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Episode 144 - Interview with Don French and Steve Leininger, Co-Designers of the TRS-80 Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   FutureVision Research  Hello, and welcome to episode 144 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for October, 2024.  I am Randy Kindig, your host for this audio ode to the home computers of the past. This month I have a special treat for you.  At the recent Tandy Assembly, which I will talk about in more detail later in the podcast, not only were there a lot of great people, exhibits, vendors, and camaraderie, but we were also blessed with having Steve Leininger as one of the guest speakers along with his partner in the development of the TRS-80 Model I, Don French! I recently had an interview with Steve Leininger (episode 142: https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-142-interview-with-steve-leininger-designer-of-the-trs-80-model-i ), thanks to his willingness to be interviewed at the recent VCF Southeast in Atlanta.  That was a milestone for my podcast, as I had always wanted to talk with Steve.  I also had interviewed Don French several years ago, prior to his attending Tandy Assembly in 2017, in episode 53 (https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-53-interview-with-don-french-co-designer-of-the-trs-80-model-i ).  This time, however, I was able to get an interview with Don and Steve together in the same interview!  That in itself was amazing and I think you'll really enjoy the back-and-forth between the two gentlemen who are obviously and correctly proud of the work they did to bring the TRS-80 to the world and Tandy into the computer business. Next month, I will talk about another computer rescue that came my way recently, and which is also tied into Tandy Assembly and Radio Shack computers.  I'll not go into any further detail here as I don't want to spoil the story for you next month.  But believe me, it will be fun both to tell and to listen to. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To Soldering kits from FutureVision Research The Soldering Basics Kit  The BEAM Bot Soldering Kit  The Demonstrator Soldering Kit  Tandy Assembly 2024 - https://www.tandyassembly.com/  Drive cable for the TRS-80 Model I from Ian Mavric - https://www.ebay.com/str/trs80universe  RAM card for Tandy PC2/Sharp PC1500 from Jeff Birt - https://www.soigeneris.com/sharp-pc-1500-memory-modules  Upcoming Shows 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  Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule)   

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.  

James and John discuss eBay finds: Apple-owned Macintosh IIx, Color Classic II, and Power Macintosh 9600/300. John shows off the colorful innards of his clear Macintosh SE/30, and news includes the end of I'm a Mac, make a modern Mac retro, KansasFest, and VCF Southeast.  Join our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, watch us on YouTube, and visit us at RetroMacCast.

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Jack Nutting, Blake Patterson, and Carrington Vanston Topic: On whether RealPlayer suuuuuuux Computer video: What have been the most striking impacts computer video has had on you? Topic/Feedback links: My first taste of CGA composite color 1K colors on CGA: How it's done Full Motion Video World Steve Gibson’s page on subpixel rendering The mysterious orange vertical line (Apple Orchard v1n2 Fall 1980) Cornica.org Retro Computing News: Triton - The Forgotten 1970's Home Computer - Part 1 An Absurd Number of People Still Play Microsoft Solitaire Play MS Solitaire Online Living Computer Museum + Labs is closed at least for now Microsoft Open-Sources GW-BASIC Github: Microsoft GW-BASIC Interpreter Source Code Upcoming shows VCF Southeast 8.0. July 10-12. Atlanta, GA. KansasFest. July 24-25. Online. WozFest SWEET 16. Sat Jul 25. Online. VCF West. August 1-2. Mountain View, CA (Computer History Museum). VCF East. October 10-12, 2020 (rescheduled). InfoAge. Wall, NJ. Vintage Computer-related Commercials: Windows 95 TRS-80 Model 4 Retro Computing Gift Idea: Bitsbox subscription for kids Auction Picks: Blake: CBC-7000 Model No. Dialer VI See also: Discusson of the CBC-7000 (@Foone) Apple IIc in original pacakaging Vintage 61414 Monochrome Display Monitor Conrac Corporation See also: Discussion of the monitor Carrington: Alice Through The Looking Glass for Lisa and Mac See also: Chess.app on Mac OS X and OpenStep See also: Screens: Mac Plus See also: Alice (Folklore.org) See also: AliceX online Legacy graphical text adventure for 128K Mac Paul: Cheat code for Apple hardware completist Very white Apple II joystick Model 4P in its box Another nice 4P set Hyperportable CP/M machine NEC PC-8001A and peripherals TAM Feedback/Discussion: @rcrpodcast on Twitter Vintage Computer Forum RCR Podcast on Facebook Throwback Network Throwback Network on Facebook Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X - link Includes: "Corncob" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) which is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License Show audio files hosted by CyberEars Listen/Download:

