Atari 7800 Designers Talk Atari, 7800, GCC

TheAlchemist writes "Applefritter.com has posted recordings of the talks that took place at the Vintage Computer Festival held at Sun's Boston campus July 16th and 17th. One of the talks revolved around the Atari 7800's 20th Anniversary, and was presented by Curt Vendel of Atarimuseum.com and Steve Golson, one of the original designers of the Atari 7800, the successor to the Atari 5200 that has more in common with the 2600 than the 5200. The presentation and accompanying slide show covered the history of GCC (the company that designed the 7800 for Atari, as well as many 7800 games), Atari, and the 7800. Sitting in the front row of the audience were 10 former GCC employees, who provided additional insight during the presentation. You can listen to the full Atari 7800 session here, and can find more talks from the Vintage Computer Festival here."

Comments

Voice recognition

[vasqzr]

Anyone care to post a transcript of the interview?

Re:Voice recognition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's over an hour long, which is a LOT to transcribe. I am working on a transcript, but it probably won't be ready until the weekend. Check the atariage.com forums for it.

The Damage to My Desk

[Jason Scott]

I am stunned with myself; I had this date on a calendar on my wall, ready to go to it. After all, it took place 10 miles from my house. And here I read about it now, on Slashdot, 10 days afterwards. That's a heartbreaker.

I'm glad I got to go the Philly Classic show, and hang out with Curt and some of the other fine folks, but I definitely would have enjoyed this one too. I'm sorry, Curt! Next time.

I'm really glad to hear these talks are going up where people like myself can hear them. Well, guess I better go to the west coast one this year, instead.

I hope we have more of these soon.

classics are good

[shaitand]

I suppose everyone has their classic favorites, something they cuddled up to in the beginning.

I actually had and used several of the old "classics" I hear about, and none compared with C64/128. Those things were hackable in ways never before dreamed of... kind of like the Amiga, which I would now call vintage if there weren't people still selling the things for a few thousand.

Re:classics are good

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite. I feel that way about my old Pentium III 800MHz. I really shed a tear when I upgraded a year or so ago, that machine had been my bread and butter for nearly two years. I bet a few of the readers here will get misty eyed hearing the specs, 16Mb ATI Radeon 7500, 128Mb of RAM, 40Mb hard disk. I used an old 15" CRT monitor with it - can you even get those any more?

Superb, and from the golden age of gaming (Quake Arena, Unreal Tournament, and many others.) It's still in the attic and one day I guess I'll show my grandkids how we used to play games.

Re:classics are good

[Lisandro]

The C64 is one of the best personal computers in history, no doubt about it. The things that people managed to do with it are mind-boggling, specially when you consider the machine limitations - 64kb of *total* memory, so RAM was less than that, 1MHz clock, very limited resolution and color palette, and a very basic sound synthetizer chip (even when most of it was top-notch hardware back then). Check http://www.lemmon64.com/ for all your C64 need, there's a lot of gems laying arround. I recently fired up the VICE emulator for C64 and digged an old cd with 200mb of games and demos... and had a blast, i don't mind admitting it. It's weird when you have more fun playing Uridium or Tapper than modern games.

Re:classics are good

[Lisandro]

Sorry, make that http://www.lemon64.com/!

Re:classics are good

[Anonymous Coward]

C64 was a cheap piece of crap. Yes, there were a lot of smart kids hacking it. But they would have been hacking Apples if their parents wouldn't have cheaped out and bought C64s instead. (We had an Osbourne lol.)

Re:classics are good

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn- who is that girl on the front page?!?

There are two pictures, (hit refresh) and I can't decide which one I like more. Blue shirt with gigantic knockers, or the slightly see-through white shirt...(same girl, different pics)

Re:classics are good

[Tofino]

Yep, I once hard-soldered a VCR remote control (back when they had wires) into the back port (one of them) on my C64. This was so I could write a Dragon's Lair-style game using Robotech episodes. It worked better than you'd think :). Mom was impressed, all right.

Re:classics are good

[Tofino]

64kb of *total* memory, so RAM was less than that

Minor nitpick. Lots of the 64k was protected, but it was indeed overwriteable if you did the right POKEs to allow said overwriting. Lots of whacky shenanigans ensue...

Re:classics are good

[Anonymous Coward]

I somewhat agree with you. I wanted an apple, but the price was too high for my parents. The c64 speced about the same and it was cheaper. Sure it was not a hackers box, but I was only 8. Looking back, I am glad that my parents saved the money.

Re:classics are good

[Anonymous Coward]

Uridium... Hm, I think Katakis was more fun.

Re:classics are good

[sammaffei]

Hey idiot, some people are poor. You know.

I had an Atari 1200XL with 1050 Floppy drive. It was all my folks could afford and I loved it. Best computer keyboard at the time.

Re:classics are good

[twalk]

The C64 was cheap, but it wasn't a piece of crap. Apples were *much* more expensive, and pretty much the least capable of the "big 3" of the time (Apple/Atari/C64). Ataris had a lot more capabilities than either of those, but they were 2X the price of a C64. However the real thing that damned Apple & Atari (esp. Atari) was not only was the C64 less than 1/2 the price of either, but it also was able to do 90%+ of what people wanted. (The C64 had only about 60% or so of the capabilities of an Atari, but if people decided that they didn't need/want those capabilities, then who cares?) (Memories from someone who programed all 3 systems. Man I wish that I'd never sold my copy of De Re Atari, for nostalga if nothing else.)

C64?!?

[vrai]

Pah I say! Pah! The greatest computer of the 80's was clearly the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. How could anything compete with it's classic design, surreal colour system and the awesome 'dead flesh' keyboard. The C64 had a full sized space bar - just like computers made in the Soviet Union! Solid proof that owning a C64 made you a filthy red!

Now if you don't mind "3D Ant Attack" has just loaded ...

GCC != GCC

[dbirchall]

I had to RTFblurb to realize that no, the GCC compiler hadn't been ported to yet another processor architecture. Pity, that, I was just about to imagine a beo... oh, nevermind.