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Created page with "This is a transcript of an audio interview. This transcript may contain errors - if you're using this material for research, etc. please verify with the original recorded inte..."
This is a transcript of an audio interview. This transcript may contain errors - if you're using this material for research, etc. please verify with the original recorded interview.
Source: ANTIC: The Atari 8-Bit Podcast
Source URL: http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-90-glenn-the-5200-man
Interviewer: Kevin Savetz
K: I'm Kevin Savetz, and this is an interview episode of ANTIC, the Atari 8-bit podcast. Glenn Botts is better known to Atari 8-bit users as 'Glenn the 5200 man'. Glenn was perhaps the most widely known Atari software cracker, because he had a unique specialty: most pirates removed copy protection from software making it so it was copyable and able to be shared for free. Glenn skill was in taking games that were designed for the Atari 5200 system and converting them so they would run on Atari 8-bit computers. Many of the games created for the Atari 5200 were not released for the computers. So Glenn system conversion/cracking had the unique effect of creating games for the Atari computers that otherwise would not have existed. The Atari 5200 was very similar in architecture to the Atari computers, but not 100% compatible. For one thing, the 5200 cartridges physically didn't fit into the Atari computers. Also the joysticks were very different, with the 5200 using analog joysticks and the computers using digital joysticks. This is the first time that Glenn's identity has been revealed to the general public. This interview took place September 11, 2015.
K: I guess my question for you, first of all, is...is it ok to use your name, or are you still... do you still want to be anonymous?
G: I don't think it's gonna hurt... XXX people XXX XXX me for 8-bit stuff anymore...
K: XXX some people who want you to join the forums and come talk and... you know... join an Atari forum...or two...You may get a lot of XXX...Ok. So, it's ok if I...
G: Yeah, I mean, it's not gonna hurt the XXX
K: Ok, great. Alright. So...where should we start? Can you tell me the beginning of the story, on how you first got involved with the Atari computers and the 5200?
G: Well, back in High School I had my first experience with a computer. It was fairly primitive system...had BASIC and a few enhancements that someone else hacked into it...He happened the XXX at the school that it was operating from and... got access and started creating a few programs...and I got a little more adventurous from that..and then started in...College, I was going for Electro Engineering but I...a second major with computers, programming...and then...nearby university in Maryland was a store called the Madbox. And they happened to have the Atari computers. So I've joined their XXX, XXX with them...eventually I got one. And, you know...learn more on my own than anything else...I actually worked for a while at Madbox, let me ...you know...buy some stuff at lower cost. They had the Atari manuals, that you know...they were... Unlike most places, they actually published the Operating System and the source code. So it was possible to learn how things worked, and that was very helpful and started to understand how the programs and the system operated. And over the years I just sort of hacked various things, got all the various programs and didn't like the way some of them operated, so I started writing my own little enhancements for compressing files and then I wrote a program called MiniDOS, which was basically a small DOS XXX for running games. Not actually operating as a full functioning DOS. And from there, XXX another thing called Supercart, which basically allowed you to dump the raw cartridges onto a file. It would move the screen down out of the way, and unload the cartridge in its normal location.
<<00.05>>
XXX hack underneath it to operate for the reset so forth copy. The area of the cart...it would be damaged by the screen reopening on reset, down below the cartridge and it wouldn't move it back and move the screen out of the way each time you do a reset. And that's what led actually into the 5200s. One day I got a call from somebody who happened to have some of the 5200 games. XXX most interest of them was the one who would be hardest to do and that was Baseball. And that's because it really took advantage of the 5200 joystick, which was potentiometer based, so was variable. The further that you pulled the stick, the lower the bat would go, and then you would swing it around to simulate swinging the bat. And with that some hack and also access to the actual sticks to modifying to maybe use the potentiometer or the knob controllers on actually two of the ports...it wouldn't have been possible to do. And it would also would require that the range of the bat was the same as the knob, so I never really got that one to work. But I learned XXX about how they operated...eventually got hold of some of the others...Ms Pac Man among others. At first I had to decompile them, to get an idea of how they operated, what the differences was between the 5200 and the 800, and it turned out it was very little. They have moved a few variables in the 2000 range. Of course the keyboard didn't exist on the 5200, it was just this small keyboard on the actual controller. And once I learned that, I learned the difference of were XXX to the XXX would be where the...the character set was not at the beginning of the E000 which it was for the 800, but it was I think F00 or E8 or something like that. So of course I had to adjust the parameters within the game to point to the correct files. And I basically used the same technology I used for running the cartridges to run it, so all I had to do was to XXX cartridge tag to maintain XXX and functionality and then I had to find of course in the games the place were it was doing its keyboard work and its joystick and replace these routines with something that would look at the standard control of the computer. Once I got that, I was able to basically XXX shortcut routine would act like a smart and decompiler...it would look through the program for any possible instructions that would be point either a XXX or it would be access any variable XXX to be modified. And then all I had to do was go use it and disassembler it, and looking those small sections to make sure it wasn't reading garbage code as potential source code. Once I determined which one needed to be patched, again it became very simple to then run a XXX that would patch the cartridge. And then, like I said XXX, the part that required the extra effort was finding the keyboard and joystick routines to replace them. So it became a straight forward pattern after I done a couple of them. It was fun to do, but much I knew how, it was fairly easy. So easy, that it actually was very annoying that Atari themselves never would've released these games on the 800. If I ... it worked effectively in other games with very little change. XXX a few more games in the process.
K: Yeah, for sure.
<<0:10>>
K: So how did you physically get ... initially get the data off the 5200 and over to your ... was it an 800? Or whatever model you had...
G: I never had the actual cartridges myself. It was the people that were contacting me with them. Basically they pulled, I guess, the EPROM out of the cartridge and put it on a reader, and read it. Of course you couldn't plug it directly on the computer to read it.
K: Sure.
G: However they were managing to do it. All I got was the raw dump of the ROM.
K: On a floppy disk or something?
G: I actually used XXX it was sent to me over the modem.
K: Ah, ok. So were these from Atari? People who worked at Atari?
G: Not that I am aware of. It's certainly possible that some of the new people at Atari, but I don't believe any of them directly worked for Atari.
K: Interesting.
G: At least they never admitted if they were.
K: So how did you get in contact with these people?
G: They contacted me. I was known because I had put out some of the things like XXX SuperCart, MiniDos, and a few other things. So through various channels they XXX me and I was like "OK, why not. I am not XXX"
K: So after you got into the flow things, how long would it take you to convert something?
G: After I done a couple of them, I could use and do it in a single day, at last. A couple of hours.