ANTIC Episode 68 In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast… Jonathan Halliday joins as we discuss his amazing work on the SIDE loaders for the Incognito and Ultimate 1MB  and the work going on for the SIDE3 cart. READY! Recurring Links  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kevin’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   What We’ve Been Up To plotter ink https://twitter.com/KaySavetz/status/1258830441320079360 But steve bowsell @A8bit working on 3-D printable solution  Kay’s old Atari games https://twitter.com/KaySavetz/status/1259569122364407808 ; https://github.com/savetz (Scavange, boggler, rats, testtube, hubcap of fortune, Komix Creator)  Carrington and Kay play Scavange at Eaten By A Grue http://monsterfeet.com/grue/notes/35 play it at https://archive.org/details/Scavange  Catalina broke Altirra under WINE and Xformer, Kay got them both fixed https://atariage.com/forums/topic/286036-altirra-on-macos-update-thread/page/2/#comments  and https://atariage.com/forums/topic/289510-xformer-emulator-running-on-macos/?do=findComment&comment=4544143  Updated firmware to Jonathan Halliday’s for Incognito in 800 - https://atari8.co.uk/firmware/incognito/  RetroPie on Pi4 - https://retropie.org.uk/  8Bit Classics - https://www.8bitclassics.com/  News  Retro Format is a physical print magazine covering computers and game consoles from the 1970s to the early 2000s; including Atari - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/8bitmagazine/retro-format-magazine-issues-1-to-12 PaperCraft - Rocky Bergen: “I've been working on an entire Atari 8-bit tradeshow display. But it may be some time before I can finish. I have an 800XL at home so that may actually show up before I finish this display.” - http://rockybergen.com/ ; https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158054518491047&set=p.10158054518491047&type=3&theater  MicroProse is back. Seems that one of the original founders, Bill Stealy, and a new partner have purchased the company back from whoever had it last (Infogrammes/Atari?) https://www.microprose.com/#; Kay’s 2017 interview with Bill Stealy - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-263-bill-stealey-co-founder-of-microprose-software Compute magazine disk image depository - Allan Bushman - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/307591-compute-magazine-disk-image-depository/ Break Into Chat, Josh Renaud's blog about BBS history, retro computing post “Unearthed: My Atari 8-bit cassette tape” - https://breakintochat.com/blog/2020/05/30/unearthed-my-atari-8-bit-cassette-tape/ Atari Portable Project - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/306569-atari-portable-project/ Kickstarter: The 8-BIT WARS - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyremic/the-8-bit-wars New version of Atari800MacX - makes it compatible with Catalina - https://github.com/atarimacosx/Atari800MacX/releases  also fixed plotter support for Renderrific - https://github.com/atarimacosx/Atari800MacX/issues/10    Shows Upcoming Shows where you might see Atari computers (or Atari people): July 10 - 12, VCF Southeast, in conjunction with Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta, GA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/ CANCELLED July 24-25, KansasFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/ (virtual) cost $20, opened registration on April 30th August 1, VCF West, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - http://vcfed.org/wp/2020/05/24/vcf-west-2020-will-be-a-virtual-event/ GONE VIRTUAL - The entire event will be scheduled for 6-8 hours on Saturday August 1st; call for exhibitors and keynote speakers Aug. 20 - Aug. 23, 2020, Fujiama, Lengenfeld, Germany - http://abbuc.de/~atarixle/fuji/2020/  September 12-13, VCF Midwest, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  October 10 - 12, VCF East, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/ NOTE: You can order a t-shirt to support the VCF events at http://vcfed.org/wp/t-shirts/ for $20 + shipping Event page created by Chicago Classic Computing - http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html?fbclid=IwAR3Fm5hf7PCQj0yXBxXvj9J8Mp8GDwD2w1bfD_qktpPOnNYNoQUmN_EpgB8  Event page created by Floppy Days - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/  Event page on Vintage Is The New Old - https://vintageisthenewold.com/vintage-is-the-new-old-releases-new-events-calendar/  YouTube videos this month Games That Push the Limits of the Atari 8-Bit Family - Sharopolis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTUmiot6vyM  ANALOG Computing Games on your Atari 8bit - The New Retro Show - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9xOpFnqo88  Several demos from Poland, including one called Windows 95 - American NTSC - demo for Atari XL/XE from Poland - Miesiu - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7qy3DwsIX4  The Atari 8bit and ST games by Jon Williams - Into the Vertical Blank - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-HJR2WpWTc  A companion to the Into The Vertical Blank: Generation Atari Season 3 Episode 11 Episode interview with Jon.  New at Github Bill Kendrick pointed to omc65 (Our Macro Crossassembler for 6502) at  https://GitHub.com/pkali/omc65  Disassembling SynCalc - https://github.com/jduerstock/syncalc  Alternate Reality: The Dungeon for Atari 8-bits cartridge project - https://github.com/Wilheim1977/ARDungeonCartridge  New at Archive.org Italian XL catalog - https://archive.org/details/1984-catalogo-atari-home-computer/mode/2up and advertisements https://archive.org/details/@philsan69  Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.

Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, Jack Nutting, Blake Patterson, and Carrington Vanston Topic: As Seen on TV Retro computers, as featured in TV and movies. What shows at the time had computers in them? What shows of today has yesterday's computers in them? Topic/Feedback links: Rebuilding James Bond’s Apple IIc - A Software Forgery Blake mentions: War Games, The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins, Whiz Kids, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Electric Dreams, Cloak and Dagger, Weird Science, Knight Rider, Kindergarden Cop, City Slickers, Wayne's World The War Games IMSAI 8080 Earl mentions: Terminator - Rise Of The Machines, Star Wreck - In The Pirkinning, UFO, Colossus: The Forbin Project Jack mentions: Manhunt: Unabomber Carrington mentions: Desk Set, Alphaville, World on a Wire, Crosstalk, The Rachel Papers, Evilspeak, Takeover, The KGB, The Computer, and Me, Triumph of the Nerds, Pirates of Silicon Valley, Computer Chess, John Wick series, Magic 2.0: Off to Be the Wizard (Scott Meyer). Paul mentions: Halt & Catch Fire, Stranger Things, The Americans, The Goldbergs, Young Sheldon, Schooled, Blindspot, Devs, The IT Crowd, Lost, Preacher, Timeless, Mr. Robot Spectrum Next unboxing video New C64 printed circuit boards Camelot dungeon game, on Cyber1 (PLATO) Retro Computing News: Bill Metcalfe, BBS game developer, passed away Apple and Steve Jobs' Biggest Mistakes Ep 1 - The Macintosh GraphicConverter now opens Apple II formats ATR Image Explorer The Long View - Macintosh Y2020 Moritz & Alexander (2019). Vintage electronics for trusted radiation measurements and verified dismantlement of nuclear weapons. PLOS ONE. Bubbles Whiting—Using Punch Cards 1970s Unbuilt Kit Computers Sylvain Lefebvre made a DooM-chip Brief Engadget write-up of DooM-chip Upcoming shows VCF Southeast 8.0. July 10-12. Atlanta, GA. KansasFest. July 24-25. Online. WozFest SWEET 16. Sat Jul 25. Online. VCF West. August 1-2. Mountain View, CA (Computer History Museum). VCF East. October 10-12, 2020 (rescheduled). InfoAge. Wall, NJ. Vintage Computer-related Commercials: Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Retro Computing Gift Idea: UpCart Plus for C64 Auction Picks: Blake: Mindset Computer System See also: Mindset Computer (Bytecellar) Exatron Stringy Floppy Disk Drive Wafer media Carrington: AOL t-shirt My Other Computer Is An Apple II (sticker) My Other Computer Is A Commodore 64 (sticker) My Other Tablet Is A Newton (sticker) Radio Shack CGP-115 4-pen printer Spare paper rolls for CGP-115 Earl: MAINDEC-11-DZMMC-A-PB (PDP-8 paper tape) Commodore Computer Gold Rim Shot Glass NeXT shot glass Paul: Applesurance diagnostic disk controller See also: Apple II The Review, Spring 1986 (p. 18) See also: Stephen Buggie presentation (KansasFest 1996) Personal Software VisiStuff Tandy 1000 EX DEC PDP etc. stuff Martek Electronics Apple II external keyboard See also: Compute! (Feb 1989) See also: Computist (#74) Closing words links: Clipper Summer 87 unboxing Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation (book, CNN Style) Feedback/Discussion: @rcrpodcast on Twitter Vintage Computer Forum RCR Podcast on Facebook Throwback Network Throwback Network on Facebook Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X - link Show audio files hosted by CyberEars Listen/Download:

