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnhnYABROAg Hockey Tennis Exidy (Picture Needed): https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/hockey-tennis TV Pinball Case: https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/tv-pinball TV Pinball Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_1kAlO8G6c TV Pin Game: https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/tv-pin-game Exidy Destruction Derby (Cabinet & Gameplay): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLMmz1gdTVs Chicago Coin Demolition Derby (Cabinet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AodIwNpqYQk Chicago Coin Demolition Derby (Gameplay): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kRQ2OEJkNY Death Race 2000 (1975 Trailer): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp5FUoa4K7c Death Race cabinet pictures and flyer: https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/death-race Death Race Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fg-QN6tJPc Death Race Gameplay (MAME): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBBtt72aJLA The Media VS Death Race (VGHF Article): https://gamehistory.org/media-vs-death-race/ Score Newspaper Article, Flyer, and Cabinet Pictures: https://www.reddit.com/r/lostmedia/comments/mrnrug/exidys_score_lost_arcade_game_1977_the_first/ Exidy Car Polo Cabinet Picture: https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/car-polo Car Polo Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmZKvLRFpiI An Introduction to Rocket League: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7TTRtF-HI Robot Bowl (Pictures and Flyers): https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/robot-bowl Robot Bowl (Gameplay): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRLdN6dCLu0 Meadows Lanes (Gameplay): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Fj136NZQ8 Meadows Lanes (Pictures and Flyers): https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/meadows-lanes Robot Bowl Ball Return Cabinet Picture: https://www.gamesdatabase.org/media/arcade/artwork-cabinet/robot-bowl Circus (Gameplay Original Hardware): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTxNk1NqTFc Circus (Cabinet Pictures and Flyers): https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/circus TCW 202 - Advanced Balls and Paddles Part 2: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/advanced-balls-and-paddles-part-2/ The Exidy Sorcerer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWseXQDrhJY   New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month!   TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com  Twitter: @tcwpodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theycreateworlds Alex's Video Game History Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com Alex's book, published Dec 2019, is available at CRC Press and at major on-line retailers: http://bit.ly/TCWBOOK1     Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode -  Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode  Outro Music: RolemMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love    Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Episode 139 - Interview with Vic Tolomei, VP Software Development, Exidy Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   Hello, and welcome to episode 139 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for May, 2024. This month I'm bringing you another interview episode; in the ongoing effort to document the story of Exidy and its Sorcerer computer.  I've already talked, in previous episodes, with Howell Ivy and Paul Terrell, both principals at Exidy and in the creation of the Sorcerer computer.  Those were quite popular episodes!  In this episode, I also tracked down Vic Tolomei, VP of Software Development at Exidy during that same time, and got his story.  If you want to know what it was like to lead a software development effort at that time, this is the interview for you! Upcoming on the podcast, I have more interviews to share, as well as more hardware to cover.  I'm actually a few months ahead with developing content, which I guess is an advantage of being retired! I've created some tiers for paid members and have come up with some ways to reward those who are generous enough to monetarily support the Floppy Days Podcast on Patreon. First of all, all tiers ($2/month and up) will receive early access to companion videos for any interviews that are published. The audio will be published to Floppy Days immediately, as usual, while any video will be made available exclusively to all paid members for a period of time (at least 30 days) before the general public. The videos will be published for you on Patreon.com, and then moved to the Floppy Days YouTube channel after the exclusivity period is over. Other benefits have been added for the tiers above the minimum $2 tiers, such as Floppy Days merchandise, an audio introduction for supporters, and even the option to co-host an episode! It is my intention to always make all content available to everyone at no cost, while at the same time providing some benefits for those generous enough to support the podcast. I hope this is a good compromise. Please let me know your thoughts. Enjoy!! New Acquisitions VTech Advantech IQ Unlimited - https://vtech.fandom.com/wiki/I.Q._Unlimited_Computerv  A8PicoCart - https://github.com/robinhedwards/A8PicoCart  M100/T102/T200 Dial-A-ROM - https://www.soigeneris.com/dial-a-rom-for-vintage-computers  Upcoming Shows Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule)  CorgsCon (Columbus Ohio Retro Gaming Society) - June 1 - Kasich Hall – Ohio Expo Center, Columbus, OH - https://www.corgscon.com/  Game Not Over 2024 - June 8-9 - Dunstall Park Racecourse in Wolverhampton, U.K. - https://retro.directory/browse/events/326-game-not-over-2024  VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/  Boatfest Retro Computer Expo - June 14-16 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info  Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo - June 22 - New Westminster, BC, Canada - https://www.vancouvergamingexpo.com/index.html  Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 22-23 - Old Rainier Brewery Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start  Kickstart Amiga UK Expo - June 29-30 - Nottingham, UK - https://www.amigashow.com/  KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 (in-person), July 27-28 (virtual) - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/  Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21,  2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/  Nottingham Video Game Expo - July 20-21 - The Belgrave Rooms, Nottingham, U.K. - https://www.nottsvge.com/  Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/   Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/   VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/  Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/   Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Interview Links Interview with Vic - https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/10/the-story-of-chiller-one-very-messed-up-video-game/  Vic has several software credits at Moby Games, including Arrows and Alley, and Magic Maze for the Sorcerer - https://www.mobygames.com/person/636004/vic-tolomei/  Exidy Sorcerer Book: Software Internal Manual for the Sorcerer (1979)(Quality Software) by Vic Tolomei - https://archive.org/details/Software_Internal_Manual_for_the_Sorcerer_1979_Quality_Software  VP of Software, Vic Tolomei at The Ultimate (So Far) History of Exidy blog - https://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-ultimate-so-far-history-of-exidy_21.html 

This episode explores Apple Inc.'s evolution from its humble beginnings in a garage in 1976 to its current status as a global tech powerhouse, showcasing its pivotal products like the Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and more. Steve Jobs's strategic vision, design philosophy, and Ted Cook's leadership are highlighted as key drivers behind Apple's success and innovation.