K: How old were you XXX ?
G: Probably the early twenties, mid twenties XXX when I was doing.
K: So you said that Baseball...you can do Baseball mostly because of the analog joystick. Were there any others that you had to give up on?
G: No. Everyone else was easy to do. Because that was the only one that really used the variable joystick. There was one...other one that somebody else did. But I could sort of get around it. I forget which one it was at this point, but I was able to make it work without the analog. It does lost some of the functionality...it might have got...don't know. Without the analog it couldn't speed up or slow down XXX...XXX one speed...
K: How did you initially get the idea in the first place...the mental leap of "I'm gonna take something that's on the 5200 and move it to the 800...do you remember?
G: Like I said, they called me with it and said "Can you do it?" I had no idea, my assumption would be, because with the same processor and the same company basically using the same graphics systems, that it should be possible. But until I looked at it, there was no way I really understand how it operated. And then, like said, once I did and found that it was very close, saying the last...unless your capable version of the operating system it wasn't that difficult. Because they didn't use variables that were of otherwise conflicted with the computer. They had put their interrupts in different locations than the computer used, like the MRI and IRQ variables. Have had been in someplace else and then they moved something else onto that place, then it could affected conflicts. I would have potentially had to move them around. The only ones, like I said, that really required moving around but one difficult because they were competing for that memory usage for other purposes, were like the color variables. And things like that. I had to go relocate them. Had they been trying to actively use the rest of 200 and redefine it for other purposes that overlap the computer, then it could have XXX a lot more difficult, because I would have find ways getting each piece out of the way or disabling some functionality on the computer.
K: So the SuperCart was a cartridge copier?
G: No. Well...Cartridge copier...Was a cartridge player. Was basically the MiniDos that all you had to do was XXX a file or have the raw image of the cartridge.
<<0:15>>
So you had something it would load from the 8000 or the 8000 location into the rest of the cartridge space. And it could run it. So that's basically...What it did was it would move the screen out of the way, so the cartridge could load there. Otherwise, if you loaded the cartridge you would write at the top of the screen and get noise. And then when you reset, it would destroy that area of the cartridge because the screen would reopen at the highest point in memory.
K: Right
G: So that's why I had copied that part of the cartridge down below the standard cartridge area, protected my little tag code XXX down in there, would set it so XX the reset code, so when you hit RESET, it would jump back to my code. And my code will move the screen back down, restore that section of the cartridge and then it would continue doing the rest of the operating system initialization as needed. And then jump to the cartridge, XXX a physical cartridge there.
K: Did you work on any other projects? SuperCart, MiniDos...and anything else?
G: Like I said, I did some stuff that wasn't released...And the XXX...Decompilers, XXX , stuff like that...Actually one of the people that I talked had to...you know...crack programs...Actually wanted to make a program to try to protect...I XXX people cracking, because I basically told him, you know, all the flaws all over the program XXX why they failed, and then of course what makes it more difficult, what kind of steps you can do that for a programmer we tried to follow him, making it extremely difficult figuring out all the junk as a XXX for the program actually runs. And he may have feel a go at it. So he had XXX to a number of people.
K: Nice. What was the XXX of that product was?
G: The XXX...I cannot remember the name of it.
K: So after you hacked...Do you know how many 5200 games you converted...about? I was trying to make the final list online. And I don't think I can find anything as like a definitive list.
G: It's been so long that...I really don't remember. I would say between 10 and 20.
K: So after you hacked a game, how did you get it back? How did you get it out into the wild? Did you send it to the person who sent you the original ROM?
G: Oh yes, they would always give it, that was part of the reason why they were sending it to me. And then I had some other friends, XXX I give it to them, XXX on bulletin boards, and very quickly spread from there.
K: Did you...How did you come...any particular stories to coming up with the name "Glenn the 5200 man"?
G: No, just the fact that a lot of people were putting tags on...when they do hacking or cracking at programs. So I xxx "What the hack! Why not do it myself?" And I just XXX out there for the heck of it. And then let it go where it would.
K: Did you ...there was any worry about being found out by the wrong people?
G: That's the reason why XXX even say Glenn...At that point people really weren't pursuing or trying to prosecute people for cracking, so it wasn't a major concern.
K: From my perspective, as a kid who was pirating software, and among the kids that I know and even when I look around the Atari forums, you were a kind of a legend. It seemed like you were doing magic. Did you know this at the time? Did you have a sense of that at the time, that people were kind of involved with what you were doing?
<<0:20>>
G: Oh yeah. That's part of the reason why I didn't go around other way advertising myself, because I did not want to be constantly harassed by everybody that wanted to get ahold of me. I let other people that wanted to be active on the channels releasing the software and going to other sites and so forth. Back then, XXX the stuff. And I stayed out of the way. But then even then, back in the days, when XXX the 300 and the 1200 baud modems, it could take an hour or so...end up...a decent sized program between one person and another. You can imagine trying to send a massive amount of data. So I wasn't interested myself in doing that, I'd rather go over to somebody's house and XXX of disks, just copy the disks. In fact, that was actually one of those things when you do say "do it, do other stuff", I mean, XXX MiniDos, XXX with the Happy Drive. And I got ahold on one of those. I looked XXX the code was working, and then I added that to my MiniDos. The SuperCart programs. So they were fast and easy to work with. And then they came out with a couple of the ones XXX offers or something, which was just the high speed but not the buffering of the entire track like the Happy Drive did. And a second item that was similar to the Happy Drive which was a Turbo. I got ahold of one of those and enhanced them, did the same thing...and then added its code to mine so XXX work with that drive and its high speed transfer. Because also do something with the Happy Drive didn't...Unfortunately I don't have any more left. Somebody borrowed it, swap drives, and never got my Turbo drive back. And another thing which I did...had fun of it...liked to do...the soldering. So I had one of the RAM disks, and we took it and replaced all the memory with double or three times the space, I believe, actually. And of course it's a rat’s nest of wires. XXX the original chips all fitted in sockets. But of course the new chip had four pins outside of the sockets. So we got a little rat’s nest of wires going across, and then had to add XXX collector chip to recognize the addressing that the extra pins were giving us. And I wrote my own RAM disk controller, which was much faster and more reliable than the original code. And then later I would go hold
one of the debuggers that sit in the C000 location 4K, but it had a switch to flip between one part of it and other, and it will XXX a little text message telling you it's time you need the flip...so you type a different command and XXX flip to the other half. We put that on my machine, we put in a multi layer functionality of having a switch that I could have extra 4K of memory and get 52K of memory, or I could XXX 48 or the debugger to be in there. And then I hacked the debugger so instead of asking for you to flip the switch, it would attempt to do it electronically. If you had the switch in the correct position, in which case it would then auto-flip between the sections. If not, then it would prompt you to switch it so you could have it manual or automatic mode. Another useful for debugging and cracking other programs XXX I could pop into it...use it...to capture code.