Panelists: Earl Evans (hosting), Paul Hagstrom, Jack Nutting, and Carrington Vanston Topic: Things we (came to/no longer) hate Things we used to hate, but maybe no longer do. Or maybe still do. Or maybe didn't used to hate, but now do. Topic/Feedback links: RetroMacCast interviews Rocky Bergen about papercraft creations Mimic Spartan Retro Computing News: Mini vMac for Nintendo 3DS MacRumors write-up of 3DS Mini vMac ComputerLand and the BC88 Al Alcorn explains early color graphics Retrofair 2020 Mar Hicks: Scapegoating COBOL Why I Still Use A 34-Year-Old IBM Model M Keyboard Tweeting from the Teletype Volkseigener Betrieb (VEB) Robotron PC 1715 on parade, East Berlin, 1987. 10 pfennig 1987 stamp featuring the Robotron PC 1715 Primary Optics, Robert Henke’s Commodore CBM 8032 Based Audio-Visual Art Robert Henke Loop 2015 Keynote: Failure = Success Upcoming shows VCF Southeast 8.0. July 10-12. Atlanta, GA. KansasFest. July 24-25. Online. WozFest SWEET 16. Sat Jul 25. Online. VCF West. August 1-2. Mountain View, CA (Computer History Museum). VCF East. October 10-12, 2020 (rescheduled). InfoAge. Wall, NJ. Vintage Computer-related Commercials: Computerland commercial Retro Computing Gift Idea: Floppy Disk iron-on patches Auction Picks: Carrington: PS/2 Googly Eyed Duck Mouse TRS-80 Model I Briefcase Earl: Pi 1541 Paul: TRS-80 Model 16B Bunch of Apple II era manuals of no particular rarity Black Hole Colorforms Power Mac power button replacement Atari Lynx kit case Feedback/Discussion: @rcrpodcast on Twitter Vintage Computer Forum RCR Podcast on Facebook Throwback Network Throwback Network on Facebook Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X - link Show audio files hosted by CyberEars Listen/Download:

ANTIC Episode 67 - Still Socially Distant In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast...Randy forgets to call the artist, formerly known as Kevin, as Kay about 100 times, we continue discussion on AtariFests and World of Atari, we help you with your free time by telling you about papercraft computers and RetroPie, and help you navigate what’s happening with vintage computer shows; plus a whole lot more Atari news! READY! Recurring Links  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kevin’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   What We’ve Been Up To Carol Shaw’s Colleen Calculator - View the pages or download the images - https://archive.org/details/ColleenCalculator9K/mode/2up  Carol also sent the printout of Rev. A of Atari VCS Checkers - https://archive.org/details/VCScheckersA/mode/2up  A community member has digitized the listing - https://github.com/white-flame/vcs-checkers  Kay’s 10-line contest entries 2014-2020 on GitHub - https://github.com/savetz?tab=repositories  Bankster  http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-bankster_35883.html https://atariage.com/forums/topic/236768-the-atari-interview-discussion-thread/?do=findComment&comment=4506193  Video of Bankster - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0cAf8ydvQc  Kay’s 10-line videos 256 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Qh-JVKaBM  120 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2CmDYKIU6s  80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awNkk8yNkDU 2020 Atari 10-liners on one disk, by vitoco - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/301250-2020-basic-10liner-contest/?do=findComment&comment=4502763  AtariFest/World of Atari thread on AtariAge - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/304554-atarifest-and-world-of-atari  ABBUC (Atari Bit Byter User Club) - http://www.abbuc.de/  Recent Interviews http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-378-gabriel-baum-atari-conversational-french-and-spanish  http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-380-atari-speed-reading-karlyn-kamm-and-brad-oltrogge  News   Jason Moore - Atari Projects on HackaDay https://hackaday.com/2020/04/29/classic-8-bit-computing-the-atari-way/ http://atariprojects.org/  PaperCraft models - http://rockybergen.com/ Atari 800, and NeXT Cube are on the short short list  MidiMax at Best Electronics - http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/laser_printers.htm#MidiMax  RetroPie 4.6 released with Raspberry Pi 4 support - https://retropie.org.uk/2020/04/retropie-4-6-released-with-raspberry-pi-4-support/  RetroMagazine - https://www.retromagazine.net/    Jonathan Halliday has updated his Incognito, Ultimate 1MB, etc. to 3.1 - https://atari8.co.uk/    Shows Upcoming Shows where you might see Atari computers (or Atari people): July 10 - 12, VCF Southeast, in conjunction with Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta, GA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/  July 24-25, KansasFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/ (virtual) cost $20, opened registration on April 30th August 1-2, VCF West, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/  Fri, Aug 14, 2020 – Sun, Aug 16, 2020, Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Portland OR - https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ CANCELLED Aug. 20 - Aug. 23, 2020, Fujiama, Lengenfeld, Germany - http://abbuc.de/~atarixle/fuji/2020/  September 12-13, VCF Midwest, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  October 10 - 12, VCF East, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/  Event page created by Chicago Classic Computing - http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html?fbclid=IwAR3Fm5hf7PCQj0yXBxXvj9J8Mp8GDwD2w1bfD_qktpPOnNYNoQUmN_EpgB8  Event page created by Floppy Days - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/  Event page on Vintage Is The New Old - https://vintageisthenewold.com/vintage-is-the-new-old-releases-new-events-calendar/  YouTube videos this month 20MHz Atari 800XL: Rapidus, U1MB, and Sophia DVI: Part Two - Flashjazzcat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnfjxNqoZ7Y  800XL with Rapidus and Ultimate 1MB: What Have We Learned? - Flashjazzcat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2go2VU7xyYU  How to flash Ultimate 1MB and SIDE/SIDE2 with new firmware - flashjazzcat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SLyjhLba6c  New Games for your Atari 8 bit Part 12 - The New Retro Show - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIrZHksTKIM - Time Pilot (2018) and Runner Bear (2020) SpartaDos X Cartridge - 8-bit and more - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvIyj6-lMQ  Bits of the past - Super Sparta DOS PCB - https://www.bitsofthepast.com  iCore64 - Atari ICD R-Time 8 Cartridge Case, XL/XE cart extender - https://corei64.com/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=62_87&product_id=67 New at Github https://github.com/A-Fitz/Atari-8bit-Pac-Man-Port  https://github.com/jtsom/AnalogSourceCode  New at Archive.org Current Notes Volume 10 Number 9 - https://archive.org/details/current-notes-volume-10-number-9-november-1990/mode/2up  Many issues of Atari Interface magazine: https://archive.org/details/@scottithgames  Steve Boswell many issues of Atari User: https://archive.org/details/@choccyhobnob  Feedback Rare Atari software found: Atamon DXG 5724 V1.3 is an Atari Germany title - https://www.atarinside.com/blog/index.php/atamon-dxg-5724/  https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=ATA%20MON%20DXG%205724  German version of Sky Writer was the last puzzle of the series: Spielend lernen mit Atari-Programmen- https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Articles#section-Articles-GermanyAtariDeutschlandGmbH  From CSS, we have the BUG/65 manual Rev. 1.0 missing page - https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Bug65  Tanktics bits and piece to play this hybrid game. These are available at https://www.mobygames.com/game/tanktics_/cover-art/gameCoverId,349600/.  The parts for Dnieper River Line  are there as well - https://www.mobygames.com/game/dnieper-river-line/cover-art/gameCoverId,348252/  Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender. 