Pizza Time goes bust, Amiga announces a computer & Nintendo launches the VS   These stories and many more on this episode of the VGNRTM!   This episode we will look back at the biggest stories in and around the video game industry in March 1984. As always, we'll mostly be using magazine cover dates, and those are of course always a bit behind the actual events.   Alex Smith of They Create Worlds is our cohost.  Check out his podcast here: https://www.theycreateworlds.com/ and order his book here: https://www.theycreateworlds.com/book   Get us on your mobile device: Android:  https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly92aWRlb2dhbWVuZXdzcm9vbXRpbWVtYWNoaW5lLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz iOS:  https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/video-game-newsroom-time-machine   And if you like what we are doing here at the podcast, don't forget to like us on your podcasting app of choice, YouTube, and/or support us on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/VGNRTM   Send comments on Mastodon @videogamenewsroomtimemachine@oldbytes.space Or twitter @videogamenewsr2 Or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vgnrtm Or videogamenewsroomtimemachine@gmail.com   Links: If you don't see all the links, find them here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/march-1984-104469980   7 Minutes in Heaven: Dolphin's Rune/Dolphin's Pearl Video Version:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/104389483     https://www.mobygames.com/game/21190/the-dolphins-pearl/     Game Manual: https://archive.org/details/c64man_dolphins-rune     Ecco the Dolphin 7 Minutes in Heaven: https://www.patreon.com/posts/7-minutes-in-80192007 Corrections: February 1984 Ep - https://www.patreon.com/posts/february-1984-102404099 Ethan's fine site The History of How We Play: https://thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/     https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-san-francisco-examiner-la-pinball-or/145438040/     https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-san-francisco-examiner-san-francisco/145438150/     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc     https://www.mobygames.com/game/38079/cosmic-chasm/     https://www.mobygames.com/game/82890/cube-quest/     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomy_Tutor     https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/15340     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80186#In_personal_computers   1974: Atari introduces Gran Track 10     https://archive.org/details/cashbox35unse_37/page/58/mode/1up?view=theater         https://archive.org/details/cashbox35unse_38/page/54/mode/1up?view=theater     https://archive.org/details/cashbox35unse_36/page/52/mode/2up     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYcNvAAeu6k     https://www.facebook.com/100057102354061/videos/1111919918819701/   Wurlitzer ends manufacturing     https://archive.org/details/cashbox35unse_37/page/59/mode/1up?view=theater     https://archive.org/details/cashbox35unse_35/page/44/mode/1up?view=theater     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wurlitzer   1984: Laserdisc games galore!     https://archive.org/details/198403VideoGamesExpress/mode/1up        Play Meter 15th, 1984, pg. 56     Replay March 1984, pg. 10     https://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/   Centuri turns it around     No Headline In Original, PR Newswire, March 14, 1984, Wednesday, Dateline: HIALEAH, Fla., March 14   The battle begins with Sente vs. VS!     Replay March 1984, pg. 10     https://sergiostuff.com/category/nintendo-vs-dualsystem/     https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/punch-out   Exidy goes interchangeable     Replay March 1984, pg. 10     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy#First_Star_Software_games     https://www.classicarcademuseum.org/exidy-max-a-flex-system     https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/boulder-dash--data   Bills pile up at Pizza Time     Company Deferring Some Debts, The Associated Press, March 9, 1984, Friday, PM cycle, Section: Business News, Byline: By LORETTA NOFFSINGER, Associated Press Writer         Bankruptcy Threat Issued, The Associated Press, March 16, 1984, Friday, AM cycle   Pizza Time Theater enters Chapter 11     Curtains for the Pizza Time Theatre, Financial Times (London,England), March 30, 1984, Friday, Section: SECTION I; Pg. 18, Byline: By Louise Kehoe in San Francisco     Joneva Barry - Chuck E. Cheese, Kadabrascope - https://www.patreon.com/posts/joneva-barry-e-101938460     Roger Hector - Atari, Disney, Sega, Namco, Sente - https://www.patreon.com/posts/72058794     Owen Rowley - Chuck E Cheese, Autodesk - https://www.patreon.com/posts/owen-rowley-88533133   Bally buys Sente     BALLY-MANUFACTURING; Acquires Sente Technologies Division of Pizza Time Theatre Inc., Business Wire, March 29, 1984, Thursday   Chip shortage looms     Play Meter March 1st, 1984, pg. 16         Jay Balakrishnan - HESWare, Radical, Dynamics, Solid State Software - https://www.patreon.com/posts/jay-balakrishnan-103071267   Goldman Sachs quantifies the Crash     https://archive.org/details/computer-entertainer-2-12/page/182/mode/1up?view=theater      Battle for Warner is over...     Warner buys back Murdoch's stake with aid from Chris-Craft, Financial Times (London,England),  March 19, 1984, Monday, Section: SECTION I; Pg. 16, Byline: BY WILLIAM HALL IN NEW YORK     https://archive.org/details/masterofgamestev00bruc   Atari cuts another 200     Atari cuts jobs in restructuring, Financial Times (London,England), March 21, 1984, Wednesday, Section: SECTION II; International Companies; Pg. 19, Byline: BY LOUISE KEHOE IN SAN FRANCISCO     A Year After Layoffs, Atari Foresees Better Times in '84, The Associated Press, March 11, 1984, Sunday, BC cycle   Coleco losses dwarf expectations     COLECO LOSES $35 MILLION IN QUARTER, The New York Times, March 8, 1984, Thursday, Late City Final Edition, C, Section: Section D; Page 1, Column 3; Financial Desk, Byline: By DAVID E. SANGER         https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/08/business/coleco-loses-35-million-in-quarter.html   Coleco announces massive layoffs     No Headline In Original, The Associated Press, March 28, 1984, Wednesday, AM cycle, Section: Business News, Byline: By S.W. BELL, AP Business Writer, Dateline: AMSTERDAM, N.Y.   Massive losses can't bring Mattel's spirits down     Mattel, Despite $171 Million Loss, Optimistic About Future, The Associated Press, March 15, 1984, Thursday, AM cycle, Byline: By ROGER GILLOTT, AP Business Writer        Mattel reaches new financing agreement with creditor banks, Financial Times (London,England), March 15, 1984, Thursday, Section: SECTION II; International Companies; Pg. 27, Byline: BY PAUL TAYLOR IN NEW YORK   Intellivision reborn!     https://archive.org/details/computer-entertainer-2-12/page/179/mode/1up?view=theater     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revco     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision#INTV_Corporation_(1984%E2%80%931990)   2600 goes to Turkey     ATARI; Signs agreement with Turkish firm to manufacture and distribute video game products in Turkey, Business Wire, March 20, 1984, Tuesday  https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCinemassacre/comments/1afkuz2/the_first_atari_2600_commercial_in_turkey_80s/        http://www.atariboxed.com/index.php?go=output&sort=T1.Modul_Complete_Title,%20T1.Modul_Complete_Model,%20T1.Modul_Complete_TV,%20T1.Modul_Complete_Label&dir=DESC&rows_per_page=50&select_system=1&select_company=49   Odyssey RIP     Pioneer Home Video Game Is Dropped, The Associated Press, March 20, 1984, Tuesday, AM cycle, Byline: By TOM EBLEN, Associated Press Writer First Home Video-Game Maker Calling It Quits, The Associated Press, March 21, 1984, Wednesday, PM cycle, Byline: By TOM EBLEN, Associated Press Writer   Nintendo may show off console at summer CES     https://archive.org/details/computer-entertainer-2-12/page/182/mode/1up?view=theater      Goodbye Video Game Update including Computer Entertainer...     https://archive.org/details/computer-entertainer-2-12/mode/1up?view=theater     https://archive.org/details/electronic-fun-with-computers-and-games-volume-2-number-5-march-1984/page/4/mode/1up?view=theater     https://archive.org/details/Electronic_Games_Volume_02_Number_12_1984-03_Reese_Communications_US/page/n5/mode/2up     Julian 'Jaz' Rignall - Computer and Video Games, ZZAP!64, Mean Machines, Future Publishing, Virgin, IGN  - https://www.patreon.com/posts/julian-jaz-and-97565043     Jerry Wolosenko - Synapse - https://www.patreon.com/posts/42014024   Amiga announces 68000 based home computer     Infoworld March 26, 1984, pg. 13     Infoworld March 19, 1984 pg. 20     https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/atari/museum/mickey.html     https://theretrohour.com/amstrad-cpc-40th-anniversary-with-roland-perry-pt-1-the-retro-hour-ep425/   Mac distribution widens     Infoworld March 26, 1984, pg. 11     Infoworld March 26, 1984, pg. 16   Apple IIx rumors begin     https://archive.org/details/computer-entertainer-2-12/page/184/mode/1up?view=theater         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIGS     https://archive.org/details/Creative_Computing_1984-03/page/n43/mode/2up   Intel licenses chip designs to Sanyo     BOTH 8- AND 16-BIT MODELS; Tokyo Sanyo will make Intel-compatible MPUs, The Japan Economic Journal, March 13, 1984, Section: ELECTRICALS & ELECTRONICS; Pg. 9   Commodore and IBM become Intel licensees     https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/10/business/ibm-is-licensed-to-makeintel-chip.html?searchResultPosition=1   https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-15/mode/1up?view=theater     Don Greenbaum - Commodore - https://www.patreon.com/posts/don-greenbaum-67077078   Commodore goes brit     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-29/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHJ6vVxJLlQ   IBM slashes PC prices in Europe     Infoworld March 26, 1984, pg. 11     Creative Computing reviews the TS 2068         https://archive.org/details/Creative_Computing_1984-03/page/n93/mode/2up   Timex calls it quits     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-01/mode/1up?view=theater        InfoWorld March 19, 1984 pg. 16   Sinclair admits QL is a mess     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-08/mode/1up?view=theater        https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-15/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater        https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-29/page/n31/mode/1up?view=theater     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-22/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater   QL peripheral makers multiply     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-29/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater   Developers abandon QL for CPC     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-15/mode/1up?view=theater   Sir Clive's portable TV impresses     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-29/page/n15/mode/1up?view=theater        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV80   Sinclair EV to be made by Hoover     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-08/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater   Imagine begins Bandersnatch and Psyclapse ad blitz     https://archive.org/details/computer-and-videogames-029/page/n153/mode/2up   Imagine bungles deal     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-08/mode/1up?view=theater        http://redparsley.blogspot.com/2016/08/input-magazine-retrospective.html        https://archive.org/details/Input_Vol_1_No_01_1997_Marshall_Cavendish_GB      Imagine announces price cut     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-08/page/n2/mode/1up?view=theater       https://archive.org/details/Big_K_Issue_03_1984_Jun/page/n15/mode/2up   Bug Byte won't give up on Miner Willie     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-22/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater        https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mattie-goes-mining/   Novotrade details     First All-Hungarian Stock Corporation Ventures Into Video Gaming, The Associated Press, March 3, 1984, Saturday, BC cycle, Byline: By ROLAND PRINZ, Associated Press Writer     https://www.stayforever.de/2024/04/ddr-computer-sft-14/     https://www.ddr-museum.de/de/blog/2020/genex-geschenkdienst     https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genex     https://archive.org/details/genexhauptkatalog1986   Hudsonsoft goes Speccy     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-29/mode/1up?view=theater        https://www.mobygames.com/game/company:1360/platform:zx-spectrum/sort:-date/page:1/     https://www.mobygames.com/game/19608/cannon-ball/   Geoff Crammond takes to the skies     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-29/page/n6/mode/1up?view=theater        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVNAippFbAs     https://www.mobygames.com/person/6244/geoffrey-j-crammond/   Mythos puts Karsten Köper on the map     https://archive.org/details/atari-club-magazin-1984-3/page/6/mode/2up        https://archive.org/details/atari-club-magazin-1984-3/page/10/mode/2up        http://thethalionsource.w4f.eu/Artikel/Mythos.htm   XOR brings Football Manager to the gridiron     Infoworld March 12, 1984, pg. 22        https://www.mobygames.com/company/1848/xor-corporation/   Palace software to leverage movie licenses     https://archive.org/details/home-computing-weekly-052   Enter the 'bookware'     https://archive.org/details/Acorn_User_Number_020_1984-03_Adn-Wesley_GB/page/n7/mode/2up     https://worldofspectrum.net/publisher/11213/        https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-08/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater   Addison-Wesley launches line of games for girls     Infoworld March 26, 1984, pg. 20        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgYqUjtPj8        https://www.mobygames.com/company/23943/rhiannon-software/        https://www.wearelivinginthefuture.com/p/space-girls-gaming-obsolescence        https://archive.org/details/wozaday_Lauren_of_the_25th_Century   Angelsoft founded     https://archive.org/details/computer-entertainer-2-12/page/190/mode/1up?view=theater        https://www.mobygames.com/company/1107/angelsoft-inc/   Synergistic abandons publishing     https://archive.org/details/Electronic_Games_Volume_02_Number_12_1984-03_Reese_Communications_US/page/n13/mode/2up   Lotus goes for integration     https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-03/page/n10/mode/1up?view=theater        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Symphony_(MS-DOS)     http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-commodore-plus4-3-plus-1-and.html        https://archive.org/details/Ahoy_Issue_03_1984-03_Ion_International_US/page/n9/mode/2up   Egghead Softwear is slashing prices     https://archive.org/details/Creative_Computing_1984-03/page/n205/mode/2up   Comptiq brings US games to Japan     Comptique will market U.S.-made game packages, The Japan Economic Journal, March 13, 1984, Section: SPECIAL U.S. SECTION; Pg. 13         https://www.mobygames.com/company/6942/comptiq/        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptiq   MSX looks to be a dud     https://archive.org/details/home-computing-weekly-052/page/n31/mode/2up   Sega to export 70,000 SC300's     Personal computers, The Japan Economic Journal, March 6, 1984, Section: NEWS PACKAGE; Pg. 18   MAX RIP     Commodore withdraws from toy business, The Japan Economic Journal, March 13, 1984, Section: SERVICE/LEISURE/FOOD; Pg. 18   Robotron ships with dual controller holder     https://archive.org/details/computer-entertainer-2-12/page/184/mode/1up?view=theater        https://forums.atariage.com/topic/166814-robotron-dual-controller-holder/   Violence in Gaming debate comes to the C64     https://archive.org/details/Video_Games_Volume_2_Number_06_1984-03_Pumpkin_Press_US/page/n77/mode/2up         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqPymlvBrSA      Alladin's Castle finally beats Mesquite     Play Meter 15th, 1984, pg. 13   Computer hacking laws proposed     https://archive.org/details/home-computing-weekly-053/page/n15/mode/2up   Piracy has Apple in a tizzy     No Headline In Original, United Press International, March 10, 1984, Saturday, PM cycle   Japanese Industry backs MITI     KEIDANREN SUPPORTS MITI'S SOFTWARE PROTECTION BILL, Copyright 1984 Jiji Press Ltd.Jiji Press Ticker Service, MARCH 13, 1984, TUESDAY        https://www.keidanren.or.jp/en/profile/pro001.html   Video Nasties Bill gets games amendment     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-22/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Recordings_Act_1984   UK Libraries clash with software publishers     https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-03-29/mode/1up?view=theater      Are computer graphics art?     https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/27/science/colorful-graphics-aren-t-for-everybody.html        https://blisscast.wordpress.com/2023/10/17/mindset-computer-vyper-game/         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset_(computer)   Smart devices invade homes     A Year After Layoffs, Atari Foresees Better Times in '84, The Associated Press, March 11, 1984, Sunday, BC cycle       https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/08/garden/the-digital-revolution-breeds-smart-new-appliances.html   Seiko introduces the smartwatch     https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-03/page/n10/mode/1up?view=theater        https://www.namokimods.com/en-eu/blogs/namokitimes/seiko-originals-the-uc-2000-a-smartwatch-from-1984   RIP Mike Kogan     Replay March 1984, pg. 10     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kogan Recommended Links:   The History of How We Play: https://thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/ Gaming Alexandria: https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/ They Create Worlds: https://tcwpodcast.podbean.com/ Digital Antiquarian: https://www.filfre.net/ The Arcade Blogger: https://arcadeblogger.com/ Retro Asylum: http://retroasylum.com/category/all-posts/ Retro Game Squad: http://retrogamesquad.libsyn.com/ Playthrough Podcast: https://playthroughpod.com/ Retromags.com: https://www.retromags.com/ Games That Weren't - https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/ Sound Effects by Ethan Johnson of History of How We Play. Copyright Karl Kuras   chuck e cheese   atari   commodore   commodore 64   ecco   dolphin's pearl   dolphin's rune   nintendo   nes   famicom   vs   amiga   appleii   palace   retro   video games   alladins castle   robotron   commodore max   addison-wesley   rhiannon software   bookware   thalion   geoff crammond   novotrade   hudsonsoft   spectrum   ql   amstrad   imagine   sinclair   timex   intel   pc clones   odyssey   magnavox   coleco   intellivision   exidy   laserdisc   dragon's lair

