A new software culture

The Atari ST computer came along soon after Antic’s software publishing operation launched, opening a whole new market for original software. Because of two specific developments, Gary was able to tackle this market in a new way:

For one, Gary discovered he could work directly with software developers in a collaborative manner, rather than simply providing a publishing service. A good example of this collaboration was the Flash telecommunications product, which quickly became (and forever remained) the de facto standard on the Atari ST for modem-based networking and CompuServe access:

Flash is one of my dream-come-true products since I’d had fantasies of a decent telecom program for a couple of years and finally found those two guys [John Chiazzese and Alan Page] in Toronto. It was the first time a programmer really listened to my ideas and implemented them and I saw how powerful that could be.

About the hardware

All of this software and artwork was produced on Atari ST (“sixteen-thirty-two”) personal computers in the mid-to-late 1980’s. These computers were based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor (the same as in the original 1984 Macintosh), and featured 512KB to (eventually) 4MB of RAM.

Physically, the computers were highly self-contained and built on a single motherboard with little “expandability”. On the other hand, they were complete packages, and were relatively inexpensive (“The Power Without The Price”). Some later form factors included a floppy and hard disk drive inside its case with a detached keyboard, others used external units.

The Atari ST computers used an operating system called TOS (“Tramiel Operating System”), which was partially derived from and featured a primitive (and wretched) Mac-like GUI called GEM. The machines could be operated in three graphics modes, depending on what sort of (proprietary) monitor was attached: 320x200 in 16 colors (out of a total palette of 512 colors), 640x200 in four colors (out of 512), and 640x400 in black and white. Some models had composite video output. All units had a set of MIDI ports which helped make these computers briefly ubiquitous in the professional music world.

For more information and pictures, visit The Atari Historical Society

The other major epiphany for Gary was CompuServe. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet, social computer telecommunication was done either through tiny BBS (bulletin board server) or larger national (even international) services, such as CompuServe. CompuServe hosted several Atari forums managed by Ron Luks, and one of the busiest belonged to Antic. The forum did two significant things for Gary and his publishing operation: First, it put him in direct contact with an active portion of his customer base. Gary could talk directly with the people buying his products and tailor the products appropriately. Second, it provided a medium for his customers to interact with each other as a community. People from disparate parts of the world using the same software could now share information—and ultimately, their computer artwork—with minimal attention or resources from Antic. In fact, on-line computer art exchange was already well under way with both the Atari 800 crowd and the ST users who had software like Tom Hudson’s DEGAS digital paint program. Gary took all this activity to the next logical level by making “user community” an official part of software development at Antic. The on-line arm of his graphics community was the “Cyber Connection” forum on CompuServe, which provided both an official face (like a commercial Web site) and a more casual message board system for free discussions.

The combination of direct collaboration with programmers and direct interaction with the end customers were two key components of the software culture that made all the subsequent graphics software possible.