<<0:25>> You probably, if you had to look around different programs, and I didn't usually add my tag when I did this. But a lot of times, people were dumping specially the electronic cart scans and they would be a huge file because it would be almost all the memory. And I would look at these stupid files and you had huge XXX of empty space because the way they composed work. You allocate a playfield or data areas and then instead of leaving a gap in the program, the compiler would fill in an area full of all zeroes. So you could wind up were half the file or more was empty space. So I wrote my own load routine that would recognize XXX of the file to do it. And the it would run a tiny little tag that would load up, clear up the memory that this program was gonna load into, so it was all zeroes. So just in case the program actually needed the zeroes, because I found some did. Then it would load the program in tiny little fragments of only what was actually data, and leave all the empty zero spaces without having to be loaded from the file. So it would dramatically sped up the loading of the programs, but also saved us a significant ammount of disk space. And of course in those days, with the 88K floppies, anything you could save was well worth it.
K: So it sounds like you hacked a lot of 8-bit stuff that was native to the computer as well.
G: Yeah. That was one of the things I enjoyed with that system. I mean, it was an easy enough system running over XXX 65 of the XXX not that extensive of functionality. Which of course, limited some of its XXX but it made it easy to XXX and figure out what it was doing. Also made me, at that time, not a very big fan of some of the higher level languages. Let me to sit there and you look at what it actually would compile into. You realize just how inefficient these programs are. And of course, I had to do that. The hardest ones to do were like p-code. Which... Fortran was compiled in the p-code, a couple of others...Because you couldn't read them, you had to know what the interpreter was doing. So you actually had to let the interpreter decode chunks of code and then try to find one that was actually doing something that either was not functioning right or crashing or doing protection checks or anything like that.
K: Do you have an Atari computer anymore?
G: Yes, I do have it. I would use them a long time. One of the things I really have wondered but never got around XXX trying to figure out how to do, given the equipment necessary, would be a routine that would allow me to transfer at really high speeds and read the disks into standard computers. So you can XXX the programs on the CD-ROM, because floppy disks don't last forever.
K: That's true
G: And XXX, I got a XXX ton of them. It's quite likely that half or more of them are no longer readable, because of the degradation and not the media, just XXX the surfaces starting to fall off the disk. So there's nothing to read.
K: You know, I have archived hundreds of Atari disks in the last year. I'm part of a group of people who are trying to, for instance, archive all of the Atari Program Exchange disks. And of course, people are always interested in archiving their old data. You'd be surprised how many disks are XXX. Not all of them, but a lot of them are.
<<0:30>>
K: I use a gadget called SIO2SD, and then you can basically copy a disk to an SD card, and then you can move it to your modern computer. If you have anything you want to archive, if you want to send me your whole stack of disks, I will be happy to archive it all for you. And send it back to you privately, or share it, or whatever you wanna do it.
G: Yeah, maybe you can send me the information. Like certainly there's still XXX specially the ones that got labeled XXX what the heck they are.
K: If you have any source code, or the stuff you wrote privately for yourself, that you never released...XXX now.
G: Yeah, XXX also like I said. One of the neat things that would make it nice would be not only the reader, but something that you can plug into the Atari that would either connect to the network, or USB, or whatever. So you can actually have a standard computer online and treat that as a disk, so that as far as the Atari concerns, it's communicating with one of its disks, even though it's actually going to a computer. You go over the computer and you say “OK now, load disk X" and then the Atari would see it.
K: There's totally things like that. SIO2PC. There's a couple of solutions for that. Custom hardware and software that do pretty much what you are describing.
G: I have to look that up. Or if you got some links for it, send them to me. It's been a long time since I played with it looking at that. At the time, I couldn't find anything. So it's certainly possible somebody followed the same thing with actually pursuing it.
K: I'll send you links when we're done. If you get that equipment and do it yourself, great. If you are not that motivated, then I'll be happy to archive your disks for you. But those things you are dreaming of, they are real.
G:
K: So what machine were you using back then, that you still have? Was it a 800? Or 13XE?
G: An 800. I prefer that over the 800, because I did not like the chicklet keyboard.
K: Over the 400?
G: Yeah. And also at some point later...What were the other models? The XLs or whatever came that after...But the 800 was always my favorite because that's where I had all my hacks. XXX and XXX, so the XL didn’t really provide anything other than "OK I have a backup unit, a spare part".
K: Right. So how did your time hacking Atari come to an end? Did you get interested on other things? Other computers? Or...
G: Basically it started fading away with that as the STs came out. Then I got an Amiga. I prefer that over the ST because it was true multi-tasking. XXX mostly people, I don't know much knew the history, originally... Was Atari people that dump the Amiga. And then somehow Atari got sloppy and Commodore came along installed it. And of course as a game company, could never really promoted. Sort of XXX in comparison both the Mac and the IBM, if they have been promoted properly. A blue XXX away, true multi-tasking...and everything else. Imagine it now with the processors we got and the protected memory...VMware...and everything else that you can get. It will blow them away. It was much better designed...XXX...for actual multi-tasking from the beginning, not CPU sharing like the PC was. XXX PC even today.
<<0:35>>
I run one little program and oops it hangs, and you watch everything else start to hang up and the whole machine come to a XXX hole because they still continue to emulate that garbage software that they started off with and they refuse to XXX the operating system to a true multi-tasking operating system. When you start doing low-level programming, which I had to do...writing the DOS and stuff like that... trying not to XXX systems where you did something and it goes after to never-never land ... XXX...you take the computers like damn Windows...and you hit a key...one of the hotkeys. And I had one computer that did this. And it would take a minute to 2 minutes before we come back and actually do something. So like the Windows E key. It takes 2 minutes to load an Explorer window. And the machine come to XXX hole until it's completed because he knows what it XXX in and it's going nuts. It's undocumented, so you can't go "Here's how things work, here's why they work" like they did with the Atari. And I really miss that.
K: What do you do today?
G: Programmer, N.H. And working today, IT Management software. Various reporting software...
K: I have a feeling you have an interesting story that I haven't heard yet. Tell me a story, Glenn, of the Atari days.