ANTIC Episode 107 - 4 Times! In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast…we realize there are 4 times as many interview episodes as regular episodes and what that might say, Kay visits the Strong Museum, Randy attends the Indy Classic Expo, and Brad drools over a keyboard for the 400 Mini… READY! Recurring Links  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kay's Book “Terrible Nerd”  New Atari books scans at archive.org  ANTIC feedback at AtariAge  Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  Links for Items Mentioned in Show: What we've been up to Strong Museum - https://www.museumofplay.org/  Atari BASIC Tutorial book - https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-atari-basic-tutorial  Indy Classic Expo, April 16 & 17 - http://indyclassic.org  80-column card for 1090XL - Brian Reifsnyder - https://www.tindie.com/products/5cfab/80-column-rpp-board-for-the-atari-1090xl1091xl/  Disk archiving setup, using FujiNet - new project by Randy at Jason Moore's Atari Projects - https://atariprojects.org/2024/04/06/archive-atari-8-bit-computer-disks-from-a-real-floppy-to-a-virtual-disk-using-fujinet-15-30-minutes/  News Andy Diller's tnfs server for FujiNet - tnfs.Atari8bit.net or FujiNet.Atari8bit.net  Other FujiNet goodness from Andy - https://atari8bit.net/projects/software/fujinet-server-status/  Tim Lapetino Interview - https://www.creativebloq.com/features/atari-creative-director-tim-lapetino-interview  BASIC 10-Liner Contest winners announced! - https://www.homeputerium.de/  Vitoco has bundled Atari 8 Bit computer games competing in the BASIC 10 Liners Contest 2024 into a single disk - https://www.vitoco.cl/atari/10liner/NOMAM2024.atr  New Game! Missile Command Arcade (VBXE) - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/365388-new-game-missile-command-arcade-vbxe/  VCF East update by Thom Cherryhomes - https://www.facebook.com/groups/atari8bitcomputers/permalink/7361112970592812/  FujiNet RAPID #6 from Andy Diller - https://www.atariorbit.org/rapid/  Atari XF 351 floppy drive clone - https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/64292  Atari 8-bit machines comparison table - MrFish - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/289798-atari-8-bit-machines-comparison-table/?do=findComment&comment=5453949  keyboard for the 400Mini - ScreamingAtTheRadio - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/363964-i-made-a-keyboard-for-my-400mini/  RastaConverter - Jakub "Ilmenit" Dębski: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/200118-images-generated-by-rastaconverter/  https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2024/04/rastaconverter-beta-9-renuevan-el.html  PAS 6502 - added Atari 8-bit support - https://syntaxerrorsoftware.itch.io/pas6502/devlog/717309/new-machine-support-and-some-fixes  Upcoming Shows VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/  Boatfest Retro Computer Expo - June 14-16 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info  Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21,  2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/  KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 (in-person), July 27-28 (virtual) - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/  Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/   Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/  Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-18 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se   VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/   Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29, 2024 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we   YouTube Videos Let's install a monitor jack and upgrade the RAM on a US Atari 600XL - FlashJazzCat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyWtzC96kZo  Simius Sophia 2 : Atari 800XL Install - Vintage Gaming Memories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOD4ifpz0S8  https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/atari-800-xl-xe-xel-xld/products/sophia-2-dvi-output-gtia-replacement  ATARI XL / XE += GUNNER =+ BASIC 10LINER CONTEST 2024 - Atari 8 Bits For Ever - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR2RkDt__3s  Atari XL/XE -=Tetris=- BASIC 10 Liner Contest 2024 - Saberman RetroNews - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjh_k55Hjeo  Every Atari 8-Bit Game in the BASIC 10 Liner Contest 2024 - ZeroPage Homebrew - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaBBVvFsBX8  New at Archive.org  https://archive.org/details/computer-shopper-november-1986-vol-6-num-11-atari-articles  https://archive.org/details/computer-shopper-september-1986-vol-6-num-9-atari-articles https://archive.org/details/solo-flight-microprose

Episode 138 - Interview with Hans Franke, VCF Europe and Computeum Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   What I've Been Up To Indy Classic Expo - http://www.indyclassic.org  8-Bit Classics - http://www.8bitclassics.com  80 column card for Atari 1090XL at Tindie from Brian Reifsnyder  New Acquisitions Coco MPI mention on an earlier episode (Episode 131)  Cloud-9 - http://www.cloud9tech.com/  Texas Instruments TI58 & TI59 calculators coverage on an earlier episode (Episode 3)  TI58/59 battery pack mod from Bob Wolfson  2.4A power adapter for Atari XL/XE - https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/atari-xl-xe-2-4a-amp-power-adapter/  Upcoming Shows The 32nd Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! - May 4-5, 2024 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago-Carol Stream (Wheaton), Carol Stream, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/  The Festival of Portable Computing - May 18-19 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72231/The-Festival-of-Portable-Computing-18th-19th-May-2024/  CorgsCon (Columbus Ohio Retro Gaming Society) - June 1 - Kasich Hall – Ohio Expo Center, Columbus, OH - https://www.corgscon.com/  Game Not Over 2024 - June 8-9 - Dunstall Park Racecourse in Wolverhampton, U.K. - https://retro.directory/browse/events/326-game-not-over-2024  VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/  Boatfest Retro Computer Expo - June 14-16 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info  Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo - June 22 - New Westminster, BC, Canada - https://www.vancouvergamingexpo.com/index.html  Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 22-23 - Old Rainier Brewery Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start  Kickstart Amiga UK Expo - June 29-30 - Nottingham, UK - https://www.amigashow.com/  KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 (in-person), July 27-28 (virtual) - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/  Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21,  2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/  Nottingham Video Game Expo - July 20-21 - The Belgrave Rooms, Nottingham, U.K. - https://www.nottsvge.com/  Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/   Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/   VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/  Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/   Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule  Interview with Hans Franke  VCF Europe (VCFe.org) Computeum (Computeum )   

The time has come for our deep dive into Pirates of Silicon Valley, the 1999 made-for-TNT movie that chronicles the parallel rises of Apple and Microsoft. Join us for a bunch of chatter about the historic business deals and betrayals, the portrayals of Gates, Jobs, Ballmer, Wozniak and others, what the actual people depicted thought about the movie, how Shakespeare informed the production, the delightful '90s blue screen effects, and plenty more. (And check the show notes if you haven't seen the movie yet!)Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley before listening to the ep: https://archive.org/details/piratesofsiliconvalley_201908Read Fire in the Valley, the book the movie is based on: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Birth-Personal-Computer-dp-1937785769/dp/1937785769/Check out Folklore.org's sprawling history of the Macintosh's development that Brad mentioned (linked here to a story about who actually created the Mac project): https://folklore.org/The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.html Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

Steve Fink Steve Fink is the Vice President of IT at Fenner Precision Polymers, a global leader in advanced polymer solutions. With over 15 years of experience in the Michelin Group, Steve has a deep understanding of IT’s role in driving business success. He is passionate about fostering a people-centric IT culture and leveraging technology...

James and John discuss eBay finds: Apple Computer sales & service sign, Apple Macintosh Portrait Display, and Black Performa 5420. They take a look at a bunch of Marchintosh projects, and news includes Apple II styled FloppyEmu enclosures, RR Auction Apple auctions, an article on the original Macs delivered to Drexel and Making a Macintosh Studio.  Join our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, watch us on YouTube, and visit us at RetroMacCast.