The BBC Micro: History Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 98 of the Floppy Days Podcast for April, 2020! I hope everyone is staying safe in these days of isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic.  One day we’ll look back at this as a strange time in all our lives. Again, for the podcast, we are finishing up the tail-end of the year 1981 in the personal computer timeline and the primary topic of this and the next couple of podcasts will be the BBC Micro.  I talked with Steve Furber, one of the primary developers of the Beeb, in the last episode concerning his part in and thoughts about those heady times.  In this episode I’m going to cover a more general history of the BBC Micro to give everyone a view of why the machine was developed and its huge impact on personal and educational computer history, especially in the UK.  For the UK listeners, you’ll likely be very familiar with the Beeb’s history.  For the  US listeners, and listeners in other parts of the world, you may be less familiar with the story.  I know that until I dove into the research for this episode, I only had a cursory familiarity with this machine and had no inkling of its true place in computer history. For future episodes, software, emulators, books, Web sites, modern upgrades, etc. will be explored. I hope you enjoy this short excursion into the history of a machine that I’ve come to love and respect. Links Mentioned in the Show: Thoughts and Memories - Richard Broadhurst Richard’s Games on the Complete BBC Micro Games Archive - http://bbcmicro.co.uk/index.php?rt_R=&rt_B=&rt_M=&rt_P=&rt_U=&rt_W=&rt_L=&search=broadhurst&on_T=on&on_Y=on&on_P=on&on_A=on&on_G=on&on_S=on&on_Z=on&on_C=on&sort=b  Richard’s Games Videos on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1eiw5ttGL3ZagVI0c_vSe19KNALTwuXX  New Acquisitions/What I’ve Been Up To Fusion magazines - https://fusionretrobooks.com/  Erebus - Oric Atmos SD Interface - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Erebus-Oric-Atmos-sd-card-flash-cart-Oric1-/174120579582  Home Computer Course and Home Computer Advanced Course magazines https://archive.org/details/The_Home_Computer_Course  https://archive.org/details/The_Home_Computer_Advanced_Course_01/  Spectrum DIV/MMC Future - https://www.thefuturewas8bit.com/shop/sinclair/divmmcfuture.html  HP85Disk project - https://www.tindie.com/products/hp85disk/hp85disk-disk-emulator-for-hp85-series-computers/ BBC Micro formatted CF card and ROM - http://www.retroclinic.com/  Upcoming Shows After VCF PNW 2020 was cancelled in March, an individual allowed exhibitors to post their own videos to this website - http://www.retrofair2020.com/ CoCoTALK! hosted a live, virtual CoCoFEST! Saturday April 18th. You can view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4qkRI1JyqU&feature=youtu.be July 10 - 12, VCF Southeast, in conjunction with Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta, GA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/  July 24-25, KansasFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/ (virtual) cost $20, expect to open registration on April 30th  August 1-2, VCF West, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/  Fri, Aug 14, 2020 – Sun, Aug 16, 2020, Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Portland OR - https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ CANCELLED Aug. 20 - Aug. 23, 2020, Fujiama, Lengenfeld, Germany - http://abbuc.de/~atarixle/fuji/2020/  September 12-13, VCF Midwest, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  October 10 - 12, VCF East, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/  NOTE: You can order a t-shirt to support the VCF events at http://vcfed.org/wp/t-shirts/ for $20 + shipping October 24, Chicago TI International World Faire, Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/  October 30 - November 1, 2020, Tandy Assembly, Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  December ?, World of Commodore, Mississauga (Toronto), Ontario, Canada - https://www.tpug.ca/  References There is a docudrama "Micro Men" about the early 80s and winning the joint government/BBC contract to produce a computer that would be the focus of the initiative. 78 page PDF by Tilly Blyth of the Science Museum: "The legacy of the BBC Micro - effecting change in the UK's cultures of computing" “Now the Chips are Down: The BBC Micro (Platform Studies)” by Alison Gazzard - https://amzn.to/2yLnYdf 

In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast:  In our 50th episode, Kevin tells us about all his secret tours, we tell you about upcoming contests, review new books, and read lots of feedback from our listeners. READY! Recurring Links Floppy Days Podcast AtariArchives.org AtariMagazines.com Kevin’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   Donate to Ted Nelson project at: https://paypal.me/Savetz TEH: Tech Enthusiast Hour - https://tehpodcast.com What We’ve Been Up To Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest - https://archive.org/details/@savetz?and%5B%5D=Vintage+Computer+Festival+Pacific+Northwest Atari 1020 plotter https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=yAetCgnxYbc Replacement X/Y gears: https://www.shapeways.com/product/CMBQ6D2Z4 LCM tour (Dorsett tapes) - http://www.livingcomputers.org/ Internet Archive visit - http://www.archive.org Theses project - https://archive.org/details/@savetz?and%5B%5D=thesis Dandy source code: https://archive.org/details/Dandy_source REWRITE word processor https://archive.org/details/REWRITE_word_processor Indy Vintage Computer Club - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1082702455167563/ Video enhancement options VBXE - RGB output providing crisp clear picture using LCD TV or RGB monitor - https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=53 Bryan Edewaard’s  UAV (Ultimate Atari Video) board - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260267-the-uav-rev-d-video-upgrade-thread/ Sofia - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/258702-new-development-gtia-in-cpld/ News 8 BIT ANNUAL book -  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/8bitmagazine/8-bit-annual-2018-for-8-bit-computers-and-consoles If you have an Android device, you can listen to it with a free app InfoMan made called Retro Atari Podcasts -  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andromo.dev5592.app460787&hl=en BASIC Ten-Liners are back for 2018 - http://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium/basic-10liners-2018 ABBUC Software contest - Freetz on AtariAge - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/272415-abbuc-software-competition-2018/ Stunt Car Racer - http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7541 RetroChallenge 2018/04 - http://www.retrochallenge.org/ That company that calls itself Atari is doing a cryptocurrency - Atari Token - http://fortune.com/2018/02/16/atari-cryptocurrency-atari-token/ The A-Z of Atari 8-bit Games: Volume 2 (The Atari 8-bit) Kindle Edition by Kieren Hawkin - https://www.amazon.com/Z-Atari-8-bit-Games-ebook/dp/B07B7P5CSF Upcoming Shows where you might see Atari computers (or Atari people): VCF Southeast, April 21 & 22, 2018, this year at the Computer Museum of America Roswell, GA Vintage Computer Festival East - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/ , When: May 18-20, 2018, Where: InfoAge Science Center, 2201 Marconi Rd., Wall, NJ Southern Fried June 8-10 http://southernfriedgameroomexpo.com KansasFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/ , July 17-22, 2018, Kansas City, Missouri VCF West Aug 4-5 - https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - http://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ - Oregon Convention Center on October 19-21, 2018 other shows that will definitely occur but not yet announced: VCF Midwest - Elk Grove Village, IL - September Atari Party - keep eye open International Atari Shows (Nir Dary) - https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=io8bv441r87ffratdj1ir2lggs@group.calendar.google.com&pli=1 YouTube videos this month YouTube videos this month - using the search term “Atari 800” Atari 400 vs. Commodore VIC-20 - Round 1 - Fight! - by Retro Systems Rescue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeOJY9VUkyQ Atari 400 Y/C (S-video) video mod by FlashJazzCat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WejZHNOMgYU Atari 400 demonstration video tapes by Bill Lange - different resolutions - 5 minute video - shows Programmer, Communicator, Entertainer, Educator 1280 x 720 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE_qS5IEQhQ 1920 x 1080 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5DpP_-zrck 720 x 480 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3AGOXO4sdM A Word From Our Sponsor ATARI 400 Demonstration Video Tapes - Bill Lange -  https://atari8bitads.blogspot.com/2018/03/atari-home-computer-merchandising-aids.html New at Archive.Org https://archive.org/details/Atari810DiskPeripheralDeviceDescription https://archive.org/details/NiteLiteBBS Cosmi's Text Pro II/Data-Pro II manual - https://archive.org/details/TextProDataPro https://archive.org/details/Conflict2500Manual1981 https://archive.org/details/MidiTrackIIIManual https://archive.org/details/atari_800XL_Field_Service_manual_201802 https://archive.org/details/1010CassetteRecorderFieldServiceManual https://archive.org/details/SpaceKnights by david heller dr wacko https://archive.org/details/SummaryOfCommandsCrusadeInEurope https://archive.org/details/Dandy_source End of Show Music MotionRide (Pete) rock version of Disco Dirge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa-twkXhXDQ Possible side effects of listening to the Antic podcast include stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat; drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous; mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation; increased appetite, weight changes; insomnia, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; dry mouth, intense hate of Commodore, and Amiga lust. Certain conditions apply. Offer good for those with approved credit. Member FDIC. An equal housing lender.