G: One of things which was...When after school XXX started was programming and stuff like that...I could it hours and hours...on it...get into...hacking or when I was writing MiniDos or stuff like that...it was going on and on for hours...all night long...damn! And out of a sudden XXX. Don't really have that thing...love...with the current computers ...that I did with that...I'm not...something I miss. Even some of the games that we had at the time...The regular arcade type of games. Some of the XXX games now are these massive XXX 3D world where you run around and you look at these things and you go... You have to remember patterns for what the rooms are because you really can't recognize the XXX easily enough to go...have a feeling where you are...the sort of playing and run around and learn where somebody can hide to shoot at you and everything else...I miss the simpler games. Even a game...Star Raiders. And all the years XXX nobody has ever made one that was as nice as that. Even you could improve the graphics on it, but you don't see those type of thigs anymore. XXX...It's nice to have things improved and have any extra power, but...A lot of games XXX the PC and played with the keyboard...I much rather prefer the simple small joystick for some of the games. But when you do have the joysticks, they are complex and not all the games support them. Because they are not a standard feature of the operating system. Over the years, sort of unfortunately, as we were forced into the Microsoft world because...business were on Microsoft and then people had to buy Microsoft because "Oh! I am using it at work". So what. Can you read the program and use the files on other machines? XXX? The rest of the world didn't go that way. So all the other machines sort of faded away...and XXX have the new software and the people programming for...this is not a market there.
<<0:40>>
So I don't deal with it as much as I used to plus...When you work on it at work, you come home and one of the last things that you really wanna do is to work on the computer again.
K: Right, that's true. If you could send a message to the Atari computer community that still exists, and you can right now, what would you tell them?
G: Well, I hope you enjoyed my...the programs that I put out there and...all the systems that they can find...and keep supporting it. Get some of the emulators for, maybe get some more of the stuff put on the computer, and XXX use it the same on the PC. I don't know how much you play with the emulators...
K: All the time.
G: Do you have one that you like for doing the Atari on the PC or have you XXX while at it?
K: I'm a Mac guy. But the two that, I understand work on the PC, one is called Altirra and the other is called Atari800.
G: It's been a while since the last time I played with some of those, and I don't recognize XXX those two names at the time when I was playing with them...
K: I'll send you a link when we're done. They're both fine emulators. I use the Mac version of Atari800. It works great. But I've XXX with you and all the other pirates, I gotta say. 'Cause now...You guys had a great job at pirating all the games, because that's what you wanted to play. But now, today, in 2015, what it has not been archived is educational software, everything by Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, it's still locked up on disks. And very few people now know how to crack it, or care to, if they do. A lot of the history and educational and application software was never cracked.
G: True. The games were the more popular. I did other things as well when I came across them. But no one ever...There was one educational or documentation XXX set that I did do at one point, but I don't recall the specifics so which one it was...Because they weren't in high demand, and wasn't...didn't have people constantly requesting them...
K: Right...yeah. OK
G: Quite frankly. I mean, even with the emulators, I would think you'd be able to use XXX thing that you were XXX and copy it to a computer and crack it on a standard PC or Mac by using emulators.
K: I think that's probably possible. I would love to be able to do that. But even if you've got to this code and you have XXX to find where’s looking for the bad sector or whatever magic it's doing...the copy protection is still there. And the art of defeating it is being lost.
G: Yeah, I know...I mean it's still like say...XXX whether any of these emulators have built any of the debugger tools like the one I was talking about. And basically XXX this part of the operating system. Then they certainly true because when we hit the Reset, you could pop into the debugger. And follow the XXX of it...and it's...even now, probably possible with just the file dump of it to search for the call.
<<0:50>>
Because mostly the protections from those programs were very poor. It was just a straight "Here we have a call for bad sector...duplicate sector...whatever that they were looking for...went to XXX a code that was it. No further test. The more intelligent ones would add code that would look back at the protection area and would look and XXX "Hey, something's changed there" and then start malfunctioning. But, like I said, that was rare in most programs. All you had to do really was look for the calls for reading the disk and look for a case where they were doing the JSRs to the E456 or whatever was for reading the disk, and then looking for a return code, was a 189 I think that was the value for the bad sector. So it's actually looking for just this small piece of code. So it would be possible even to do that with very little effort, depending on how complicated the code was.
K: Awesome. Well, you seem to remember how to do it. Maybe you can teach me one day. Save the rest of the software that hasn't been saved yet. If a...Listen. I would like to get in contact with you. Is that OK? Can I talk to you on Twitter? Or what do you prefer?
G: Yeah, I have Twitter and I have Facebook. So either one.
K: What's your Twitter ID? I actually knew it at one point. But I thought I knew it...
G: Yeah...Amiga_4000. Alright, and I like the look of the blog...Anyway, just seeing what else you have out there...
K: Yeah, we've done a lot of interviews. Everything from Nolan Bushnell down to secretaries and like the guy who bought the cardboard for the game boxes. And we've talked everything from middle managers to programmers...XXX...It's been a lot of fun talking all these people.
G: Yeah, that XXX was something. And I figure it was probably XXX but I was wandering if people that was trying to dig up the dump were Atari tossed away the E.T. game for the 2600 and a bunch of other cartridges rather than...selling them for cheap or anything. Why?. You could have sold them off to XXX XXX and at least make something out of it, instead of this XXX off to a landfill.
K: There's so many things they did that are beyond understanding.
G: Look, like the 7800. It was another thing. I got a 7800 machine. But it used a different CPU, there wasn't a means to convert them easily to the 800. But even for the emulators. You can have an emulator for it. But Atari had a whole bunch of games for that but they never released them. In fact, the games that I got, a number of them I got, some people who had contacts at Atari, we had to burn them to EPROM ourselves in order to actually XXX them, because they were never released. After XXX somebody is doing an emulator for that, have some of the XXX they don't have all those games, if I still have the files anymore for it...
K: These were games for the 7800?
G: Yes. There were a whole bunch of them, they never released. As the game systems collapsed at that point...and of course eventually it came back with Nintendo and stuff like that...Atari and some others...Unfortunately, I guess, they figured everybody was moving to computers and that game machines would go away,
<<0:55>>
so they didn't really push the technology there and then the Japanese did suddenly the market disappear. And American game companies all went under.
K: Well find those disks, and see what you have. We'll figure out if that stuff it's been found from familiar source or if you have the only copy left.
G: Yeah, XXX XXX XXX XXX. It was XXX, I said you don't need
Atari ST, or whether have it on the Amiga or which one that
I got...Couldn't stand so long...I just remember having to do it...
XXX XXX to get it...XXX XXX XXX XXX now...I am somewhere, that's
'cause I never fool around.