Our "Evil Easter" month kicks off with Evilspeak, from 1981...or, uh, 1982. Look, we'll explain. All you need to know is this a Satanic Panic-fueled story of a bullied young cadet at a military academy who uses an Apple II computer to translate the Latin passages in a mysterious old book he finds, in the process allowing demonic forces to take over the computer, and - eventually - him, as well. Yeah, yeah, a really common story, but this one has Clint Howard in his first movie leading role! A gory cult classic that was intense enough to end up on the infamous UK "Video Nasties" list, Evilspeak still didn't manage to earn any sequels, even in a decade quick to create supernatural-slasher franchises when it could. So, what happened? We discuss this, as well as our thoughts on the film, and Clint Howard as a performer, in general. Our Twitter Our Facebook Our Instagram Our YouTube Trev's Letterboxd Chris' Letterboxd

Jake Knapp loves tech. He grew up using Apple II and then Mac computers, browsing bulletin boards, and making his own games. As an adult, he worked at Microsoft on the Encarta CD-ROM, before being hired by Google, where he worked on Gmail, co-founded Google Meet, and created Google Ventures' Design Sprint process. Today, he's a venture capitalist and consultant for start-ups, as well as a writer.But, if Jake was an early adopter and booster of the upsides of technology, he was also early in sensing its not-so-positive side effects. Twelve years ago, unhappy with the pull his smartphone was exerting on him, he decided to curb its distractions. He continues to use this distraction-free phone today.Today on the show, I talk to Jake about what motivated him to change his relationship with his phone over a decade ago and what steps he took to do so, including how and why he lives life without a web browser or email app on his phone. We get into what realizations about work and life Jake's gotten from having a distraction-free phone, why he doesn't think using tools like Screen Time or a dumbphone are always the best solutions to reducing the phone itch, and how he also cuts down on distractions on his desktop computer.Resources Related to the PodcastMake Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp and John ZeratskySprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake KnappAoM Podcast #450: How to Make Time for What Really Matters Every Day With John Zeratsky AoM Podcast #972: Down With Pseudo-Productivity: Why We Need to Transform the Way We Work With Cal NewportAoM Article: The Complete Guide to Breaking Your Smartphone HabitAoM Article: 5 Concrete Ways to Develop a Healthier Relationship With Your Phone (No Blocking or Deleting Apps Required!)AoM Podcast #420: What Makes Your Phone So Addictive & How to Take Back Your LifeFreedom appHow We Feel appLight Phone IITime TimerConnect With Jake KnappJake's website

In this episode of Discover Daily, we celebrate Apple's incredible 48-year journey, from its humble beginnings in Steve Jobs' parents' garage to becoming one of the world's most valuable and influential technology companies. We explore the iconic products that have redefined entire markets, such as the Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and discuss how Apple's commitment to innovation, design, and user experience has set the standard for the tech industry. We also look into the latest developments in the world of technology, including OpenAI's startup fund shakeup, as CEO Sam Altman transfers control to Ian Hathaway, and the upcoming EU version of the AltStore, which takes advantage of new rules introduced by the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to provide iOS users with more choice and flexibility in accessing apps. Join us as we uncover these stories and more, curated from Perplexity's daily updated Discover feed.For more on these stories:48 years of Applehttps://www.perplexity.ai/search/48-years-of-5qQLOltASjK3aunb6Huz5wAltman gives up OpenAI fundhttps://www.perplexity.ai/search/Altman-gives-up-1lRH6NXxQRG8dx2sz0T18gEU AltStore coming soonhttps://www.perplexity.ai/search/EU-AltStore-coming-veEXjmi_S2GMEmlbbV85BgPerplexity is the fastest and most powerful way to search the web. Perplexity crawls the web and curates the most relevant and up-to-date sources (from academic papers to Reddit threads) to create the perfect response to any question or topic you're interested in. Take the world's knowledge with you anywhere. Available on iOS and Android Join our growing Discord community for the latest updates and exclusive content. Follow us on: Instagram Threads X (Twitter) YouTube Linkedin

Season 6 Episode 6 Episode 169 Rob & Hugues discuss issue 12 of Apple II & Alien Abduction magazine! This is a special episode, recorded earlier to accommodate down-time. Enjoy!   Game Club Link Tree Retro Game Club Discord server Bumpers: Raftronaut , Inverse Phase Threads, Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, and  Instagram managed by: Zach Email us: email@retrogameclub.net ===================================== #retro #retrogames #retrogaming #videogames #classiccomputing #magazines #80s #AppleII #Aliens

ANTIC Episode 106 - Thom, do you ever sleep!? In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… we cover all the recent contests involving new Atari software development, bring you all the other Atari news we could find, and marvel at the stamina of Thom Cherryhomes… READY! Recurring Links  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kay's Book “Terrible Nerd”  New Atari books scans at archive.org  ANTIC feedback at AtariAge  Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  Links for Items Mentioned in Show: What we've been up to Atari's 1986 prospectus and form S-1 - https://archive.org/details/atari-corp  Titan game - https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-titan_6337.html  https://archive.org/details/tbace-thunder-bay-atari-computer-enthusiasts/TBACE-1985-01%20Minutes/  2.4A power supply for XL/XE from 8bitclassics.com - https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/atari-xl-xe-2-4a-amp-power-adapter/ (affiliate link)  80-column card for 1090XL - Brian Reifsnyder - https://www.tindie.com/products/5cfab/80-column-rpp-board-for-the-atari-1090xl1091xl/  News Custom floppy disk envelopes - https://ataricovers.com/  Atari 400 mini started shipping! (3/28) - https://atari.com/products/atari-400-mini-1  BASIC 10-Liner Contest - https://www.homeputerium.de/  Vitoco has bundled Atari 8 Bit computer games competing in the BASIC 10 Liners Contest 2024 into a single disk - https://www.vitoco.cl/atari/10liner/NOMAM2024.atr  https://hackaday.com/2024/03/21/video-poker-takes-your-money-in-10-lines-of-basic/  6th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/356719-6th-annual-atari-homebrew-awards-voting-information-discussion/  Atari in a suitcase - https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2142412709436907&set=gm.7187337001303744&idorvanity=181644898539691  Anode chat - you can use Anode chat and talk on the Fujinet discord to the anode channel - TNFS://fujinet.pl/anode/anode.xex  and search in it for "chat" - you'll need to register with the anode server first Including ACTION! code from GitHub - Thom Cherryhomes: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/363311-including-action-code-from-github-yes/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W49Uxf-UDk  FujiNet Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/fujinet/  ABBUC Software Competition 2024 opened: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/363297-abbuc-software-competition-2024-opened/ You can find all the rules here - https://abbuc.de/aktivitaten/software-competition/  ABBUC hardware contest 2024 starts now: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/363122-abbuc-hardware-contest-2024-starts-now/  You can find the rules here - Rules AHC 2024 YAIL (Yet Another Image Loader) - YouTube video by Thom Cherryhomes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o54Ds-DwGJI&t=6s  https://www.southernamis.com/baudday  Best Old School Tech Super Bowl Commercials, Ranked (Gizmodo) - https://gizmodo.com/best-vintage-tech-super-bowl-commercials-ranked-1851235860  Atari computer commercial (Atari: Get Started, 1984, with Alan Alda) #7 on the list - https://gizmodo.com/best-vintage-tech-super-bowl-commercials-ranked-1851235860/slides/5  Upcoming Shows Midwest Gaming Classic - April 5-7 - Wisconsin Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/  VCF East - April 12-14, 2024 - Wall, NJ - http://www.vcfed.org  Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 13-14 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/  VCF Europa - April 27-28, 2024 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/  Boatfest Retro Computer Expo - June 14-16 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info  Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21,  2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/  KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/  Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/   Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-18 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se   VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/   Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29, 2024 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we   YouTube Videos The end of the road for the Atari 800XL - FlashJazzCat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNmzdcSbn2U  Saving Archer Maclean's Atari 8-bit Arcade Experiments - Games That Weren't - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmry_CG_l8I  FujiNet: Demoing the atari 8-bit Compuserve VIDTEX Terminal Emulator - Thom Cherryhomes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpeaYuWS94o  More about Videotex here - https://tandyvideotex.com  A version of the demo server is here on GitHub - https://github.com/tlindner/VideoTexD…  A bootable copy of the Atari Compuserve VIDTEX 4.0 terminal is here via TNFS and HTTPS - https://apps.irata.online/Atari_8-bit…  Writing the FujiNet User's Guide for ATARI 8-bit Users - Thom Cherryhomes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stqeQP_jVGQ  A look at my new Encrypt Decrypt Basic Program for The Hardball Game on Atari 8 Bit - Red Rock Video Productions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOsE4LjJbEU  New at Archive.org  https://archive.org/details/@atariware_doc  https://archive.org/details/multieditor-manual-de-uso  https://archive.org/details/multificha-manual-de-uso  https://archive.org/details/atari-410-schematic-a-skematiks/Atari_410_Schematic_A_Skematiks/  Allan: https://archive.org/details/visi-calc-programming-no-experience-necessary-daniel-shaffer https://archive.org/details/french-i-ibm-pc-acorn/French_I_Atari_Acorn/ https://archive.org/details/how-to-operate-the-atari-600-xl-800-xl-learning-express https://archive.org/details/personal-finance-version-one-computari https://archive.org/details/german-i-ibm-acorn/German_I_Atari_Acorn/ https://archive.org/details/c.-r.-i.-s.-adventure-international Portland Atari Club newsletters - https://archive.org/details/@allan52?query=portland+atari+club  Lending: https://archive.org/details/spellbound0000stin  https://archive.org/details/advancedprogramm0000schr  https://archive.org/details/31newataricomput0000nort  https://archive.org/details/letslearnbasicki0000shne_k4c8  https://archive.org/details/isbn_0942386086  Github https://github.com/drunkeneye/MAFIA.A8  https://github.com/gladir/ATARITOOLS (French)  https://github.com/tebe6502/Mad-Pascal  Feedback Peter Dell -  installer which makes the installation of his WUDSN IDE for the Atari 8-bits (https://github.com/wudsn/wudsn-ide-install) just two clicks on Windows, macOS and Linux. Peter Dell interview on ANTIC (2015) - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-27-the-atari-8-bit-podcast-peter-dell-wudsn  Chris Lorenzo - Mozzwald's Atari USB-C Power Adapter - Video - https://youtu.be/wLnZ4dyMJ-s?si=tY1CH_q8HJukVJQC  https://www.youtube.com/@VintageGamingMemories  Mozzwald's USB-C Adapter - https://mozzwald.com/product-category/atari/   

We've done Prince of Persia, we've done The Last Express. So when The Making of Karateka was released in late 2023, we figured this was the perfect opportunity to have a look at Jordan Mechner's very first published game. Originally released in 1984 for the Apple II, the PC got a port of this game […]

James and John discuss eBay finds: BYTE Magazine February 1984, inflatable Flying Toaster, NIB Apple StyleWriter. They look back at March 2004 in MacAddict magazine, and news includes It's a Coco! No, It's an Apple II!, a black iPod Hi-Fi, and Marchintosh.  Join our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, watch us on YouTube, and visit us at RetroMacCast.

