Atari 8-bit history, still booting.
ANTIC is a long-running conversation about Atari 8-bit computers, where current community projects sit beside old hardware, software, and documentation finds. It suits listeners who enjoy emulators, programming extensions, floppy-disk rescue work, text adventures, and the small historical details that make old machines feel alive.
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ANTIC is a monthly, community-minded chronicle of Atari 8-bit computing. It treats the Atari 400, 800, XL, XE, and related systems as active territory. New software matters here. So do old disks, user-group newsletters, emulator interfaces, cartridges, obscure utilities, and the people still trying to preserve or extend them. The show usually begins loosely, with hosts checking in on what they have been building, reading, fixing, digitizing, or testing. Then the conversation starts collecting details. A short mention of PokeStream Player can become a practical discussion of how much audio fits on a stock 130XE compared with an expanded machine. A note about an emulator coming to macOS can become a careful explanation of why rebuilding a large Windows-native interface around an untouched emulation core is a major job. That patient specificity is the show’s strength. ANTIC is comfortable with version numbers, platform names, old compilers, interpreter formats, and the texture of real preservation work. Recent episodes cover Fuji-san, FastBasic tooling, AtariAge projects, BDB text adventures, European countries and capitals software updates, and experiments that connect Atari machines to SQL databases. The archive side is just as central. Kay Savitz talks through year-end digitization work, newsletters, interviews, and uploads, while guests describe recovering floppy disks, handling hardware surprises, and saving material that could otherwise vanish. The banter is informal, but the attention is serious. The show can joke about awkward segues or tiny listener counts without losing focus on the work. Interview episodes widen the frame, including conversations tied to Logo, computer science education, artificial intelligence history, and Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory. That mix gives ANTIC a useful double life. It is a news show for people still following Atari 8-bit releases, and it is also an oral-history project for computing culture around those machines. Listeners come away with names, links, tools, and context. More importantly, they hear how a small enthusiast scene keeps itself documented. ANTIC is not polished tech nostalgia. It is a working table covered with disks, notes, emulators, memories, and somebody saying the odd detail is worth saving.
Made for: For retrocomputing fans, Atari 8-bit owners, emulator users, preservation-minded programmers, and listeners who enjoy technical history told through real community work. It especially rewards patience for specific software names, hardware quirks, and archival trails.
What sets it apart: ANTIC stands apart by treating Atari 8-bit culture as an active archive, mixing current project news with first-hand preservation stories and long-form interviews. The show’s value is in the accumulated detail: disks, newsletters, emulator cores, old programming languages, and the people keeping them traceable.
We cover Atari news, reviews, and a special feature each show for the Atari 8-bit line of computers (400/800/XL/XE/XEGS)
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
ANTIC documents Atari 8-bit computing as both technical history and an active culture of preservation, emulation, programming, and repair.
ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast treats an old computing platform as a living technical community. Kay Savitz, Randy Kindig, and Brad Arnold move between personal projects, software releases, emulation work, hardware discoveries, and community news, with an easy rapport that leaves…
A 1980 map gets patched for 2026, and suddenly your vintage-computing habit has release notes.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
PokeStream audio math, a Mac port, and a FastBasic update keep the episode grounded in working code.
The episode stays close to practical retro-computing work, and that focus gives it a clear center. PokeStream Player, the Atari audio tool for the Poke, and the plain math of how much audio fits on a stock 130XE carry most of the interest.
An Atari 8-bit roundtable that moves from Fuji-san to a map project and a prehistoric text adventure.
March 2026 Antic settles into an Atari 8-bit roundtable with Paulo Garcia, who talks through Fuji-san and notes that an earlier cross-platform migration idea was too much to pull off.
A binder of Atari newsletters opens into text adventures and the club history around them.
Episode 122 keeps its focus on the Atari archive and is strongest when it gets into the fine-grained details. Kay Savitz threads together a busy stretch of Atari collecting, from a two-inch binder of Atari newsletters from August 1987 to the Jersey Atari computer group's habit…
A loose Atari conversation about old disks, recovered files, and preservation-minded hardware talk.
Antic Episode 121 opens with Brent Carroll working through a large archive of floppy disks, BBS downloads from the DC area, and files he wants to keep from going to waste.
A grounded Atari-era conversation about programmers, platforms, publishing credit, and lasting player interest.
Jack Verson's story moves cleanly from a Purdue physics major to a 1971 computer science degree, then into the Atari 8-bit work he did through JV Software.
Fuji-san, a map update, and a prehistoric text adventure keep the Atari 8-bit archive moving.
ANTIC's March 2026 episode stays close to the work itself, with Paulo Garcia talking through Fuji-san, the emulator he created, and the earlier push to make Altura cross-platform before that effort proved too much to carry through.
Artificial life, remembered and reimagined.
Lambda calculus from the driver’s seat.
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Antic Episode 126 features special guest Paulo Garcia, creator of the Fuji-San Atari 8-bit emulator.
This episode interviews Bob Stein about his work at Atari Research in the early 1980s on a visionary encyclopedia project, featuring drawings by Disney animator Glenn Keane that predicted future technology.
This interview features Jan Velasquez, owner of the Spanish-language Atari 8-Bit news site Atari Tega, discussing his background as a journalist in Lima, Peru, and his work in communications and education.
This episode interviews Nick Kennedy about his software that turned an Atari computer into a Morse code keyer for ham radio operations.
This episode features an interview with Rick Reaser, the 8-Bit editor of Current Notes Magazine, discussing his role, personal history with Atari computers, and nostalgic connections through physical mail and archived materials.
Jack Verson says he wrote Action Quest on a borrowed Atari 800 in assembly language, then sold it by mailing free copies to magazine advertisers.
Kay has been busy.
Kay Savitz opens the March 2026 show with Randy Kindig and Brad Arnold, and the guest is Paulo Garcia, creator of Fuji-san.
This episode features a discussion with guest Wade Rybkowski about his project connecting an Atari 8-bit computer to an SQL database to overcome memory and storage limitations.
This episode of Antic discusses Kay's annual wrap-up document detailing Atari and computer historical archiving work, including interviews and digitization projects.
The hosts discuss recent Atari 8-bit computer activities, including showcasing an Atari 800 at an Amiga 40 celebration to highlight historical connections.
Randy Kinnick opens episode 122 with Brad Arnold and Kay Savitz, who joins from Portland, Oregon.
Brad opens episode 121 with Randy, Kay, and guest Brent Carroll, then lets Brent get right to the work of archiving decades of floppy disks.
This interview episode features computer scientists Cynthia Solomon and Brian Silverman discussing their pioneering work on the Logo programming language and its connections to Atari computers.