James and John discuss eBay finds: Apple stapler, Think Different Watch, and Lisa 2. James reviews the Apple HomePod, and news includes an Apple VR goggle patent, and VCF Southeast. To see all of the show notes and join our website, visit us at RetroMacCast.

James and John discuss eBay finds: G4 PowerMac, TechStep, and 2c LCD. They finish off the interviews from VCF SE 5.0, and news includes The Last Jedi trailer, iPhone 10th anniversary, and iPod in the movies.   To see all of the show notes and join our website, visit us at RetroMacCast

The Commodore Vic-20, Part I Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 73 of the Floppy Days Podcast, where modern computers are simply considered peripherals to the classic computers.  My name is Randy Kindig.  In the computer timeline, we’re still squarely in the year 1980.  In that year, a breakthrough computer, with a great keyboard, color graphics and sound was announced for under $300.  Of course, if you’ve been listening to the last few episodes of the podcast, you know that we’re talking about the Commodore Vic-20.  William Shatner said it best in the TV ads of the time: “The wonder computer of the 1980’s: The Commodore Vic-20”.  So far on Floppy Days, we’ve covered the history of the machine from the perspective of three different gentlemen: Brian Bagnall, historian; Neil Harris, member of the Vic Commando Team; and Michael Tomczyk, leader of that same Vic Commando Team and assistant to Jack Tramiel.  In this episode, friends and fellow podcasters Jeff Salzman and Todd George, help me go through tech specs, peripherals, books, magazines, emulators, Web sites, and more for this groundbreaking machine.  As there was a lot of material to cover, rather than making an extra-long episode, I’m breaking this topic up into 2 different shows.  So, I hope you enjoy part 1 of this episode about the Vic-20.  Before we do that, I want to thank Brent Santin and Peter Cetinski for sharing their memories of the Vic-20.  Later in the episode Brent has some additional memories that he shares with us as well. Web site: http://floppydays.com email: floppydays@gmail.com Twitter: @floppydays Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/floppydays on iTunes and Stitcher (www.stitcher.com) part of the Throwback Network (www.throwbacknetwork.net ) Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/I5bhao6ixoxkzq52qlku5mfb43q?t=FloppyDays_Vintage_Computing_Podcast Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions ZX Spectrum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum TRS-80 Quick Printer II - http://www.trs-80.org/trs-80-quick-printer/ TRS-80 Assembler/Editor - https://books.google.com/books?id=VjAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA34  News ZX Spectrum BASIC Jam - https://itch.io/jam/zx-spectrum-basic-jam Upcoming Shows Pacific Commodore Expo at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle on June 10-11 2017 - https://www.facebook.com/events/1171192169619276/ KFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, July 18th-23rd Commodore Vegas Expo v13 - July 29-30, 2017, California Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex Vintage Computer Festival West - August 5-6, 2017, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west-xi/ VCFMW - September 9-10, Elk Grove Village, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ , https://www.facebook.com/events/805945506224113/ Tandy Assembly - October 6-8, 2017 - Chillocothe, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/https://www.facebook.com/events/671911082972172/ Chicago TI International World’s Faire - October 15, Evanston, IL - http://www.chicagotiug.com/tiki-index.php?page=Faire World of Commodore - first weekend in December - Toronto - http://www.tpug.ca/ Indy-area Vintage Computer Get-together - https://www.facebook.com/events/418655208501577/ Feedback Mauricio Vives photos from VCF Southeast on Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/gp/mvives/N02Q99 Computer Chronicles episode with the correct pronunciation of Tramiel - https://youtu.be/AMD2nF7meDI?t=262 NY Times article on correct pronunciation of Tramiel - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/technology/jack-tramiel-a-pioneer-in-computers-dies-at-83.html ASVARO Electronics Flea Market - http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/ Peripherals http://sleepingelephant.com/denial/wiki/index.php?title=Peripherals

James and John discuss eBay finds: Apple Collection clock, Apple 2 Smart Drive, and Macintosh Watch. Charles from RetroConnector gives an update on his products, and news includes WWDC, Mac Buyer's Guide and VCF Southeast.     To see all of the show notes and join our website, visit us at RetroMacCast