Register: https://stree.ai/rtapod30 | Tim's new podcast series: https://stree.ai/keyboardandquill | Tim sits down with Professor Laine Nooney (NYU) to discuss the significance of software in the evolution of personal computing, as part of unpacking Laine's book, "The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal." Here's the 30% discount Tim mentioned for the Real-Time Analytics Summit: https://stree.ai/rtapod30 (Code: RTAPOD30)

Book club returns this week, now that we've both read id Software founder John Romero's memoir, Doom Guy: Life in First Person. Join us for an extremely nerdy chat about Romero's early days as a teenage Apple II developer learning 6502 assembly, the pre-id team's blistering one-game-a-month output at Softdisk, technical innovations that led to id's most groundbreaking games, the internal strife that ultimately split the company, retrospective thoughts on a very different mid-'90s Doom 3 than the one we got later, and a bunch more.Pick up Doom Guy: https://www.amazon.com/Doom-Guy-Life-First-Person/dp/141975811XRomero's fan mail to Jordan Mechner: https://twitter.com/jmechner/status/1253777950299873283 Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

Wer in den 80ern am C64 gespielt hat, hat vermutlich Bruce Lee gespielt. Dabei war das nicht mal ein "richtiges" C64-Spiel, sondern ein Port vom Atari 400/800, veröffentlicht von der Firma Datasoft (Dallas Quest, Theatre Europe). Der Titel ist an sich einfach ein kompetentes Jump&Run, aber die ungewöhnlichen Kampfspiel-Mechaniken, die der Entwickler Ron Fortier eingebaut hat, machen es zu einer ziemlich einzigartigen Erfahrung. Und wenn man Gunnars Kindheitserlebnisse mit dem Spiel stellvertretend für seine (Spieler-)Generation nehmen mag, wurde Bruce Lee mehr wegen der einfachen Kampfspielaspekte gespielt als wegen des eigentlichen Spielprinzips. Chris und Gunnar nehmen sich den Titel vor, frischen dabei erstmal (mit der Hilfe von Christian Genzel) ihr Bruce-Lee-Wissen auf, ordnen den Titel in die Entwicklung seines Genres ein, tauchen ein bisschen in die Technik der Spieleprogrammierung auf dem Atari 400/800 und erzählen die Geschichte der Entstehung des Spiels. Infos zum Spiel: Thema: Bruce Lee Plattform: Atari 400/800, C64, AppleII, MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum, Schneider CPC, PC-88, MSX Entwickler: Datasoft Publisher: Datasoft, US Gold Genre: Platformer Designer: Ronald J. Fortier, Kelly Day Musik: John A. Fitzpatrick Podcast-Credits: Sprecher: Christian Schmidt, Gunnar Lott - Einspieler von Christian Genzel Audioproduktion: Johannes DuBois, Christian Schmidt Titelgrafik: Paul Schmidt Intro, Outro: Nino Kerl (Ansage); Chris Hülsbeck (Musik) Mehr von Christian Genzel: Der kundige Gast dieser Folge, der Filmexperte und Regisseur Christian Genzel, betreibt folgende Podcasts, die wir hier gern empfehlen möchten: Pixelkino - Die Begegnungsstätte für Spiel & Film (mit Heinrich Lenhardt) Lichtspielplatz - Ein Podcast über die Filmgeschichte Talking Pictures - Ein englischsprachiger Interview-Podcast mit Filmemachern und Schauspielern

