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Today I published my interview with Bob Stein. He worked at Atari Research in 1981-1982, hired by Alan Kay. He worked almost exclusively on an encyclopedia project: a potential collaboration between Atari and Encyclopaedia Britannica that did not turn into a product. He saved all sorts of interesting documents from his time at Atari, including a 1982 collection of nine colorful pencil drawings (drawn by Disney animator Glen Keane) depicting futuristic scenarios where people use a computerized encyclopedia to get information.
Video: https://youtu.be/No7MyFafWqU Audio: https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-442-bob-stein-atari-research
Support my patreon to help me keep doing these interviews: http://patreon.com/savetz
Yesterday I took possession of three Texas Instruments 99/4A computers. Complete with a speech synthesizer and the giant expansion box!
I’ve had these as a retro collector before, but wasn’t really in the mood to play with them so let them all go. That was years ago and now I am vibing with this machine. The last time I really paid any attention to them was when I went to TI Fest West in 2017
so: what is the state of the art? What’s the upgrade to get? I remember there was some sort of tiny box that was the equivalent of the expansion bread box. Doesn’t look like Fujinet is for sale yet. Advice appreciated.
275 issues of MicroTimes Magazine are now available at Internet Archive, with the blessing of the publisher. The magazines can be read online or downloaded, and are full text searchable. https://archive.org/details/microtimes?tab=collection&sort=date
Published starting in 1984, MicroTimes magazine was "California’s Computer Magazine”. Published in two editions (Northern and Southern California localizations) MicroTimes provided interviews, instructions, product reviews and opinion pieces related to all manner of home and business computers.
Great news — the next EIGHT episodes of Famous Computer Cafe have been digitized and uploaded to Internet Archive! You can listen now. They sound GREAT! It's amazing that these tapes are in such great condition after so many years (so far, at least, fingers crossed.)
It's thrilling to hear these episodes, which are 39 and 40 years old, and literally haven't been heard since they originally aired.
These episodes are available for everyone in the world to enjoy immediately. They are not private or for "backers only" — so if you hear something interesting, feel free to link to them. You're also welcome to link to the GoFundMe, which is still accepting contributions. (https://www.gofundme.com/f/digitizing-the-famous-computer-cafe)
I haven't listened to every minute of every show yet, so I'm excited to find out what gems you discover. If you have an Internet Archive account, you can leave comments as "reviews" in the Internet Archive items, or discuss what you hear on your favorite social media.
https://archive.org/details/famous-computer-cafe?sort=-addeddate
I just got word that there may be a few more tapes available, which will add to the expenses. (The fundraising goal covers purchase of the tapes, shipping, and digitization. Only if funding exceeds that will I get paid for my time managing this project.)
I am asking the computer history community to share these expenses to preserve an amazing part of computing history that was thought to be lost forever. Once digitized, the recordings will go online for free at Internet Archive, where they will be machine-transcribed and full-text searchable.
You can listen to the first two episodes that we’ve digitized right now. They probably have’t been heard since they were first broadcast. The Dec 7 1984 episode includes an interview with Steve Roberts, who was riding around the United States in a teched-out, computerized recumbent bicycle. https://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1984-12-07_Steve_Roberts The Jan 9 1985 episode includes an interview with Barbara Elman, publisher of Word Processing News. https://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-01-09_Barbara_Elman
The Famous Computer Cafe 1984-12-07 Steve RobertsAired on KFOX.Steven K. Roberts (born September 25, 1952) is an American journalist, writer, cyclist,...
But all the episodes (except one) were lost years ago. We thought they were gone forever.
Until now — thanks to extraordinary luck, I have purchased 35 reel-to-reel tapes that should contain roughly 54 episodes.
Buying the tapes was a gamble. There was no guarantee that they weren’t blanked or recorded over. But, it appears that the recordings survived! I have hired a trusted, professional digitizer to digitize them (I can handle 7.5” reels myself but don’t have the equipment for these hefty 10.5” reels.)
