Speakers

At various points between 6pm and 7pm, our guest speakers will do short talks and answer questions. There's (currently) no precise schedule.

Presentations will most likely happen at Station 1, interspersed with music playing on the Jaguar.

Paul Cubbage - "Atari Program Exchange"

(From Wikipedia) Atari Program Exchange (APX) was a division of Atari, Inc. that distributed software for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers through a quarterly mail-order catalog. It ran from 1982 to 1984. APX was a mail-order catalog of user-written software for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. APX allowed all programmers, not just professionals, to submit their programs for commercial distribution. If selected, that program was added to the catalog along with the credit to that programmer (unlike Atari's own mainstream software). Many APX programs were games, but also included a wide variety of applications, utilities, programmers' tools, and educational software.

Paul managed the software publishing operation for the Atari Program Exchange, working with developers to bring products to market. APX published 274 original titles from 108 different authors (including 16 teenages) in the span of just over 2 years.

Bill Kendrick - "Persistence of Vision for more colors"

Bill Kendrick (host of Atari Party) he created the Atari 8-bit computer game "Gem Drop", a clone of the arcade puzzle game "Magical Drop III". Programmed in Action!, it utilizes a quickly-animated multicolored font that causes more colors to appear on screen than are actually being displayed in a single frame. He'll briefly talk about this effect, and other similar graphics tricks that people before and after him had created.

Zach Matley - "Homebrew 2600 programming"

Zach Matley has created a number of Atari 2600 games, including hacks of existing titles (i.e., "Combat Redux", based on the original "Combat") as well as all-new games (creator of "Four-Play" and one of the programmers that worked on AtariAge's "Toyshop Trouble"). He'll talk briefly about homebrew programming on the 2600.

Bob Woolley - "Atari XL hardware hacking"

Along with designing numerous hardware upgrades for Atari 8-bit computers — Upgrade an XF551 floppy disk to use 3.5" disks, instead of 5.25"; Battery-backed up RAM; Connect IDE hard drive to Parallel Bus Interface (PBI); Add a PBI to the 1200XL; Upgrade CPU with 65816 (16-bit, faster, 6502-compatible); Video output improvements — he also took over running Atari Classics magazine, and was part of the Atari-oriented San Leandro Computer Club.