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we have a discussion with Devlin Lyles, President of Improving, about AI's evolving role in business. With his extensive tech leadership background, Devlin offers insightful perspectives on strategically integrating AI and shifting workforce mindsets. He explains how AI enhances personal productivity and compels a transition from manual tasks to advanced system management. Other notable topics include vendor resiliency, learning cultures, and personal growth's influence on business innovation. Wrapping up, Devlin shares his views on AI's future impact through emerging tools and personal assistants that boost productivity. Join us for this enriching exchange at the intersection of technology, leadership experience, and work-life harmony. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Devlin discusses his transition from a young programmer to a leader in technology, emphasizing the role of AI in changing business strategies and operations. We explore the psychological aspect of AI adoption in businesses, addressing how the workforce adapts to the enhanced productivity and evolving roles that AI tools bring. Devlin makes an analogy between the historical rise of ATMs and their impact on bank tellers, to the current transition from manual task execution to strategic AI system management. We dissect common misconceptions in AI implementation, such as the belief that data must be perfectly curated and the pitfalls of building bespoke AI solutions from scratch. Devlin highlights the importance of focusing on problem-solving over the technology itself, encouraging companies to differentiate between truly valuable AI applications and those simply following trends. The conversation delves into vendor resiliency, with a focus on the legal protection offered by large companies like Microsoft for their AI services. We discuss the cultivation of a learning culture within Improving and the impact personal development has on managing technology and fostering business innovation. Devlin shares insights on the future of AI, such as the potential of a "cloud of things" and personal AI tools that can enhance daily productivity and support memory. We examine the transformative effect of AI on mundane tasks and its potential for significant impact on industries like logistics, supply chain, and manufacturing. Devlin and I reflect on the importance of hobbies and personal interests, such as golf and video games, for maintaining a balanced life while engaging with technological advancements. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Improving GUESTS Devlin LilesAbout Devlin TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Devlin Liles, President of Improving. Devlin is a leading expert in the application and use of AI for businesses. Devlin shares several helpful ideas relating to AI for businesses and believes that a business's readiness for AI is mostly psychological. Devlin, I want to thank you for taking time to join us today. Why don't we start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and your role with improving Sure. Devlin: So Devlin Lyles. That seems like an odd thing to say. So I'm a technologist by kind of trade and training, so I started writing software when I was very young. I was 8 when I started programming. Chris: My dad got me into it. Devlin: I started my first software company when I was 16 in high school, building used car websites and that kind of thing Right at the kind of dot-com bubble expansion, and so decided I was going to not do that as a career. I was going to become a professional soccer player. That didn't work, so I kind of fell back into it as a hobby and kind of continued on that. Chris: Most programmers think of a professional soccer player as a dream, right yeah absolutely. Devlin: And so I ended up kind of falling back into my hobby as a career and then came up through kind of corporate IT at Tys Foods and then got into IT consulting and been doing that for the last 15 years. So that's a bit about me. Chris: Okay, and let's talk a little bit about improving where you serve as president. Tell us a little bit about what improving does in your role there, and then you know one of the things I really want to focus on, as you know, is things on most people's minds over the last 12-18 months is AI, so it's kind of couched in that context. Devlin: Sure. So my role with improving has kind of evolved over the years. So I actually started as a consultant delivering to our clients and I came in kind of two and a half three years in and so we have an equity share model. So I grew an equity share at improving and then took over as president here in Houston in 2017. My global role for improving is chief consulting officer, so I own client delivery, thought leadership, go-to-market and employee growth kind of that space, and so AI has been a big part of that conversation. Now the interesting thing is I get to live in a time machine somewhat in this space of AI has been a big part of that story for us for five to seven years. The world with chatGPT, kind of making it a part of the zeitgeist, is really catching up, and so it's cool to have these conversations and really talk about it, because a lot of our excitement and like oh, it's going to be utopia from 2017-2018, when there were some big strides being made forward and we get to kind of relive with everybody else. Chris: Interesting. Yeah, so you're living it for the second time. Devlin: Yeah, and it's. The thing is that, going through at the second time, you get somewhat of the hindsight in real time, which is interesting. Yeah, because we ended up helping a lot of customers apply some of these technologies, and technology always has this kind of pull to off the shelf right Systems. We used to pay tens of millions of dollars to build custom right. Think about CRM, a client contact management system, right Almost everybody has today. Chris: Yeah. Devlin: In the 1990s that was a multi tens of millions of dollar project for only the biggest companies to really have a unified customer relationship management system. And today I can go, put in a credit card and sign up for HubSpot or Salesforce or Dynamics right off the shelf. There's this pull to off the shelf that happens in technology, which leads to the middle market and small businesses being able to take advantage of what used to be incredibly expensive technology and that's actually what we're seeing in the AI space is it's driving from. I no longer need 100 million to approach this problem. I can actually apply this for 20 bucks a month, yeah. Chris: It's a great observation and yeah it's so true that it becomes, I guess better, efficient and more economical right Each time, I guess, as technology is with us and develops longer. That's a great kind of segue. I want to just kind of start with what are some of the key factors a business should consider when evaluating their readiness for adopting AI into the business. Devlin: Interesting For adopting AI into the business. Readiness is mostly psychological, because there are pieces in the business today that you can do better. We break this into kind of three parts when we talk to business leaders about this. One is how do you do your job much more effectively, right? What's the superhuman version of Chris? Right, there's AI tools to make that happen. Like, I'm a very well augmented human, I have tools that analyze my notes and make sure that I don't forget things. I've got tools that keep reminders and stuff on my personal network. Now, they're not spamming my friends with, like text messages to buy things, but it's going. Hey, you haven't talked to Bob In two months. Here's what you talked about the last time, so I can reach out to Bob. Hey, man, we haven't caught up. How's your wife doing? How's your son doing? Like those kind of things. That's the superhuman version of me, because I want to stay connected with my friends Just bad at it and so it covers that gap for me. So that's the first part is like that personal productivity side, which is mainly just a resistance to change. That you'd see in any technology adoption. It's psychological, organizational. People have tied their identity to the work they do and so changing that means like an existential crisis sometimes, right? Sure, think about a bank teller when the ATM came out. Right Now, we still employ a lot of bank tellers, but their jobs drastically changed. It's that moment where we're not going to get rid of a bunch of humans and have robots doing those jobs. What we're going to do is change the job of the human to guiding them, controlling and managing the robots. Chris: I think that's an important point to kind of reemphasize for the listeners, because I think so much that's out there. You see these news headlines and articles. I think people think robots are going to take over the world and I think the point you just made that that's not the case. But the role the human will play will adapt and change and while that sounds scary in a vacuum, if you actually take a moment and look back, that's what's happened throughout our evolution, especially in the industrial world and the business world in the United States. Right, jobs have evolved and changed over time, and I've heard you say this before, so this is nothing different. I want you to dig in a little deeper on that to help the listeners understand and maybe some historical points to compare to. So it makes it a little more tangible. Devlin: Absolutely so. Think about the way we did accounting before the PC was invented, right? So before the Apple II, we're talking in the 1970s, right Before computing devices were in everybody's office on everybody's desk, right? The way we did accounting was we managed the book and you wrote entries in and you had somebody checking the math and you had the you know 10 keys sitting there with the stream of numbers coming out of it. Right, and your accounting department was massively larger than it is today. To be able to accomplish that, it had to be right, which was a big overhead for a business to bear. Right, and you had these big accounting firms who would help with economies of scale or whatever. But like, that was really the ballgame, right, and it took a long time to like, close out the books and do tax audits and those kind of things. Now fast forward to the introduction of broad computing power. That sped up that process. We still have accountants, we still have bookkeepers. In most businesses you can close the books on a month in 10 days, 30 days if you've got a lot of moving parts. It's not. Hey, we just closed January. In June, a crude accounting became far more prevalent. We had less financial fraud overall, the stories about it happen more often, but we have less by volume and we're actually getting more insights out of that, because it's no longer just tracking all the pieces but going hey, did you notice last month you had increased expenditures in this area without the increased revenue tied to them? And so we get business insights on top of what we used to get was just transactions. We not only have lower accounting costs, but we then have better outcomes from it. Ai is going to do something similar From a business perspective. It's going to allow us to get. It's going to allow us to get better outcomes or lower our costs, to give us pricing power in the market. Because all technology is labor compression right, what a welder by hand used to take hours to do on the original factory floors and structural integrity of the original cars that we were rolling across an assembly line right. Think 1930s, 1940s. We now have robotic welders who can do in 15 or 30 seconds with far more precision, with less human injury. Right Now, the quality checking, the x-ray and all that is still reviewed by a human to make sure that weld is solid, and even that we're automating some of. But like that, evolution allowed us to produce stronger, faster, cheaper, safer cars. I think we're in that space where AI is largely going to be applied to the problems that are on the edges of humans do a lot of it, but we're not very good at it because, like our bookkeepers, there's that whole notion of human error. Chris: Yeah, not that there won't be computer error as well. Oh, yeah, and so you kind of that's where the check and balance comes in. Devlin: And the idea of technology is just going to solve everything. Hopefully, as a civilization we've moved past right the 1970s to today. I used the 1970s because that was kind of the broad evolution of available computing right To today. Every new technology has created new problems. A joke with our team that yesterday's solutions caused today's problems. And that's a good thing, because, one, we always have problem to solve and, two, we don't have yesterday's problems. So AI being introduced is going to create things like we now need to manage bias, the computer error, right. That's not something we do today very well. When we talk about humans, right, like how do you manage bias at scale? In a thousand person company is like all right, hr and an army of training, but with a computer you can actually try to start tilting at some of these things. Now, does that mean we're going to do it Well, we're going to do it better than we do today. Probably we're going to do it wrong and have to create tomorrow's problems. Chris: Yeah, I love that perspective. So what are some of the obstacles or pitfalls that you've seen that businesses encounter when they're trying to implement technology, and maybe even specifically, obviously specific to AI technology? Devlin: So there are two. One of them is perfectly valid and it's going to be some learning that we have to overcome, and I'm going to start with that one the belief that I have to spend a ton of time and money to correct my data right. Because, traditionally over the last 20 years you've had data engineering and data warehousing and data lakes and, like you, had to clean it and curate it and do all this work. That belief is a little antiquated, right. You can bring in raw data and then actually use a lot of these automated systems AI systems to clean it up with you so that the labor of that is way less scary. Now that's the pitfall most people fall into is all I got to get my data cleaned up before I get any value. And so that ends up raising the price tag of going after these technologies and ultimately keeps companies from getting some of that benefit because they don't want to pay that cost. And then the second pitfall is building your own. And what I mean by building your own is every business has unique challenges and they have their particular flavors, right? It's why, where SAP works for one, but you know, acumatica would be better for somebody else as an ERP system. But you don't have to reinvent the wheel and we keep doing that, right? I was just talking to a friend of mine, houston based company yesterday. 500 million in revenue and we're like talking about one of their AI initiatives. It wasted $6 million, didn't get anything out of it Wow. And we're talking about them like. You can do that with almost off the shelf tools everything you guys were trying to accomplish in about four months for about half a million and the difference is that they try to reinvent all the wheels. We don't need to do that, just like you're not going to build your own email system, right? You don't need to build your own baseline architecture for a large language model. Use one of the foundational ones that's off the shelf and you don't waste a lot of that time and effort. Chris: And that gets you that good way to get started. Devlin: Yeah, it may evolve from there, may evolve from there you may hit a problem where you do need to build your own. Chris: I kind of the rule of thumb I use is if your IT budget doesn't start with a, b, you're probably not building your own machine learning models, so that raises a good question, and that would be how can companies distinguish between an AI solution that actually is going to offer value real value versus just a company following the hype right and being misguided by the solution. Maybe they choose. Devlin: Fall in love with solving the problem, not the tools. So if let's take my company right, we spend a lot of time trying to solve one big problem. That big problem was knowledge. We grow the acquisition We've done 14 acquisitions in 14 years and we always create knowledge silos. And so when we bring in somebody, our current team doesn't know their stories for, like, selling their skill sets, what they're good at, those kind of things, and they don't know all of our stories. And so we had this big knowledge silo gap problem right Right Now. Ultimately, what that means is when a customer goes, hey, do you do X, regardless of what X is, they're going to say no because they don't know the stories. Now, how do I overcome this? I could do training, all right, but then I got to do that training every time we acquire a company and we're doing like we're aiming for two to four acquisitions a year, which means that's not a sustainable thing because of the labor cost. Right, it's like, okay, well, maybe I allow the silos to continue and just accept that's part and parcel of the business. It's possible. Chris: Possible, but you're a miss out on a ton of opportunity. Exactly. Devlin: Or we take all their stories, their case studies, their customer testimonials. We loaded them into what we call echo, which is a AI enabled chatbot, and it literally reads SharePoint. Right, it's not like it's not parsing data. There's no big data engineering effort. It's loading Word documents, PDFs, all this off SharePoint and they just chat with it and they go hey, have we done a deal with a major energy company? And it goes yes, here are the three, they're most relevant to you. And then it embeds the PDF and goes and here's where you find more details, so that the sales team on a sales call can have echo up on another window. Like, hey, have we ever done that? And it goes yes, in this office, here's the people to reach out to that level of knowledge. Access would have cost us thousands of hours of training, Right, and so it's that type of thing. Focus on the problem. Where do you have pain and where are you wasting hours? You don't actually care as a business owner unless you're selling AI as a product, Right. You don't actually care if it's an AI solution, an automation solution or just really clever software. You just want the problem solved, and by not falling in love with the tool, but falling in love with solving the problem. You focus on the right thing Because the value add, the ROI, is all about the problem, not about the tool. Chris: Look, that makes sense. It's easy to remember, for sure, and I mean I think you're right. Devlin: I think most business owners agree. Chris: I just need this problem solved effectively and efficiently. Devlin: By the way, you find these problems by going. What would it take for me to 5x my business today? The things that immediately popped to mind? You're like, oh well, this would break and this would break, and this would break and this would break. That's your list. For me, it's like well, I need five times as many account managers and my accounting staff's got to grow and I'd need better hiring. That's my list. Do I need five times as many account managers or do I need to help automate a lot of the account management and administrator to make them more effective? How do I upskill and get my recruiters leveraging AI, sorting and those kind of things to pull more people into the pipeline? That's my list. By simply going. What would it take to get bigger? Buy a big number. If 5x isn't scary enough, tack a zero on there. Chris: That definitely would be scary. Devlin: So let's, talk about. Chris: There's a lot that's been written and it's something we're doing here ourselves and that's with AI out there. What are best practices that businesses should be considering around policies for using, evaluating, adapting AI technology in the business, ai technology in the business. There's a lot that I think it's probably best practice. There should one. Yes, you should have a policy, but anything you can kind of guide the listeners on on those issues around a competent and well thought out AI policy. Devlin: So it's got a few pieces. Number one data privacy needs to be forefront in that conversation, primarily to protect your business and to protect your competitive advantage. So if your AI usage or acceptable usage policy doesn't include something about how data privacy should be evaluated, that's a big gap. Now your opinions about data privacy are gonna be your company's opinions, but those tools that are cheap and freely available today are largely cheap and freely available so that they can use your data to train a better tool. Is that okay with you? Some people will like yeah, it doesn't matter, and some people are like no, I absolutely can never allow this data out of my control, at which point you gotta choose different tools. So data privacy is number one. Chris: To that point. You may be aware of this and I recently wrote a little, brought it on it, but you had the New. York Times lawsuit saying that all trained on copyrighted material. Trained on copyrighted material, so that's kind of to me somewhat akin to data security and privacy, and that's a whole other issue about copywriting and licensing around information. So we haven't talked with that in a minute. Let's keep on the data or AI kind of policies. And so you said, most important thing, data privacy. What's next? Devlin: Second is vendor resiliency. Now, this is gonna sound a little tough to like the indie developers who are trying to launch their product, but last year in the US there were 6,000 plus tools launched on the AI Hype Wave. Now the punchline to that story is over 4,000 have already failed Already, had to either pivot or gone out of business. Vendor resiliency if you're gonna start pulling these into your business, evaluate the vendor. Are they gonna survive long enough to be valuable to you, or do you now have a broken tool that's no longer being accessible that you've woven into your business? That is gonna drive you towards some of the bigger vendors, the ones that have been around for a while, and, as it kind of should. If you're weaving it into your ops Now for experimentation, use the little players, Like that makes sense to me, but when you're talking about a broad policy, vendor resiliency is gonna be a big thing. The other side of vendor resiliency is how are they going to indemnify you from the inevitable lawsuits in this space? Right? Microsoft, Google, Amazon have all said if you're using our tools inside the license agreement, there's indemnity. Right, that's a pretty big shield, right? Microsoft actually said that they would. If you're using their AI services. They would protect you and defend and pay a settlement if one ends up happening for copyright infringement. So, like the Times article thing won't hit the consumers of those AI tools. Microsoft has stood in front of it and said we're good, that's a big shield. Now if you're a small to mid-market software player, can you put up a shield right Right To your customers? As a customer, I need to start caring about this. And then, lastly, in that policy, some centralized knowledge repository, some centralized store, Because what we found is everybody's play. Everybody's trying, experimenting using these tools. They're wiring in their favorite one. I do this almost on a daily basis. I kick out unapproved tools from meetings that somebody like wired up like a meeting transcriber, listener, bot, and I kick them out of meetings and send a note to whoever did it. I'm like just to be clear not approved. Chris: Right. Devlin: Here's the approved one. Don't use that one and everybody's just so. Expense control and some kind of central review. It doesn't have to be heavy handed. Ours is literally just a let us know when you're experimenting so we can check in on the experiment because it might be something we want to share. Yeah, right, but some kind of central right. Yeah, because a lot of these are SaaS based. A lot of them are out, kind of in the ethos of like knowledge tools, like note taking tools that I use. There would be no way for improving to know that its IP is in that tool if I didn't tell them. And so you've got to. You've got to have kind of a reporting and honor system for the employees to tell you where your data and vendors live. Chris: So one of the things that I know that improving and the leadership and improving which includes you. You've done a great job of building a culture and a company that embraces technology, embraces innovation. What can you share about that experience and that journey at improving to maybe help others understand, you know how they may be able to do the same thing. Devlin: Absolutely so. I have the oddity of looking at this kind of if I look back down the mountain, it seems like it's a long way, but all I can see is looking up the mountain and it still seems insurmountable. So I guess first would be the journey doesn't end. Don't let the size of the mountain scare you, Just take a step Right. For us we have a lot of like growth and planning kind of baked into our employee management model. We call it PATH, that's our employee growth systems, and part of that is maintaining your marketable job skills, literally what we call hard skills right, the marketability of a person to maintain. Because there's this kind of natural degradation If I stop learning, I become less and less valuable because the market moves ahead of me. Right, and so, recognizing that truth and going okay, what are you doing this quarter to grow with technologies? Then we go okay, what new tech are you learning or playing with or experimenting with this quarter? What we have found is, as long as there's a vehicle for them to share that back to the company and make an impact, people are highly engaged If it is just playing over here and then they have to come back over here and do the same thing that they've been doing for 15 years less engagement, and so creating the vehicle in which their experiments can have a long lasting impact on the business created a lot of engagement. And then the other side of it is we recognized a while ago that if you're not growing, you're dying as a business, and that's true for all of our people. It's what we call the plateau of slow death. Like you've just decided to coast that will have an accelerating decline in your value to the business. How do we help people stay on a plateau of slow growth where they're still incrementally investing? Sure, Now for us that's five hours a week because we're a technology company, it moves quick. Right, that might not need to be five hours a week for somebody in manufacturing, distribution etc. But probably an hour a week just reading. Like there's the Wall Street Journal podcast, there's this podcast that's phenomenal for staying abreast of what's happening. Like consume an hour a week of new information for you and your team, and you'd be amazed at what doing that week after week will do to the business. Like it just accelerates. And it sounds very simple. It was one of the first steps we took. Chris: You know that the dedication to being intentional about the learning and self improvement on a weekly basis, I think is amazing that any business right I believe so I am amazed how many business owners and friends I have that work in businesses and they're so busy that they're too busy to survive. I've said here in this firm before and you have to repeat it, and we're all can be victim of it and guilty of it, but busy can't be an excuse. I'm too busy to do X when X is strategic work on how to improve the company or yourself. Busy can't be an excuse, Because if it is, then nothing will ever get done because you always feel too busy right, and so I pay for a lot of tools. Devlin: I'm a well augmented human right. One of those tools is summaries of like business articles and books and all that. And so while I was sitting here waiting for this conversation, I was reading one of those. And it's that overarching approach of like how am I getting value out of those moments, like when a meeting wraps up early, do you sigh in relief and like, walk out and waste 10 minutes? Maybe that's good recovery and you need that for emotional balance. Okay, but is it intentional? Did you go hey, you know what I need emotional balance and chose that. Or did you go? I got 10 minutes. I'm going to read that book summary, or I'm going to read an article, or I'm going to check out what's on HPJ innovation stuff, like those questions. Right, just making the consumption of data an option mentally for all this. This is why I say like, a lot of our barriers are psychological, because the technology is actually not scary Once you start exploring it. It's only scary when it's like Skynet and Terminator from the movies, and so then it's scary and that makes sense. Chris: But let's get this right, let's bring this full circle from the beginning of the conversation. Right what you're talking about and recommending people. Be intentional about that. Self learning, that discipline around self learning and improvement, is really going to be essential as new technologies come online, because we you said earlier right Technology is going to force the worker to adapt and the only way you can adapt is by continuing to learn. So, to be successful alongside technology like AI, it's going to be essential. Devlin: This is actually. I'm a future optimist, and what I mean by that is I think that technology elevates humanity right, Very similar to capitalism. Elevating humanity it has made life better. It's increased longevity, it's done a lot of things. Now, that's not to say technology is perfect and we live in utopia Like, but it is. Technology elevates us, but it makes us do the harder version of life right. Technology allows us to play life on hard mode. So, like social media, I can doom scroll forever, which means I have to own the choice. Right Before that, technology enabled me to stay connected with all my friends. I didn't have to make that choice Right. Right, ai, by taking a lot of the complexity, a lot of the time consuming tasks off my plate, means that all that's left are the difficult tasks, it's the hard mode tasks, and getting really good at the hard mode tasks is the value creation in the future. It's hey, I got to go write this software. The writing of the software, the actual typing, is going to get much easier, just like accounting, just like bookkeeping, just like going through and like automatic scanning of discovery documents in the legal space. Sure, used to be very time consuming Now is being accelerated by AI and automation. So now then, the hard part is understanding what software I need to write and why, understanding what those transactions mean to the business and why, understanding what, in that discovery, is pertinent, important and relevant to the story I'm telling. Right, like all the hard tasks, get left the difficult task, because those are the ones AI is really bad at Right. Chris: Basically for now. So before we wrap this up, I definitely want to ask you your thoughts on regulation and what you think Congress should or shouldn't do around putting some regulations in the AI space. Devlin: So AI regulation is coming, like that's going to be the case. Any sufficiently developed technology ends up getting regulated at some point. Should do. Transparency to empower a educated consumer is phenomenal Like stating if you've baked an ethical bias or a political or religious bias into a model so that the people who are using it can choose, right, that makes sense. Chris: Realize that the output is tilted in some way. Devlin: Right, that's great to know as a consumer. Right, and luckily that's where a lot of the early regulations in this space are tilting. The shouldn't do side of it is dangerously close to that, which is then publish how you built the model to prove that statement, which is a lot like saying give everybody your proprietary trade secrets. Right, there's a reason that open AI stopped publishing a lot of their and here's exactly how we built it, and that's because a whole bunch of other companies took that research that they poured tens of billions of dollars into and created additional models that were almost identical in performance. Right Now they're different and they were developed by different teams and all that. But, like, there's a reason it went from we have one major version of this to we now have 15 publicly available commercial models. Right, that gets dangerous when you start regulating people to destroying their business, and so that's the line I'm hoping we walk the stifled innovation that happens on that second one we're seeing in the EU when they passed the and here's all the restrictions of AI you have to publish your training set and your methodology and all this stuff. It's like awesome, and there was a mass exodus of AI companies from that area. Like yeah, they're like nope, we are not going to, not going to participate if you require us to kill ourselves. Chris: Right. And so we're going to invest time and money in something that they can't then have a return on. Devlin: I mean, if you look at the open AI side of it, this is tens of billions of dollars in decades of research and development and work to make this happen. Imagine if you then had a law that said and you have to enable your competitor, who doesn't have that cost, to then rapidly get to the same point for a 10th Right, and so there's a balance between you want to democratize some of it, you've got to balance the investment side of it, and if you go too far which I believe personal belief that the EU did it just causes a significant drop in investment. Chris: So you know, kind of with that in mind, where do you kind of foresee the evolution of AI over the next five to 10 years? Devlin: We have largely looked at AI as the Jetsons robot or terminator, where it's this one thing that is omnipowerful, omnikable, right, omnipresent. I don't believe that's where we're going. The best minds in this space, of which I get to talk to I am not one of, I beg the difference. Go ahead. They would tell you that it will be a cloud of things like imagine that you're surrounded by Chris's swarm of empowering bots. You've got a bot that helps you manage your schedule. You've got a bot that helps you take notes from a meeting without having to like jot them down, and all of these save you 10, 15, 20 minutes an hour and a half a day. That means somehow Chris is doing 50 hours of work in a eight hour day because you've got this super human capability that's empowered by all of these things. That's where we're headed. I just saw I was playing around with a toolkit that there's been a lot of hype over the last few weeks is the video generator, pica. It's like mid journey or Dolly or stable diffusion for images, but does videos. Chris: Okay. Devlin: Like cinematographic grade quality. The problem is you have to also get really good at understanding camera movements and placement and blocking and all these things that directors have known for decades, and so it's not built for this average consumer. It's built for making folks with that knowledge massively more successful. Right, being able to go and here's a rough of my movie idea. Right. Here's a short of my movie idea for $1,000, not 70. Chris: Right. Devlin: Right, that will accelerate the creative space in movie making, but it's not going to get rid of a need for that knowledge base. Same thing's true with geophysics and well-planning and the energy space. How do we conceptualize all of this and make a human significantly more powerful? So this team that includes a drilling engineer, a geophysicist and all this can plan wells and make financial analysis, and all that in days, not years. Right, that acceleration is where we're going to see it. We're going to see it through these kind of micro enhancements. I carry several of them with me. I've got a note-taking system that maps all of the connected topics that I've been researching and digging into and it's wicked, fun and crazy. But I built a chat system on it that runs on my laptop and so I can ask questions on my notes. I'm like, hey, in my last Vistage meeting there was a speaker who talked about this what were the key takeaways? And it goes. Here's the notes. Here are the key takeaways. It's that kind of empowerment, because human memory is fallible, and so how many of us have wished like I wish I had a better memory. Chris: It doesn't have to live in my head. Yeah, Kind of like what it. There was something five minutes ago I said I needed to do and now I can't remember what it is. How often does that happen? Devlin: I carry around to do this and to do this integrates with it, and so at the end of the day, right before I typically leave the office, I get a reminder set from the automation I hooked up to it. Now it looks at my calendar and goes where's the right point to remind a Devlin to do those things before the end of the day. So like folks literally like I don't know how you do this, I'm like I don't, I'm very well augmented that yeah, you said that more than once. Chris: I know you mean it very well augmented. So I was going to ask you what some of your favorite AI tools are. I think you've shared them just now, but maybe just a quick summary of maybe three or four of your favorite tools for the listeners who were trying to frantically take notes. Devlin: So I for network management. So my personal network management I use clayearth. You literally go to. Clayearth is the URL. I think it's phenomenal and I use that to manage my network. It does not spam or reach out to, it just helps me reach out and stay connected the kind of in my business version of that one is dynamics. We use sales copilot for dynamics. Einstein in Salesforce does the same thing. Chris: So in the business. Devlin: We use a different one because different needs, right? Sure For note taking, I use obsidian. You can use ever note or one note in this same thing and it'll do a lot of the same AI enablement through plug ins and those kinds of things. Chris: And then you mentioned one about just the main of the reminder. Devlin: So I use to do is and power automate. I've combined those two tools. So if you're in the Microsoft stack right, you use office 365 or Microsoft 365, you have access to this one already I didn't know it and so you can go to makepowercom. It's a Microsoft tool. You'll log in with your Microsoft thing and you can describe what you want it to do. I did this yesterday. I was presenting to a group of CEOs on this topic and I was like take the notes, my handwritten notes that I emailed a picture of myself. Take the notes I emailed a picture of to myself, parse them, put the text in my notebook, scan it for action items and put those action items into do list. Literally, that's all I described. And it goes okay, and it's got this massive library of these tiny little tasks and it pulls them all together and goes. Here's the automation that will do that and it writes the rough draft, the prototype of the automation for you and you just click all right, create. And it goes. This is the permissions I'm going to need. Are you good with that? Yep, go. And it's there and it's running. I had to write no code, I had to wire nothing together, it just did it and so we're using this for, like, back office automation all the time. Like, hey, take this output of our financial system, slice it, dice it in this way and it writes the pivot table creation and all that in Excel. Like that's might be half an hour or 45 minutes that I just saved our business partner in accounting, and so it's a lot of these tiny little bots. Chris: Wow. So when you think about AI and how it could be disruptive to industry, what are maybe one of the top two industries you think it's going to be the most disruptive to? Devlin: So oddly, I think logistics, supply chain and manufacturing are probably those two. One, they've typically been under invested in technology and so there's a lot of low hanging fruit. But two, it gives pricing power. Like, imagine that I can compress the labor to accomplish a task. I can now out price my competitors who aren't doing that, and in those two spaces where they're very commoditized prices can't. If you can be 3% cheaper while maintaining your margins, that's the ballgame and you can just put people out of business. So I think those two are going to have massive kind of immediate six to 18 month impact. If you look slightly beyond that, the construction space is huge in this AP great Houston story here has a robot called Dusty that they helped to develop. It takes the construction documents for a high rise and it prints the lay down onto the concrete. It uses basically a Roomba guided by AI. It parses the construction documents and, in color coded paint, prints the lay down. And it reduces the labor of manual labor, construction labor, of building out that building, because they don't have to snap chalk lines and measure everything and everything else, they just follow the color coded thing, which also means I need lower scale labor, which is the labor savings. And so these things are changing the game and changing the pricing power on a lot of these fixed bid contracts. And so you see some interesting spaces where traditionally non technology based business has a lot of low hanging fruit, like fintech and financial services has been heavily invested in technology. Less low hanging fruit there, sure. So the disruptive stuff I think is going to be in those three over the next few years. Chris: Okay, Devlin, this has been such an interesting and fun conversations. Thank you for doing that. I want to just turn just to a little bit of the fun side of things when I have a guest in, and what was your first job, I guess you told us today you were programming, but was that where you get paid to do it? Devlin: No. So my first job there was a pool near our house and I love like there was a cherry seven up, like you got the bottle cap thing and you could earn points and order stuff. Like that moment in time and I my parents like I didn't have enough allowance to like as much cherry seven up as I wanted, right, and so I talked to the owner of the pool that we were a member of near our house into letting me like, do the chlorine and the cleanup and scrub the pool for cash when I was 12. Like this was definitely not legal. And then so like I'm moving buckets of chlorine and doing all this stuff while my friends are playing at the pool, because I was earning $5 a day that I could spend on cherry seven up. Chris: I grew up from an early age right. I love it. Devlin: So hopefully I don't get anybody in trouble. I'm not giving you names of pools, okay. Chris: So what do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Devlin: Oh, barbecue Hands down. Yeah, I have a massive pit smoker in my backyard Like oh, for real Okay. So we throw a barbecue in Dallas every year for fourth of July, feed like 400 people. We throw one here at our office for Labor Day, memorial Day, which one's at the end of the summer. Chris: Labor Day, labor Day. Devlin: For Labor Day feed like 250 folks. Chris: Like I'm bigger than barbecue. You're serious? All right, I love it. And what do you like to do for fun when you're not out speaking? Devlin: on AI. So I play a lot of golf with my wife and she kicks my butt, or I like video games and stuff like that, and so my brother and I play a lot of video games Very good. Chris: Well, like I said, Dylan, I love the conversations we've had in the past. What you shared today was so enlightening and I know we'll be valuable to those listening, and I said that they probably, like me, took a lot of notes that they'll try to implement into their daily life. So thanks again for being here. Thank you, thank you.