K: Let me know what you find. Thank you so much, Glenn.
G: You're welcome.
Source: ANTIC: The Atari 8-Bit Podcast
Source URL: http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-90-glenn-the-5200-man
Interviewer: Kevin Savetz
K: I'm Kevin Savetz, and this is an interview episode of ANTIC, the Atari 8-bit podcast. Glenn Botts is better known to Atari 8-bit users as 'Glenn the 5200 man'. Glenn was perhaps the most widely known Atari software cracker, because he had a unique specialty: most pirates removed copy protection from software making it so it was copyable and able to be shared for free. Glenn skill was in taking games that were designed for the Atari 5200 system and converting them so they would run on Atari 8-bit computers. Many of the games created for the Atari 5200 were not released for the computers. So Glenn system conversion/cracking had the unique effect of creating games for the Atari computers that otherwise would not have existed. The Atari 5200 was very similar in architecture to the Atari computers, but not 100% compatible. For one thing, the 5200 cartridges physically didn't fit into the Atari computers. Also the joysticks were very different, with the 5200 using analog joysticks and the computers using digital joysticks. This is the first time that Glenn's identity has been revealed to the general public. This interview took place September 11, 2015.
K: I guess my question for you, first of all, is...is it ok to use your name, or are you still... do you still want to be anonymous?
G: I don't think it's gonna hurt... XXX people XXX XXX me for 8-bit stuff anymore...
K: XXX some people who want you to join the forums and come talk and... you know... join an Atari forum...or two...You may get a lot of XXX...Ok. So, it's ok if I...
G: Yeah, I mean, it's not gonna hurt the XXX
K: Ok, great. Alright. So...where should we start? Can you tell me the beginning of the story, on how you first got involved with the Atari computers and the 5200?
G: Well, back in High School I had my first experience with a computer. It was fairly primitive system...had BASIC and a few enhancements that someone else hacked into it...He happened the XXX at the school that it was operating from and... got access and started creating a few programs...and I got a little more adventurous from that..and then started in...College, I was going for Electro Engineering but I...a second major with computers, programming...and then...nearby university in Maryland was a store called the Madbox. And they happened to have the Atari computers. So I've joined their XXX, XXX with them...eventually I got one. And, you know...learn more on my own than anything else...I actually worked for a while at Madbox, let me ...you know...buy some stuff at lower cost. They had the Atari manuals, that you know...they were... Unlike most places, they actually published the Operating System and the source code. So it was possible to learn how things worked, and that was very helpful and started to understand how the programs and the system operated. And over the years I just sort of hacked various things, got all the various programs and didn't like the way some of them operated, so I started writing my own little enhancements for compressing files and then I wrote a program called MiniDOS, which was basically a small DOS XXX for running games. Not actually operating as a full functioning DOS. And from there, XXX another thing called Supercart, which basically allowed you to dump the raw cartridges onto a file. It would move the screen down out of the way, and unload the cartridge in its normal location.
<<00.05>>
XXX hack underneath it to operate for the reset so forth copy. The area of the cart...it would be damaged by the screen reopening on reset, down below the cartridge and it wouldn't move it back and move the screen out of the way each time you do a reset. And that's what led actually into the 5200s. One day I got a call from somebody who happened to have some of the 5200 games. XXX most interest of them was the one who would be hardest to do and that was Baseball. And that's because it really took advantage of the 5200 joystick, which was potentiometer based, so was variable. The further that you pulled the stick, the lower the bat would go, and then you would swing it around to simulate swinging the bat. And with that some hack and also access to the actual sticks to modifying to maybe use the potentiometer or the knob controllers on actually two of the ports...it wouldn't have been possible to do. And it would also would require that the range of the bat was the same as the knob, so I never really got that one to work. But I learned XXX about how they operated...eventually got hold of some of the others...Ms Pac Man among others. At first I had to decompile them, to get an idea of how they operated, what the differences was between the 5200 and the 800, and it turned out it was very little. They have moved a few variables in the 2000 range. Of course the keyboard didn't exist on the 5200, it was just this small keyboard on the actual controller. And once I learned that, I learned the difference of were XXX to the XXX would be where the...the character set was not at the beginning of the E000 which it was for the 800, but it was I think F00 or E8 or something like that. So of course I had to adjust the parameters within the game to point to the correct files. And I basically used the same technology I used for running the cartridges to run it, so all I had to do was to XXX cartridge tag to maintain XXX and functionality and then I had to find of course in the games the place were it was doing its keyboard work and its joystick and replace these routines with something that would look at the standard control of the computer. Once I got that, I was able to basically XXX shortcut routine would act like a smart and decompiler...it would look through the program for any possible instructions that would be point either a XXX or it would be access any variable XXX to be modified. And then all I had to do was go use it and disassembler it, and looking those small sections to make sure it wasn't reading garbage code as potential source code. Once I determined which one needed to be patched, again it became very simple to then run a XXX that would patch the cartridge. And then, like I said XXX, the part that required the extra effort was finding the keyboard and joystick routines to replace them. So it became a straight forward pattern after I done a couple of them. It was fun to do, but much I knew how, it was fairly easy. So easy, that it actually was very annoying that Atari themselves never would've released these games on the 800. If I ... it worked effectively in other games with very little change. XXX a few more games in the process.
K: Yeah, for sure.
<<0:10>>
K: So how did you physically get ... initially get the data off the 5200 and over to your ... was it an 800? Or whatever model you had...
G: I never had the actual cartridges myself. It was the people that were contacting me with them. Basically they pulled, I guess, the EPROM out of the cartridge and put it on a reader, and read it. Of course you couldn't plug it directly on the computer to read it.
K: Sure.
G: However they were managing to do it. All I got was the raw dump of the ROM.
K: On a floppy disk or something?
G: I actually used XXX it was sent to me over the modem.
K: Ah, ok. So were these from Atari? People who worked at Atari?
G: Not that I am aware of. It's certainly possible that some of the new people at Atari, but I don't believe any of them directly worked for Atari.
K: Interesting.
G: At least they never admitted if they were.
K: So how did you get in contact with these people?
G: They contacted me. I was known because I had put out some of the things like XXX SuperCart, MiniDos, and a few other things. So through various channels they XXX me and I was like "OK, why not. I am not XXX"
K: So after you got into the flow things, how long would it take you to convert something?
G: After I done a couple of them, I could use and do it in a single day, at last. A couple of hours.
K: How old were you XXX ?
G: Probably the early twenties, mid twenties XXX when I was doing.
