In 1986, being an Atari 800 user, a teenager and based in
Sydney Australia - the last thing I expected was to have my Smartsheet
program picked up for publication in Page 6, a UK magazine. At the time
I was heavily involved as a committee member and editor for the Sydney
Atari User Group. Like most of the other members at the time (from all
walks of life) we had a common interest in tinkering around with our
Ataris and trying to understand bulletin boards and how to emulate stuff
like display list interrupts, graphics and sounds that we saw in
commercial software. In the pre-internet days, being an Atari computer
geek still had the personal element of meeting and sharing knowledge and
ideas in person with other like minded folk. Games were a common theme
but most Atari users also wanted to break the gaming mould and I
remember many weird and wonderful non-game applications that were
written for the Atari 400/800. Like most users, overseas magazines like
Compute! and Antic were must haves.
I was originally inspired to write Smartsheet as a
small after-school hours project. I had played around with Viscalc on
the Apple IIe in the local computer shop I used to play around in after
school. I thought I would test the limits of my Basic programming skills
to see if I could write a cut-down emulation of a spreadsheet program
for the 800. I remember starting one weekend and like most programmers,
once the momentum builds it kind of snowballed from there. Given today's
instant broadband and CD/DVD storage technology, I'm amazed we ever had
the patience to sit there listening to our cassette drives "buzzing" as
they loaded software and data.
Smartsheet was finished in just under 2 months (of
serious after school labour). I remember winning an award for it by my
local Atari user group but it got coverage in the US via the Michigan
Atari Computer Enthusiasts publication which later led to Page 6. I
remember getting a letter from Les Ellingham telling me my program was
being published and I was totally thrilled to bits.
I later upgraded my trusty Atari 800 to a 1040ST which
served me well during university. Although I (and those around me)
thought I might have become a computer programmer or engineer, computers
have more or less been intertwined in my career. Now as a technology
lawyer, new technology still gives me a buzz but like so many other 80s
computer hacks, my days toying around with my Atari 800 and befriending
other Atari users were times I look back on with very fond memories.
I am forever in debt to my father who had the
foresight to get me a Atari 800 (instead of an Apple IIe or C-64!!)
Ken Shiu, October 2006