This is a new series of Crazy Wisdom where I invited my dad Stewart Alsop II to bring people from his past as a tech journalist and uncover the best stories from the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s about the personal computing revolution and apply them to the AI revolution currently happening. Our first guest Donna Dubinsky talks about her career experiences at Apple, handheld innovator Handspring, her work as the CEO of Palm (of the Palm Pilot handheld mobile device), and current AI work at Numenta. She and Stewart Alsop II both go deep on how the personal computing industry led to the mobile revoltuions and now how we got to where we are today. Dubinsky encourages listeners to stay tuned to developments at NatCast, her current project associated with the CHIPS Act. If you subscribe to chatGPT4, check out this GPT we trained on the conversation Timestamps 00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and the AI Revolution 00:50 The AI Bubble and Lessons from Past Revolutions 01:28 Invitation to Engage with the Podcast 02:04 Introducing the Special Guest: Donna Dubinsky 02:31 Reminiscing about the Past: The Agenda Conference 03:30 The Evolution of Computing Devices 06:14 The Changing Landscape of the Computer Industry 06:58 The Ubiquity of Computing and the Future of the Chips Industry 08:11 The Evolution of Apple and Personal Device Preferences 14:28 The Journey of Numenta and the Future of AI 29:15 The Evolution of Mainframes and the Future of AI on Phones 37:31 The Early Days of the Tech Community 38:30 Transition from Mainframes to Personal Computing 39:04 The Launch of the Palm Pilot 41:30 The Evolution of the Microcomputer Business 42:59 The Role of Government in Advancing Technology 44:46 The Challenges of Manufacturing and Design in the Tech Industry 01:08:05 The Impact of Pricing on Perceived Value 01:09:17 The Highs and Lows of the Palm Pilot Journey 01:12:26 Current Work in AI and the CHIPS Act Key Insights Early Days of Computing and Mainframes: Initially, computing was not a common feature on everyone's desk. Mainframes, the early giants of the computing world, were massive and expensive, accessible only to large corporations and the government. These machines were housed in special rooms and were far from being personal or portable​​​​. Transition to Client-Server Models and Personalization: Computing started evolving with the development of client-server architecture. From the large, centralized mainframes, the industry moved to a model where computing was more distributed. Time-sharing systems allowed multiple users to access mainframe resources, leading to a gradual democratization of computing power. This shift laid the groundwork for the development of personal computers​​. The Era of Desktops and Handheld Devices: The next significant shift was the move to desktops and eventually to handheld devices. This evolution represented a dramatic change in how people interacted with computers, making them more personal and portable. The podcast mentions how devices like the Apple II brought computing into educational settings, revolutionizing how people could use these tools​​​​. The Impact of the Palm Pilot: The Palm Pilot is highlighted as a significant milestone in personal computing. Before the Palm, handheld devices were simply smaller versions of existing technology. The Palm Pilot, however, adopted a different approach. It did not try to replicate all functionalities of a PC. For instance, it did not support printing directly, positioning itself as a window or client to the PC, thus embracing a kind of client-server model. This decision not only made the device more practical and focused but also less expensive to support​​. Evolution of Form Factors: The podcast discusses the evolution of computing devices in terms of form factors. There were three main form factors: desktop (too big to carry), notebook (fit in a briefcase), and handheld (fit in a pocket or purse). Each form factor was defined by how users could physically carry and interact with these devices. It was believed that devices falling between these form factors would not be successful, although this was later proven not entirely accurate with the success of intermediate devices like tablets​​.