K: So you said that Baseball...you can do Baseball mostly because of the analog joystick. Were there any others that you had to give up on?
G: No. Everyone else was easy to do. Because that was the only one that really used the variable joystick. There was one...other one that somebody else did. But I could sort of get around it. I forget which one it was at this point, but I was able to make it work without the analog. It does lost some of the functionality...it might have got...don't know. Without the analog it couldn't speed up or slow down XXX...XXX one speed...
K: How did you initially get the idea in the first place...the mental leap of "I'm gonna take something that's on the 5200 and move it to the 800...do you remember?
G: Like I said, they called me with it and said "Can you do it?" I had no idea, my assumption would be, because with the same processor and the same company basically using the same graphics systems, that it should be possible. But until I looked at it, there was no way I really understand how it operated. And then, like said, once I did and found that it was very close, saying the last...unless your capable version of the operating system it wasn't that difficult. Because they didn't use variables that were of otherwise conflicted with the computer. They had put their interrupts in different locations than the computer used, like the MRI and IRQ variables. Have had been in someplace else and then they moved something else onto that place, then it could affected conflicts. I would have potentially had to move them around. The only ones, like I said, that really required moving around but one difficult because they were competing for that memory usage for other purposes, were like the color variables. And things like that. I had to go relocate them. Had they been trying to actively use the rest of 200 and redefine it for other purposes that overlap the computer, then it could have XXX a lot more difficult, because I would have find ways getting each piece out of the way or disabling some functionality on the computer.
K: So the SuperCart was a cartridge copier?
G: No. Well...Cartridge copier...Was a cartridge player. Was basically the MiniDos that all you had to do was XXX a file or have the raw image of the cartridge.
<<0:15>>
So you had something it would load from the 8000 or the 8000 location into the rest of the cartridge space. And it could run it. So that's basically...What it did was it would move the screen out of the way, so the cartridge could load there. Otherwise, if you loaded the cartridge you would write at the top of the screen and get noise. And then when you reset, it would destroy that area of the cartridge because the screen would reopen at the highest point in memory.
K: Right
G: So that's why I had copied that part of the cartridge down below the standard cartridge area, protected my little tag code XXX down in there, would set it so XX the reset code, so when you hit RESET, it would jump back to my code. And my code will move the screen back down, restore that section of the cartridge and then it would continue doing the rest of the operating system initialization as needed. And then jump to the cartridge, XXX a physical cartridge there.
K: Did you work on any other projects? SuperCart, MiniDos...and anything else?
G: Like I said, I did some stuff that wasn't released...And the XXX...Decompilers, XXX , stuff like that...Actually one of the people that I talked had to...you know...crack programs...Actually wanted to make a program to try to protect...I XXX people cracking, because I basically told him, you know, all the flaws all over the program XXX why they failed, and then of course what makes it more difficult, what kind of steps you can do that for a programmer we tried to follow him, making it extremely difficult figuring out all the junk as a XXX for the program actually runs. And he may have feel a go at it. So he had XXX to a number of people.
K: Nice. What was the XXX of that product was?
G: The XXX...I cannot remember the name of it.
K: So after you hacked...Do you know how many 5200 games you converted...about? I was trying to make the final list online. And I don't think I can find anything as like a definitive list.
G: It's been so long that...I really don't remember. I would say between 10 and 20.
K: So after you hacked a game, how did you get it back? How did you get it out into the wild? Did you send it to the person who sent you the original ROM?
G: Oh yes, they would always give it, that was part of the reason why they were sending it to me. And then I had some other friends, XXX I give it to them, XXX on bulletin boards, and very quickly spread from there.
K: Did you...How did you come...any particular stories to coming up with the name "Glenn the 5200 man"?
G: No, just the fact that a lot of people were putting tags on...when they do hacking or cracking at programs. So I xxx "What the hack! Why not do it myself?" And I just XXX out there for the heck of it. And then let it go where it would.
K: Did you ...there was any worry about being found out by the wrong people?
G: That's the reason why XXX even say Glenn...At that point people really weren't pursuing or trying to prosecute people for cracking, so it wasn't a major concern.
K: From my perspective, as a kid who was pirating software, and among the kids that I know and even when I look around the Atari forums, you were a kind of a legend. It seemed like you were doing magic. Did you know this at the time? Did you have a sense of that at the time, that people were kind of involved with what you were doing?
<<0:20>>
G: Oh yeah. That's part of the reason why I didn't go around other way advertising myself, because I did not want to be constantly harassed by everybody that wanted to get ahold of me. I let other people that wanted to be active on the channels releasing the software and going to other sites and so forth. Back then, XXX the stuff. And I stayed out of the way. But then even then, back in the days, when XXX the 300 and the 1200 baud modems, it could take an hour or so...end up...a decent sized program between one person and another. You can imagine trying to send a massive amount of data. So I wasn't interested myself in doing that, I'd rather go over to somebody's house and XXX of disks, just copy the disks. In fact, that was actually one of those things when you do say "do it, do other stuff", I mean, XXX MiniDos, XXX with the Happy Drive. And I got ahold on one of those. I looked XXX the code was working, and then I added that to my MiniDos. The SuperCart programs. So they were fast and easy to work with. And then they came out with a couple of the ones XXX offers or something, which was just the high speed but not the buffering of the entire track like the Happy Drive did. And a second item that was similar to the Happy Drive which was a Turbo. I got ahold of one of those and enhanced them, did the same thing...and then added its code to mine so XXX work with that drive and its high speed transfer. Because also do something with the Happy Drive didn't...Unfortunately I don't have any more left. Somebody borrowed it, swap drives, and never got my Turbo drive back. And another thing which I did...had fun of it...liked to do...the soldering. So I had one of the RAM disks, and we took it and replaced all the memory with double or three times the space, I believe, actually. And of course it's a rat’s nest of wires. XXX the original chips all fitted in sockets. But of course the new chip had four pins outside of the sockets. So we got a little rat’s nest of wires going across, and then had to add XXX collector chip to recognize the addressing that the extra pins were giving us. And I wrote my own RAM disk controller, which was much faster and more reliable than the original code. And then later I would go hold
one of the debuggers that sit in the C000 location 4K, but it had a switch to flip between one part of it and other, and it will XXX a little text message telling you it's time you need the flip...so you type a different command and XXX flip to the other half. We put that on my machine, we put in a multi layer functionality of having a switch that I could have extra 4K of memory and get 52K of memory, or I could XXX 48 or the debugger to be in there. And then I hacked the debugger so instead of asking for you to flip the switch, it would attempt to do it electronically. If you had the switch in the correct position, in which case it would then auto-flip between the sections. If not, then it would prompt you to switch it so you could have it manual or automatic mode. Another useful for debugging and cracking other programs XXX I could pop into it...use it...to capture code.