Interview with Brian Bagnall, Author “Commodore, A Company on the Edge” Welcome to the Floppy Days Podcast, where old computers survive to tell another tale.  My name is Randy Kindig.  In the previous couple of episodes, I covered the history of the Vic-20 computer with the help of Neil Harris, Brian Bagnall, and Michael Tomczyk.  Although I used some audio clips from each of those gentlemen to walk through the history timeline, I actually have a full-blown interview with each that I want to share with you over the span of three episodes.  I’ve already published the interview with Michael Tomczyk, leader of the Vic Commando Team and assistant to Jack Tramiel.  Next up, I am publishing the interview with Brian Bagnall, author of the book “Commodore, A Company on the Edge” and who is working on the follow-up book “Commodore: The Amiga Years”. Before we get to that, I will very briefly cover upcoming shows and a bit of feedback, but then we will get right into the interview with Brian Bagnall. Web site: http://floppydays.com email: floppydays@gmail.com Twitter: @floppydays Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/floppydays on iTunes and Stitcher (www.stitcher.com) part of the Throwback Network (www.throwbacknetwork.net ) Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/I5bhao6ixoxkzq52qlku5mfb43q?t=FloppyDays_Vintage_Computing_Podcast   Links Mentioned in the Show: News Over 150 Commodore VIC-20 Cartridges In Under 1½ Hours by Kieren Hawkin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej5CS4Wv9UE Upcoming Shows VCF East - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/, March 31-April 2, 2017, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ CoCoFest - April 22 & 23, 2017 - Lombard, IL - http://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/index.shtml VCF Southeast 5.0 - April 29 & 30, 2017, Roswell, GA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/ TI Fest West - Saturday April 29th from 9 am to 5 pm,  Oak Tree Restaurant in Woodland, Washington - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260465-fest-west-2017/ Pacific Commodore Expo at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle on June 10-11 2017 - https://www.facebook.com/events/1171192169619276/ KFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, July 18th-23rd Commodore Vegas Expo v13 - July 29-30, 2017, California Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex Vintage Computer Festival West - August 5-6, 2017, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west-xi/ VCFMW - September 9-10, Elk Grove Village, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ , https://www.facebook.com/events/805945506224113/ Tandy Assembly - October 6-8, 2017 - Chillocothe, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/https://www.facebook.com/events/671911082972172/ Chicago TI International World’s Faire - October 15, Evanston, IL - http://www.chicagotiug.com/tiki-index.php?page=Faire World of Commodore - first weekend in December - Toronto - http://www.tpug.ca/ Feedback Atari XEGS Cart by Cart Podcast - http://xegs8bit.com/ Interview “Commodore, A Company on the Edge” by Brian Bagnall - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0973864966/?tag=flodaypod-20

Interview with Michael Tomczyk, Vic-20 Commando Team Leader at Commodore Welcome to the Floppy Days Podcasts, where old computers are the best computers and new old computers are even better.  Last month, I covered the history of the Vic-20 computer with the help of Neil Harris, Brian Bagnall, and Michael Tomczyk.  Although I used some audio clips from each of those gentlemen to walk through the history timeline, I actually have a full-blown interview with each that I want to share with you over the span of three episodes.  For this episode, I will be publishing the interview with Michael Tomczyk.  Michael was with Commodore for some time, was an assistant to none other than Jack Tramiel, and was the leader of the team known as the Vic Commando Team.  He was happy to talk about his time at Commodore and turned out to be a very interesting interview and a great guy with which to talk. Before we get to that, I do have a few housekeeping items to cover, such as a few new acquisitions, some brief news, and a bit of feedback. Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions Ultimate 1MB - http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=67 “Atari DOS 2.5:1050 Disk Drive Owner’s Manual” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_DOS “Art of Atari” book by Tim Lapetino - http://www.amazon.com/dp/1524101036/?tag=flodaypod-20 News BASIC 10-liners contest - http://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium/basic-10liners-2017 RetroChallenge 2017/04 - http://retrochallenge.tuxdriver.com/ Upcoming Shows VCF East - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/, March 31-April 2, 2017, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ CoCoFest - April 22 & 23, 2017 - Lombard, IL - http://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/index.shtml VCF Southeast 5.0 - April 29 & 30, 2017, Roswell, GA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/ TI Fest West - Saturday April 29th from 9 am to 5 pm,  Oak Tree Restaurant in Woodland, Washington - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260465-fest-west-2017/ Pacific Commodore Expo at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle on June 10-11 2017 - https://www.facebook.com/events/1171192169619276/ KFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, July 18th-23rd Commodore Vegas Expo v13 - July 29-30, 2017, California Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex Vintage Computer Festival West - August 5-6, 2017, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west-xi/ VCFMW - September 9-10, Elk Grove Village, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ , https://www.facebook.com/events/805945506224113/ Tandy Assembly - October 6-8, 2017 - Chillocothe, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/https://www.facebook.com/events/671911082972172/ Chicago TI International World’s Faire - October 15, Evanston, IL - http://www.chicagotiug.com/tiki-index.php?page=Faire World of Commodore - first weekend in December - Toronto - http://www.tpug.ca/ References “The home computer wars: An Insider's Account of Commodore and Jack Tramiel” by Michael Tomczyk - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0942386752/?tag=flodaypod-20 “The First Home Computer: 30 Years Later” by Michael Tomczyk - http://www.academia.edu/2242039/The_First_Home_Computer_30_Years_Later

Ed Kelly, Edladdin Hello, welcome to a special interview-only episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast.  My name is Randy Kindig.  This interview is with Ed Kelly of Edladdin.  Edladdin produces a fantastic family of controllers for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari Flashback, and classic 8-bit computers.  I met Ed at VCF Southeast in 2016 and was so impressed by his controllers that I later bought one and am very happy with it.  They are fully customizable and are very rugged.  This is likely the last controller you’ll need.  I sat down with Ed and we discussed how his company got started, what controllers they produce and what the future looks like. This interview took place on December 4, 2016. Links: http://edladdin.com/