In this fascinating episode, we chat with Ed Magnin. From his first encounter with video games to pioneering developments on the Apple II, Ed shares his unique insights and experiences. We explore the early days of online services in 1979, his involvement with iconic companies like Cinemaware and MicroProse, and the intricacies of porting games across platforms like the Amiga, Apple II, and GameBoy. Ed's passion for 1950s sci-fi and its influence on his work, the dynamic culture at Cinemaware, and his journey through the evolving gaming landscape from the SNES to mobile gaming are all on the table. Contents: 00:00 - The Week's Retro News Stories 38:34 - Ed Magnin Interview Please visit our amazing sponsors and help to support the show: Bitmap Books https://www.bitmapbooks.com/ Get 3 months of ExpressVPN for FREE: https://expressvpn.com/retro We need your help to ensure the future of the podcast, if you'd like to help us with running costs, equipment and hosting, please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://theretrohour.com/support/ https://www.patreon.com/retrohour Get your Retro Hour merchandise: https://bit.ly/33OWBKd Join our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/GQw8qp8 Website: http://theretrohour.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theretrohour/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/retrohouruk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/retrohouruk/ Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/theretrohour Show notes: Atari 50 gets free updates: https://tinyurl.com/2t6p2x2t Turok 3 is remastered: https://tinyurl.com/587t2f5d Cyborg force comes to neo geo, dreamcast, and PSP: https://tinyurl.com/mwpdv4sf SEGA Partners With Anicorn To Launch $800 Mega Drive/Genesis Watches: https://tinyurl.com/3cv23rfh A new Commodore console?: https://tinyurl.com/yc6a8svb

Did you know that Star Wars almost started a war in real life, over a sandcrawler model? Would the film have been so wildly successful if someone else had been cast in the role of Han Solo, such as – let's say – Christopher Walken? How would a band today be received if their drug use was so integral to their music, that they considered thanking their dealer in the liner notes? And let's take that iPhone from your pocket, and compare it to the speed of an Apple II computer in 1977, which was 3,000 times slower. Join us as we explore revolutionary cultural shifts in the late 70s, and how these phenomena have evolved in the last four decades.Writer, Host, and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahonAudio Producer: Jenny SnyderWriters and Researchers: Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, and Kari AntonProduction Coordinator: Andrea Champoux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Laine Nooney (NYU) joins me to discuss the early days of personal computing - particularly how people figured out what to do with home computers after they became convinced that they needed one - in their 2023 book The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal. If you were alive in the pre-internet era, this book is both a great trip down memory lane and a new way to think about the usual hagiographic "Great Man" retellings of the early years of the industry. If you're a bit younger, you'll get great insight into just how not obvious it was what in the hell we would do with computers at home, even though it seemed like everyone wanted one. Please support Mass for Shut-ins, an independent and ad-free podcast, via Patreon. Contact me via twitter (@edburmila), at least for now. I am on Bluesky at edburmila.bsky.social as well. Thanks: Dr. Laine Nooney, the bands that contribute music (IfIHadAHiFi, The Sump Pumps, Oscar Bait), Zachary Sielaff, Question Cathy, and all Patreon supporters, subscribers, and listeners.