<<0:25>> You probably, if you had to look around different programs, and I didn't usually add my tag when I did this. But a lot of times, people were dumping specially the electronic cart scans and they would be a huge file because it would be almost all the memory. And I would look at these stupid files and you had huge XXX of empty space because the way they composed work. You allocate a playfield or data areas and then instead of leaving a gap in the program, the compiler would fill in an area full of all zeroes. So you could wind up were half the file or more was empty space. So I wrote my own load routine that would recognize XXX of the file to do it. And the it would run a tiny little tag that would load up, clear up the memory that this program was gonna load into, so it was all zeroes. So just in case the program actually needed the zeroes, because I found some did. Then it would load the program in tiny little fragments of only what was actually data, and leave all the empty zero spaces without having to be loaded from the file. So it would dramatically sped up the loading of the programs, but also saved us a significant ammount of disk space. And of course in those days, with the 88K floppies, anything you could save was well worth it.
K: So it sounds like you hacked a lot of 8-bit stuff that was native to the computer as well.
G: Yeah. That was one of the things I enjoyed with that system. I mean, it was an easy enough system running over XXX 65 of the XXX not that extensive of functionality. Which of course, limited some of its XXX but it made it easy to XXX and figure out what it was doing. Also made me, at that time, not a very big fan of some of the higher level languages. Let me to sit there and you look at what it actually would compile into. You realize just how inefficient these programs are. And of course, I had to do that. The hardest ones to do were like p-code. Which... Fortran was compiled in the p-code, a couple of others...Because you couldn't read them, you had to know what the interpreter was doing. So you actually had to let the interpreter decode chunks of code and then try to find one that was actually doing something that either was not functioning right or crashing or doing protection checks or anything like that.
K: Do you have an Atari computer anymore?
G: Yes, I do have it. I would use them a long time. One of the things I really have wondered but never got around XXX trying to figure out how to do, given the equipment necessary, would be a routine that would allow me to transfer at really high speeds and read the disks into standard computers. So you can XXX the programs on the CD-ROM, because floppy disks don't last forever.
K: That's true
G: And XXX, I got a XXX ton of them. It's quite likely that half or more of them are no longer readable, because of the degradation and not the media, just XXX the surfaces starting to fall off the disk. So there's nothing to read.
K: You know, I have archived hundreds of Atari disks in the last year. I'm part of a group of people who are trying to, for instance, archive all of the Atari Program Exchange disks. And of course, people are always interested in archiving their old data. You'd be surprised how many disks are XXX. Not all of them, but a lot of them are.
<<0:30>>
K: I use a gadget called SIO2SD, and then you can basically copy a disk to an SD card, and then you can move it to your modern computer. If you have anything you want to archive, if you want to send me your whole stack of disks, I will be happy to archive it all for you. And send it back to you privately, or share it, or whatever you wanna do it.
G: Yeah, maybe you can send me the information. Like certainly there's still XXX specially the ones that got labeled XXX what the heck they are.
K: If you have any source code, or the stuff you wrote privately for yourself, that you never released...XXX now.
G: Yeah, XXX also like I said. One of the neat things that would make it nice would be not only the reader, but something that you can plug into the Atari that would either connect to the network, or USB, or whatever. So you can actually have a standard computer online and treat that as a disk, so that as far as the Atari concerns, it's communicating with one of its disks, even though it's actually going to a computer. You go over the computer and you say “OK now, load disk X" and then the Atari would see it.
K: There's totally things like that. SIO2PC. There's a couple of solutions for that. Custom hardware and software that do pretty much what you are describing.
G: I have to look that up. Or if you got some links for it, send them to me. It's been a long time since I played with it looking at that. At the time, I couldn't find anything. So it's certainly possible somebody followed the same thing with actually pursuing it.
K: I'll send you links when we're done. If you get that equipment and do it yourself, great. If you are not that motivated, then I'll be happy to archive your disks for you. But those things you are dreaming of, they are real.
G:
K: So what machine were you using back then, that you still have? Was it a 800? Or 13XE?
G: An 800. I prefer that over the 800, because I did not like the chicklet keyboard.
K: Over the 400?
G: Yeah. And also at some point later...What were the other models? The XLs or whatever came that after...But the 800 was always my favorite because that's where I had all my hacks. XXX and XXX, so the XL didn’t really provide anything other than "OK I have a backup unit, a spare part".
K: Right. So how did your time hacking Atari come to an end? Did you get interested on other things? Other computers? Or...
G: Basically it started fading away with that as the STs came out. Then I got an Amiga. I prefer that over the ST because it was true multi-tasking. XXX mostly people, I don't know much knew the history, originally... Was Atari people that dump the Amiga. And then somehow Atari got sloppy and Commodore came along installed it. And of course as a game company, could never really promoted. Sort of XXX in comparison both the Mac and the IBM, if they have been promoted properly. A blue XXX away, true multi-tasking...and everything else. Imagine it now with the processors we got and the protected memory...VMware...and everything else that you can get. It will blow them away. It was much better designed...XXX...for actual multi-tasking from the beginning, not CPU sharing like the PC was. XXX PC even today.
<<0:35>>
I run one little program and oops it hangs, and you watch everything else start to hang up and the whole machine come to a XXX hole because they still continue to emulate that garbage software that they started off with and they refuse to XXX the operating system to a true multi-tasking operating system. When you start doing low-level programming, which I had to do...writing the DOS and stuff like that... trying not to XXX systems where you did something and it goes after to never-never land ... XXX...you take the computers like damn Windows...and you hit a key...one of the hotkeys. And I had one computer that did this. And it would take a minute to 2 minutes before we come back and actually do something. So like the Windows E key. It takes 2 minutes to load an Explorer window. And the machine come to XXX hole until it's completed because he knows what it XXX in and it's going nuts. It's undocumented, so you can't go "Here's how things work, here's why they work" like they did with the Atari. And I really miss that.
K: What do you do today?
G: Programmer, N.H. And working today, IT Management software. Various reporting software...
K: I have a feeling you have an interesting story that I haven't heard yet. Tell me a story, Glenn, of the Atari days.
