Interview: Don (Atari 8-bit Scene)

Interview: Don (Atari 8 bit scene)

By lordcoxis (as phoenix)

phnx — Hi don!

don — hi phnx! ;)

phnx — First of all introduce yourself and explain what makes you mess with an 8bit machine up to this day :)

don — what makes ME mess with an 8bit machine is a little bit different from what makes other ppl mess with the 8bitters. when i was.. 6 years old, my uncle had an 8bit atari. when i was there, i always played pacman, frogger and all those classic games. i always wanted to have a computer myself. then, in 1991, my uncle died. in 1994 or something, i found his old atari in the basement of my fathers house. the atari got resurrected. now i like to sit there, 22 years old, coding and making music on exactly the same machine, i fell in love with, when i was 6. nice story, eh? :)

phnx — Is the Atari 8 bit scene still going strong? What groups still release productions?

don — well, the atari scene is unfortunately not very strong. of course there are demogroups, but mostly there are groups who release games, tools AND demos. i don't really like the atari8 scene, although the people are very friendly. i fiddle with the atari because i like the MACHINE.

phnx — Are there different models of 8bit Ataris?

don — sure. but they don't really differ. the original atari model is the atari 800 with 64k ram. the high end model (hehe) is the atari 130xe, with 128k ram, and an improved graphics chip. and the same design as the ST, only smaller :)

phnx — I'll be honest - I know absolutely jack shit about whats inside an Atari :) Can you describe its hardware?

don — the atari has the same CPU as the c64, but with a two times faster clock speed. the sound chip is called POKEY, and is quite okay. it has the typical atari sound. not as good as the C64's SID, but quite nice. the gem of the box is the gfx chip, called ANTIC. it has a display list, which means, you can define different screen modes for different scanlines. for example, you can have a screen with a low resolution and many colors in the top half of the screen, and a high resolution and less colors in the bottom. nice for intros.

phnx — What do you think are it's advantages/disadvantages in relation to other popular 8bitters (C64/Speccy/CPC/etc) ?

don — the clock speed is two times higher than the c64, and the graphic chip allows to display 265 colors at once (with some tricks). and scrolling! you don't have to move the data in memory, to scroll a picture across the screen. you can just move the visible area with three asm instructions and there you are: scrolling :)

phnx — What is your favourite atari demo, and why?

don — i don't know. really. most demos feature great effects (gouraud shading, real time morphing, lots of 3d stuff..), but most of the time, the design is BAD. i think i really prefer intros with nice music and nice pictures.

phnx — How often does new software (demos/games/etc) come out for the atari?

don — games etc come out quite often. mostly from poland. demos get released on atari partys, but it's not comparable with the c64, where you can get an new demo every day ;)

phnx — How do you think the Atari scene will be in a couple years from now? :)

don — exactly the same as now.

phnx — Thanks a lot for doing this don!