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Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
#236156 - 10/12/10 01:51 PM
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Here's an interview with one of the founders of the videogame industry you don't here much from--Ted Dabney.
http://www.retrogamingroundup.com/shownotes/2010/roundup024_2010.10.htm
Yes, this podcast is really 8 hours long, but the interview just runs from 95:08 to 205:14.
There seems to be some bad blood between Ted and Nolan Bushnell now, with Ted saying Nolan's taking credit for some things he didn't actually do, and that Nolan really wasn't a very good engineer. Also, get Ted's take on why he left the industry. It's an interesting listen, and I definitely learned some new tidbits about the history of Atari.
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Re: Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
[Re: ranger_lennier]
#236894 - 10/21/10 02:52 AM
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No replies.
Inetersting.
I'll give it a gander when I get a chance. Thx 4 the heads up.
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Re: Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
[Re: Outrun2006]
#236972 - 10/21/10 08:01 PM
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> No replies.
>
> Inetersting.
>
> I'll give it a gander when I get a chance. Thx 4 the heads up.
I personally found it to be very enlightening and completely believable. History is finally being corrected.
Kevin Eshbach
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| casm |
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Re: Transcript available
[Re: casm]
#237080 - 10/23/10 02:43 AM
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> For anyone who may be interested, a transcript of the interview is up at
> http://www.computerspacefan.com/Ted.htm .
Thank you very much for the link to the transcript... I literally fell asleep while trying to listen to the audio version, and not going to go through with that again, so it's appreciated.
"Ted:
Well, yeah, he decided that … remember I told you about these pizza parlors that he always wanted to do?
Scott:
Right.
Ted:
Okay, and with talking barrels and singing bears and that kind of stuff?
SoCal Mike:
Right, yeah.
Ted:
Okay, so he had this thing about barrels, and he thought of having a Pong game in a barrel would be a great idea."
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| Moose |
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Don't make me assume my ultimate form!
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Re: Transcript available
[Re: casm]
#237085 - 10/23/10 04:07 AM
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| casm |
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Re: Transcript available
[Re: jeremymtc]
#237101 - 10/23/10 07:02 AM
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> > For anyone who may be interested, a transcript of the interview is up at
> > http://www.computerspacefan.com/Ted.htm .
>
>
> Thank you very much for the link to the transcript...
Moose & Jeremy, glad to oblige. In all honesty, I couldn't concentrate on the whole podcast either; as interesting as it was, it just cut into work too badly.
Oh, and Moose: thanks for keeping your website largely-unchanged since the late '90s 
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| Moose |
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Don't make me assume my ultimate form!
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Re: Transcript available
[Re: casm]
#237108 - 10/23/10 10:18 AM
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> > > For anyone who may be interested, a transcript of the interview is up at
> > > http://www.computerspacefan.com/Ted.htm .
> >
> >
> > Thank you very much for the link to the transcript...
>
> Moose & Jeremy, glad to oblige. In all honesty, I couldn't concentrate on the whole
> podcast either; as interesting as it was, it just cut into work too badly.
>
> Oh, and Moose: thanks for keeping your website largely-unchanged since the late '90s
LOL, it's no sweat really - you set something up and then just let it slowly stagnate ...  I've got about 15 other freeware programs I'm working on [think "glacial speed"] - Suduku trainer, and so on. One day ....
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Re: Transcript available
[Re: casm]
#237293 - 10/25/10 06:13 AM
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Re: Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
[Re: keshbach1]
#237545 - 10/28/10 05:12 AM
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Quote:
I personally found it to be very enlightening and completely believable. History is
> finally being corrected.
>
>
> Kevin Eshbach
I'm not surprised at this. Bushnell comes of as this warm grandfather-like dude. No doubt he had vision - which is important - but he wasn't a Ralph Baer. Of course, neither was Bill Gates....
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Consider it high comedy....sincere tragedy....whatever...don't take it personally.
The Culture
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| DMala |
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Re: Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
[Re: mogli]
#237553 - 10/28/10 08:15 AM
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> I'm not surprised at this. Bushnell comes of as this warm grandfather-like dude. No
> doubt he had vision - which is important - but he wasn't a Ralph Baer. Of course,
> neither was Bill Gates....
It's the same with Jobs and Wozniak. That seems to be how it works. You have the frontman with charisma and vision who tries to claim all of the credit, and then you have the geek toiling in the backroom to make it all work, who gets pushed aside once the company is established.
The exception to the rule is John Carmack and Id Software, probably mostly because John Romero thought he was a rock star and flamed out so spectacularly.
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Re: Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
[Re: DMala]
#237555 - 10/28/10 08:24 AM
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Was the Woz really pushed aside or did he just make a poor timing decision when to bail out?
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
[Re: Smitdogg]
#237569 - 10/28/10 05:37 PM
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> Was the Woz really pushed aside or did he just make a poor timing decision when to
> bail out?
A little of both. Jobs cheated Woz out of a lot of money for designing Atari's Breakout discrete-logic board (the one Atari's engineers famously couldn't understand so they recreated it in a clunkier way), but there's no question that left to his own devices Woz would've created an unsellable Apple II.
Woz AFAIK has never been formally off the Apple employee list in the entire history of the company, but he's ignored it (by his choice) more than he's worked there. He was out basically from 1980 to 1985, came back to design ADB and lay out the architecture of the Apple IIgs, and then he was out again. (Jobs was pushed out by John Sculley around the same time, which likely influenced him).
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Re: Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
[Re: ranger_lennier]
#238787 - 11/13/10 12:03 AM
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Awesome! It's about time we heard Ted's side of the story, and a very interesting one it is. Thanks for posting this info!
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"One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces!"- Nick Mason, Pink Floyd
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Re: Transcript available
[Re: Moose]
#238788 - 11/13/10 12:06 AM
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Yeah no kidding. The site is still ugly but still very purposeful and useful after all these years...
(I say that with all due respect, Moose. Old man )
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"One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces!"- Nick Mason, Pink Floyd
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Interview with Atari co-founder Ted Dabney
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[Re: 
I've got about 15 other freeware programs I'm working on [think "glacial speed"] - Suduku trainer, and so on. One day .... 