According to the labels, these tapes should have interviews with Bill Gates, Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, Bill Atkinson (creator of MacPaint), Steven Levy (journalist), Jack Tramiel (Atari), John Reese (Tronix), Joel Berez (Infocom), and many more. They aired Oct 1994 through July 1985.
Here's the inventory of tapes that I bought: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zx56qfqhKMmgaGyN6ZQ1lqaaNAohDXqgRHS1qM_vID0/edit?usp=sharing
I am raising money to pay for these tapes and for them to be professionally digitized. ...
Great news — the next EIGHT episodes of Famous Computer Cafe have been digitized and uploaded to Internet Archive! You can listen now. They sound GREAT! It's amazing that these tapes are in such great condition after so many years (so far, at least, fingers crossed.)
It's thrilling to hear these episodes, which are 39 and 40 years old, and literally haven't been heard since they originally aired.
These episodes are available for everyone in the world to enjoy immediately. They are not private or for "backers only" — so if you hear something interesting, feel free to link to them. You're also welcome to link to the GoFundMe, which is still accepting contributions. (https://www.gofundme.com/f/digitizing-the-famous-computer-cafe)
I haven't listened to every minute of every show yet, so I'm excited to find out what gems you discover. If you have an Internet Archive account, you can leave comments as "reviews" in the Internet Archive items, or discuss what you hear on your favorite social media.
https://archive.org/details/famous-computer-cafe?sort=-addeddate
I highlight the interviews here, but remember that every episode also has the computer news of the day and computer product advertisements that are best described as "quaint."
Here are the freshly uploaded shows:
Bill Atkinson of Apple Computer. This is part 2 of the conversation with Bill. This part stands on its own. We have the part 1 tape but it hasn't been digitized yet.
https://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-01-09_Bill_Atkinson
Jackie Massing of Silicon Valley Computer Camp and Doug Heineman of Xerox.
https://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-01-10_Jackie_Massing_and_Doug_Heineman
David Jonson "Dr. Disk" answers listener questions. https://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-01-10_David_Jonson
Steve Laff, of Friendly Computers, a computer store.
http://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-02-25_Steve_Laff
Fred Gladney of C.W. Gladney and Associates, a computer consultancy. http://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1984-12-06_Fred_Gladney
Mike Carbonne of Simonton Industries (ergonomic computer furniture). This one has an abrupt start: the beginning of show was not recorded, someone probably forgot to start the tape recorder.
http://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-01-24_Mike_Carbonne
...
The Famous Computer Cafe 1985-01-09 Bill Atkinson. This is part two of the interview. (Part one has not been digitized yet but it will be soon.) This episode...
Terry Thormodesgaard and Jim St. Omer Roy of Thor Agency. http://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-01-25_Terry_Thormodesgaard_and_Jim_St._Omer_Roy
Hershel Toomim, biofeedback pioneer. Dr. Toomim died in 2011. https://archive.org/details/the-famous-computer-cafe-1985-02-26_Hershel_Toomim
In the news: the announcement of the WELL, Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link.
What's next? No new episodes will be digitized until mid-June, so you have some time to enjoy these :) On June 17 I plan to drive the remainder of the reels to the digitizing lab, so we should have more shows by the middle to end of the month.
You can always see the newest additions to the Famous Computer Cafe collection at:
https://archive.org/details/famous-computer-cafe?sort=-addeddate
If you use an RSS reader, you can be notified as soon new episodes are uploaded to Internet Archive. Here's the RSS link: http://archive.org/services/collection-rss.php?collection=famous-computer-cafe
The Famous Computer Cafe 1985-01-25 Terry Thormodesgaard and Jim St. Omer Roy of THOR Agency. Aired on KIEV.
Olivier Guinart
Joshua A.C. Newman (he/they)
Cabel Sasser