G: One of things which was...When after school XXX started was programming and stuff like that...I could it hours and hours...on it...get into...hacking or when I was writing MiniDos or stuff like that...it was going on and on for hours...all night long...damn! And out of a sudden XXX. Don't really have that thing...love...with the current computers ...that I did with that...I'm not...something I miss. Even some of the games that we had at the time...The regular arcade type of games. Some of the XXX games now are these massive XXX 3D world where you run around and you look at these things and you go... You have to remember patterns for what the rooms are because you really can't recognize the XXX easily enough to go...have a feeling where you are...the sort of playing and run around and learn where somebody can hide to shoot at you and everything else...I miss the simpler games. Even a game...Star Raiders. And all the years XXX nobody has ever made one that was as nice as that. Even you could improve the graphics on it, but you don't see those type of thigs anymore. XXX...It's nice to have things improved and have any extra power, but...A lot of games XXX the PC and played with the keyboard...I much rather prefer the simple small joystick for some of the games. But when you do have the joysticks, they are complex and not all the games support them. Because they are not a standard feature of the operating system. Over the years, sort of unfortunately, as we were forced into the Microsoft world because...business were on Microsoft and then people had to buy Microsoft because "Oh! I am using it at work". So what. Can you read the program and use the files on other machines? XXX? The rest of the world didn't go that way. So all the other machines sort of faded away...and XXX have the new software and the people programming for...this is not a market there.
<<0:40>>
So I don't deal with it as much as I used to plus...When you work on it at work, you come home and one of the last things that you really wanna do is to work on the computer again.
K: Right, that's true. If you could send a message to the Atari computer community that still exists, and you can right now, what would you tell them?
G: Well, I hope you enjoyed my...the programs that I put out there and...all the systems that they can find...and keep supporting it. Get some of the emulators for, maybe get some more of the stuff put on the computer, and XXX use it the same on the PC. I don't know how much you play with the emulators...
K: All the time.
G: Do you have one that you like for doing the Atari on the PC or have you XXX while at it?
K: I'm a Mac guy. But the two that, I understand work on the PC, one is called Altirra and the other is called Atari800.
G: It's been a while since the last time I played with some of those, and I don't recognize XXX those two names at the time when I was playing with them...
K: I'll send you a link when we're done. They're both fine emulators. I use the Mac version of Atari800. It works great. But I've XXX with you and all the other pirates, I gotta say. 'Cause now...You guys had a great job at pirating all the games, because that's what you wanted to play. But now, today, in 2015, what it has not been archived is educational software, everything by Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, it's still locked up on disks. And very few people now know how to crack it, or care to, if they do. A lot of the history and educational and application software was never cracked.
G: True. The games were the more popular. I did other things as well when I came across them. But no one ever...There was one educational or documentation XXX set that I did do at one point, but I don't recall the specifics so which one it was...Because they weren't in high demand, and wasn't...didn't have people constantly requesting them...
K: Right...yeah. OK
G: Quite frankly. I mean, even with the emulators, I would think you'd be able to use XXX thing that you were XXX and copy it to a computer and crack it on a standard PC or Mac by using emulators.
K: I think that's probably possible. I would love to be able to do that. But even if you've got to this code and you have XXX to find where’s looking for the bad sector or whatever magic it's doing...the copy protection is still there. And the art of defeating it is being lost.
G: Yeah, I know...I mean it's still like say...XXX whether any of these emulators have built any of the debugger tools like the one I was talking about. And basically XXX this part of the operating system. Then they certainly true because when we hit the Reset, you could pop into the debugger. And follow the XXX of it...and it's...even now, probably possible with just the file dump of it to search for the call.
<<0:50>>
Because mostly the protections from those programs were very poor. It was just a straight "Here we have a call for bad sector...duplicate sector...whatever that they were looking for...went to XXX a code that was it. No further test. The more intelligent ones would add code that would look back at the protection area and would look and XXX "Hey, something's changed there" and then start malfunctioning. But, like I said, that was rare in most programs. All you had to do really was look for the calls for reading the disk and look for a case where they were doing the JSRs to the E456 or whatever was for reading the disk, and then looking for a return code, was a 189 I think that was the value for the bad sector. So it's actually looking for just this small piece of code. So it would be possible even to do that with very little effort, depending on how complicated the code was.
K: Awesome. Well, you seem to remember how to do it. Maybe you can teach me one day. Save the rest of the software that hasn't been saved yet. If a...Listen. I would like to get in contact with you. Is that OK? Can I talk to you on Twitter? Or what do you prefer?
G: Yeah, I have Twitter and I have Facebook. So either one.
K: What's your Twitter ID? I actually knew it at one point. But I thought I knew it...
G: Yeah...Amiga_4000. Alright, and I like the look of the blog...Anyway, just seeing what else you have out there...
K: Yeah, we've done a lot of interviews. Everything from Nolan Bushnell down to secretaries and like the guy who bought the cardboard for the game boxes. And we've talked everything from middle managers to programmers...XXX...It's been a lot of fun talking all these people.
G: Yeah, that XXX was something. And I figure it was probably XXX but I was wandering if people that was trying to dig up the dump were Atari tossed away the E.T. game for the 2600 and a bunch of other cartridges rather than...selling them for cheap or anything. Why?. You could have sold them off to XXX XXX and at least make something out of it, instead of this XXX off to a landfill.
K: There's so many things they did that are beyond understanding.
G: Look, like the 7800. It was another thing. I got a 7800 machine. But it used a different CPU, there wasn't a means to convert them easily to the 800. But even for the emulators. You can have an emulator for it. But Atari had a whole bunch of games for that but they never released them. In fact, the games that I got, a number of them I got, some people who had contacts at Atari, we had to burn them to EPROM ourselves in order to actually XXX them, because they were never released. After XXX somebody is doing an emulator for that, have some of the XXX they don't have all those games, if I still have the files anymore for it...
K: These were games for the 7800?
G: Yes. There were a whole bunch of them, they never released. As the game systems collapsed at that point...and of course eventually it came back with Nintendo and stuff like that...Atari and some others...Unfortunately, I guess, they figured everybody was moving to computers and that game machines would go away,
<<0:55>>
so they didn't really push the technology there and then the Japanese did suddenly the market disappear. And American game companies all went under.
K: Well find those disks, and see what you have. We'll figure out if that stuff it's been found from familiar source or if you have the only copy left.
G: Yeah, XXX XXX XXX XXX. It was XXX, I said you don't need
Atari ST, or whether have it on the Amiga or which one that
I got...Couldn't stand so long...I just remember having to do it...
XXX XXX to get it...XXX XXX XXX XXX now...I am somewhere, that's
'cause I never fool around.
K: Let me know what you find. Thank you so much, Glenn.
G: You're welcome.