The Commodore Vic-20 - History, with Brian Bagnall, Michael Tomczyk, and Neil Harris Welcome to episode 69 of the Floppy Days Podcast, where our computers may be old, but that’s why we love them. In the vintage computer timeline, we are in 1980.  The next computer I want to discuss that debuted that year is the Commodore Vic-20.  The Vic-20 is significant because it was the first color computer to sell for less than $300, at a time when other home computers with color graphics were 2 to 4 times that amount.  It also was the first home computer of any type to sell over 1 million units. In this first episode about the Vic-20, I want to cover the history of this machine: why it was developed, some of the stories around its development, what happened after its release, and when it was canceled.  To that end, I contacted some notable persons that were involved with the roll-out and support of the Vic-20, as well as a person who was involved in documenting Commodore’s history.  The first person I contacted was Michael Tomczyk, who was an assistant to Jack Tramiel at Commodore and who led the so-called “Vic Commando Team”.  Michael was intimately involved in the marketing and support of the Vic.  In addition, a key member of his team, Neil Harris, agreed to help with this episode as well.  And, finally, I talked with Brian Bagnall, who you might recognize as the author of “Commodore: A Company on the Edge”.  This is an amazing line up of people who are very familiar with the Vic-20 and its history and I’m very lucky to have been able to get their assistance with telling its story. Before we jump into that, I will cover a few new vintage computer items I’ve acquired, cover a bit of news, and cover a bit of feedback I’ve received. Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions NADSBox - http://www.club100.org/catalog.html “Now the Chips Are Down: The BBC Micro (Platform Studies)” Hardcover by Alison Gazzard - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262034034/?tag=flodaypod-20 Compute’s Gazette - https://archive.org/details/compute-gazette “33 challenging computer games for TRS-80/Apple/PET Paperback” by David Chance - https://www.amazon.com/challenging-computer-games-TRS-80-Apple/dp/0830612750 “Atari Playground” by Fred D’Ignazio - https://www.amazon.com/Atari-playground-Fred-DIgnazio/dp/0810457709 Fred D’Ignazio Interview on ANTIC - http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-53-fred-dignazio-prolific-writer Juiced.GS - https://juiced.gs/ News Vintage Computer Party in Indy - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260834-indianapolis-area-vintage-computer-club/?hl=%2Bindy#entry3668612 Vintage is the New Old - http://www.vintageisthenewold.com Upcoming Shows VCF East - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/, March 31-April 2, 2017, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ CoCoFest - April 22 & 23, 2017 - Lombard, IL - http://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/index.shtml VCF Southeast 5.0 - April 29 & 30, 2017, Roswell, GA - http://vcfse.org/ KFest - https://www.kansasfest.org/, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, July 18th-23rd Commodore Vegas Expo v13 - July 29-30, 2017, California Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex VCFMW - September Tandy Assembly - October 6-8, 2017 - Chillocothe, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/https://www.facebook.com/events/671911082972172/ Chicago TI International World’s Faire - November World of Commodore - first weekend in December - Toronto Feedback Andy Collins’ blog about the Interak-1 - http://www.randomorbit.co.uk/?cat=122 References “Commodore, A Company on the Edge” by Brian Bagnall - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0973864966/?tag=flodaypod-20 “The home computer wars: An Insider's Account of Commodore and Jack Tramiel” by Michael Tomczyk - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0942386752/?tag=flodaypod-20 “The First Home Computer: 30 Years Later” by Michael Tomczyk - http://www.academia.edu/2242039/The_First_Home_Computer_30_Years_Later

In this episode of Antic the Atari 8-bit podcast: Nir Dary talks about all the available memory upgrade options (You need more memory!), we discuss what we’ve been up to in the Atari world, give you all the Atari 8-bit news that’s fit to print, and tell you about our “of-the-month” finds. READY Recurring Links Floppy Days Podcast AtariArchives.org AtariMagazines.com Kevin’s Book “Terrible Nerd” New Atari books scans at archive.org ANTIC feedback at AtariAge Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge ANTIC Facebook Page AHCS Eaten By a Grue   What we’ve been up to Vintage Computer Party in Indy - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260834-indianapolis-area-vintage-computer-club/?hl=%2Bindy#entry3668612 Ultimate 1MB - http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=67 “Art of Atari” book by Tim Lapetino - http://amzn.to/2hrX54h “Atari Playground” by Fred D'Ignazio - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0810457709/?tag=ataripodcast-20 “Atari DOS 2.5 - 1050 Disk Drive Owner’s Manual” - http://www.atarimania.com/documents/Atari%20DOS%202.5%20-%201050%20Disk%20Drive%20Owner's%20Manual.pdf Kevin’s 2016 In Review - http://atariaction.tumblr.com/post/155282564737/2016-in-review Loyd Dorsett FBI FOIA Response Mark Reid — Getaway! archives and development documents Trinity and Seastalker: http://monsterfeet.com/grue/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/savetz News RECOIL 3.5.0 - View retro graphics formats: Atari, Amiga, Apple II, ZX81, more - http://www.techcentral.ie/recoil-3-5-0/ Mac GraphicConverter Awesome new 3D printed case for the Atari Ultimate Cart Dropcheck 1200XL Cartridge port extension ATR8000 on eBay The 8-bit High Score Club Season 14 - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260911-high-score-club-season-14/ Pro(c) Atari Magazine Issue #12 &  Boxed Software - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260700-p-r-o-c-a-t-a-r-i-issue-12-available-now/#entry3670879 Pro(c) Magazine Website - http://www.proc-atari.de/ Fairlight game -  http://atariteca.blogspot.com/2016/12/completan-port-de-fairlight-para.html Buy a piece of Atari stock! - http://scripophily.net/atcorfampion.html Joystick Breadboard Breakout - http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Joystick-Breadboard-Breakout-for-C64-VIC20-Atari-2600-VCS-Development/332087625644 Vintage is the New Old - http://www.vintageisthenewold.com/ Benj Edwards - “Baked at Atari” song - http://www.techsongs.com/index.php/2016/06/23/baked-at-atari/ https://soundcloud.com/benjedwards/baked-at-atari#t=0:00 Upcoming Shows: Atari Invasion - Feb. 18, 2017 - Marsveen, Holland - http://atari-invasion.nl/ VCF East - March 31 through April 2, 2017 - Wall, NJ - http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/ VCF Southeast 4.0 - April 2 & 3, 2017, Roswell, GA - http://vcfse.org/ Tandy Assembly - October 6-8 - Chillocothe, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ https://www.facebook.com/events/671911082972172/ CoCoFest - April 22 & 23, 2017 - Lombard, IL - http://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/index.shtml KansasFest - July 18-23, 2017 - Kansas City, MO - http://www.kansasfest.org New at Archive.org https://archive.org/details/ForYourInformation https://archive.org/details/SilicaShop19880420 https://archive.org/details/Atari1200XLHomeComputerFieldServiceManualRev01 https://archive.org/details/Atari1027PrinterFieldServiceManualRev01 https://archive.org/details/Mosaic64KSelectNewsletterIssue1 Mark Reid — Getaway! archives and development documents https://archive.org/details/adventure-international-catalog-v2n4-1981 https://archive.org/details/adventure-international-catalog-v2n5-1982 https://archive.org/details/high-technology-software-catalog-1982 https://archive.org/details/the_tracer_201701 https://archive.org/details/book_atari_software_1983 Of-the-Month JOY-2-PIC Joystick to Microchip PIC MCU ICSP Programmer​ at Ataribits - http://ataribits.weebly.com/joy2pic.html Mathy van Nisselroy home page - http://www.mathyvannisselroy.nl/index.htm AtariLand - http://atariland.org/ - Rick Matias Nir Dary Segment - Memory Upgrades Memory upgrade tech info - http://home.arcor.de/walter.lojek/MyATARIHomepage/old_hp/MemUp/MemUp.HTM Memory upgrades banking scheme - http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-kinds-of-extra-ram-and-ramdisks-can-be-installed_73.html Software that support more than 64k ram - http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-programs-support-more-than-64k-ram_74.html Best Electronics 256k Memory upgrade kit - http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/800xl.htm#Wizz B&C ComputerVisions Memory upgrade - http://www.myatari.com/atarixlh.txt Lotharek Ultimate 1mb - http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=67 Ctirad 576XE external memory upgrade - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/232856-ram320xe576-order-thread/?hl=%20ctirad and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8M3wbwAzlQ Antonia 4MB memory upgrade - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/249405-new-4mb-ram-expansion/?hl=%20antonia and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkyXepEq4WI How to install ATARI 400 Upgrade to 48k from 16k - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBqqfqjb-x8 1MB Simm ram expansion - http://satantronic.atari.sk/?str=xe_1mbram Hiassoft 512k SRAM upgrade - http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#sram512k Byte Magazine Article on 256k memory upgrade - http://atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=362652

On this episode of Antic the Atari 8-bit podcast, we venture out into the big scary world — both Randy and I went to VCF SouthEast, and Kevin went to the museum. The winners of the 2016 10-line BASIC programming contest are announced, and Bill Kendrick drops knowledge about the demo scene. Recurring Links Floppy Days Podcast AtariArchives.org AtariMagazines.com Kevin’s Book “Terrible Nerd” New Atari books scans at archive.org ANTIC feedback at AtariAge Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge ANTIC Facebook Page What we’ve been up to Hacking Jumpman: Finished GP III video Kevin’s a winner! Game Masters special exhibit at OMSI - https://www.omsi.edu/gamemasters SpartaDOS X Super Cart Edladdin Controllers - http://edladdin.com/ Podcaster’s Roundtable at VCFSE Steve DeFrisco - Antic Interview 123 Steve DeFrisco Wing War breakout PCB - https://www.bitsofthepast.com/?p=833 Interview Discussion Bruce Poehlman game “The Last Starfighter”, orginally “Orbiter” The Last Starfighter cabinet Transcription of David Heller (Dr. Wacko) interview (thanks to Kevin Chase) News Atariada 2016 FLOP - Diskette electronic "magazine" for Atari XE / XL (Czech) - http://flop.atariportal.cz/ 10-line contest youtube vidoes in which Kevin tests all the 10-line Atari games Atari 65XE USB Keyboard by Tynemouth Software on Etsy Atari 65XE USB Keyboard complete with Raspberry Pi and USB hub Atari 65XE USB Keyboard with USB joystick controller where the original joystick ports are Insert coin to tour the new National Videogame Museum National Videogame Museum A Look At Video Game History: ‘The Art Of Atari’ Due For October Release “The Art of Atari” preview Upcoming Shows: Last Chicago CocoFest - http://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ April 23 & 24, 2016, Heron Point Convention Center, Lombard, IL Southern Fried GameRoom Expo June 10-12 KansasFest  - July 19-24, 2016 - https://www.kansasfest.org Atari Party - Saturday, July 30, at 12 PM - 5 PM in PDT, Mary L. Stephens Davis Branch Library, 315 E 14th St, Davis, California 95616 VCF west - Aug 6-7 VCF midwest — Sep 10-11, Elk Grove Village, IL PRGE Oct 21-23 http://www.retrogamingexpo.com Colo. Lottery Launches Atari Scratch-Off Upgraded internal replacement Mylars for the Atari 1200XL keyboard Widely used repair tips - 1200XL Keyboard Tune-up Atari800 handheld console emulator for Nintendo 3DS New at Archive.org APX manuals https://archive.org/details/@allan52 https://archive.org/details/XLXEPowerSupplies  - modern electronics magazine 1986 https://archive.org/details/ICDRamboXL256KBManual https://archive.org/details/AxiomAT846PrinterInterfaceManual https://archive.org/details/HebrewAtariClubJuly89 https://archive.org/details/AtariEnvisionSourceCode Bill’s Modern Segment "Control" demo, by LaResistance, 2010 Pouet entry: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=56481 DemoZoo entry: http://demozoo.org/productions/56527/ YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OsK4eC6rpg LaResistance website: http://laresistance.pigwa.net/ Based on "Control" demo for Amiga, by Oxygene, 1995 Pouet entry: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3031 Amiga Demoscene Archive entry: http://ada.untergrund.net/?p=demo&i=299 YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzOp3ngc1MA Definitions: "Demoescene" Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene “Demake” TV Tropes entry "Demakes" section of "Video game remake" article at Wikipedia Of the Month Bit 3 Full-View 80 - 80 column card for the Atari 800 - ebay auction Dave and Sandy Small wrote an article in Antic There's a few lines of BASIC code that will kick on the Bit-3. You'll find them at - http://www.cchaven.com/BIT3FV80.HTML  

Jason Scott Presentation at VCF Southeast 3.0 in Roswell, GA, May 2, 2015.   This is the Floppy Days Podcast on vintage computing and my name is Randy Kindig.  This is a special episode featuring Jason Scott of archive.org fame.  Many of you will be familiar with Jason Scott and the work he does in helping to preserve media and content, including content associated with our beloved vintage computers.  You may or may not be as familiar with the work also being done to emulate vintage computers and vintage gaming platforms in a browser.   On May 2, 2015 Jason Scott gave a presentation to the crowd at VCF Southeast entitled “Every Computer in Your Browser-The Internet Archive Emulated Software Collection.”  Jason and the VCFSE organizers  were kind enough to agree to allow me to rebroadcast this presentation on Floppy Days to help get the word out about all the great work being done to preserve our machines.  Jason also had presentation material to go along with the talk that I am posting on the Floppy Days site for your enjoyment.   Jason Scott is a Free-Range Archivist at the Internet Archive (archive.org), home of the Wayback Machine and 20 petabytes of saved media and content, provided for free for all. As the software curator, he is responsible for JSMESS project and integration into the Internet Archive's seemingly-endless pile of software, making it playable. He lives in Hopewell Junction, NY, mere hundreds of feet from where the CPUs of Nintendo 64s were manufactured. Jason is also a filmmaker. He is the creator of a 2005 documentary film about BBSes, BBS: The Documentary, and a 2010 documentary film about interactive fiction, GET LAMP.   Links   Presentation material - http://imgur.com/gallery/cNX4E

In this special joint podcast, live from VCF Southeast 3.0, we discuss our favorite parts of the show, play a game of “Never Have I Ever”, and more!   Podcast Title: “Inverse Antic Personal Computing Floppy Maccast”   Hosts: Antic - Randy Kindig, Kevin Savetz, Brad Arnold Floppy Days - Randy Kindig Inverse Atascii - Wade Ripkowski History of Personal Computing - David Greelish RetroMacCast - James Savage