-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Dodd
To: Dan Eicher
Sent: 2/3/01 7:51 PM
Subject: Re: Interview Questions - Thanks!

> How did you get started with the TI?
My grandfather bought a TI-99/4A when I was ten years old. I thought it was
the coolest thing I had ever seen. I started going over there most
afternoons to play around on it. I was homeschooled, so I was able to spend
a fair amount of time on it -- my mother was pretty flexible with things
like that. I doubt even she would have guessed how far my early obsession
with computers would end up taking me, though.

I started programming because I wanted Grandpa to buy some video games for
it. Grandpa, being incredibly wise, refused, telling me that if I wanted it
play video games so much I should write them. So I did. My first program
ever was something called Logger. You had to move this character across the
screen without getting hit by falling objects from a tree. It was all
written in BASIC (not even Extended BASIC). The game sucked (I was, after
all, only ten), but at the end of it, an amazing thing happened: I
discovered that I liked writing the game more than I liked playing it.
And I was hooked forever after.

> How did you make the jump from Basic to Assembler?
I was frustrated with the limitations of BASIC, especially the speed.
BASIC on the old TI was incredibly slow, since it was double-interpreted (the
TI interpreted the G-code BASIC interpreter, which interpreted the BASIC
program). It was really frustrating to learn -- I just couldn't get the
hang of it for the longest time. Finally, I made some conceptual
breakthrough.
While it was still challenging, I never again had the problem of just
not getting it at all. I think I was 12 or so when that happened. I remember
that there was a book that helped me a lot; I've long since forgotten
the name of it, though.

> Everyone was AMAZED the someone of your age could have written such
technical
> programs as Hypercopy and PC-Transfer!!! How old were you when you
wrote first
> assembly program for distribution?
Disk Copy 99 would have been the first, I think. It was shareware -- or
freeware, I think it was still called then. I think I released that when
I was 13. 

> You have many programs that stick out in my mind that you wrote,
> PC-Transfer, DOS-Shell for Extended Basic, Hypercopy, Identifile and
> PC-Transfer. Which one of these is your favorite and why?
(I actually don't remember DOS-Shell for Extended Basic. I don't think I
did that one. That, or I've lost my mind.)

HyperCopy was probably my favorite. Paul Charlton helped me with the
math in figuring out how fast was theoretically possible for copying a disk,
given things like step time, latency before being able to read/write after a
step, rotation speed, etc. Then the entire goal of HyperCopy was to be able to
copy a disk that fast -- to hit the theoretical limit. And I eventually
did.
I also liked accessing the low-level hardware, which was obviously
necessary for a program like that.

That said, PC-Transfer was probably most people's favorite of my
programs.
HyperCopy was very cool technically, but really, at the end of the day,
being able to copy a disk twice as fast as something else isn't that
thrilling unless you're copying hundreds of disks. It's not like it let
you do something that you were completely unable to do before. PC-Transfer,
though, was really unique -- it really opened a door at the time for
connectivity between the two platforms. Until then, the only way to get
files from one platform to another was by modem or direct serial
connection.

> One of the neatest aspects of Hypercopy is when you start it up and
the TI
> "signs" your name on the screen, is that actually how your signiture
looked at
> the time and how did you do it?
I don't even remember what it looks like anymore. I think it was
reasonably accurate. I think I wound up doing it with a mouse on the Geneve 9640,
but I'm not sure. 

> Millions of (especially assembler) programs have been started for the
TI, it
> is a rare individual that was actually able to bring it to completion,
not to
> mentions as many as you did, what do you feel was the main drive that
actually
> separated you from the crowd?
That's hard to say. No doubt having the flexibility in my schedule to
really pursue programming helped a lot. Programming just fascinated me, and I
really wanted to understand more and more of it. So it was probably my
drive, more than anything else, that really pushed me. I was also
fortunate to have some good friends in the TI community who helped me a lot (most
notably Peter Hoddie and Paul Charlton).

> I know many people were hoping, but did you ever consider adding
support for
> the Myarc HFDC to PC-Transfer?
I honestly don't remember how seriously I considered it. I would have
had to largely re-write the lower level guts of it, since PC-Transfer talked
directly to the low-level hardware controllers.

> I know at the time, you were developing Hypercopy and PC-Transfer,
MDOS was
> evolving. How did you manage to write the programs so that they have
continued
> to run on newer versions of MDOS? (The latest version 6.0 was released
last
> year by Tim Tesch to fix some Y2K issues).
I'm surprised to hear that they still work so well -- that's at least as
much a testament to the people changing MDOS as me. The basic rule for
writing software that will keep running is to be careful and pay
attention to how things are supposed to work. That's true whether it's the old TI
platform, Macintosh, or Windows. It's when you make shortcuts, because
you discovered something undocumented or weird on the platform, that you
later fun into trouble. 

> Did you have any program that you were working on that didn't make it
out the
> door before you moved on to the Macintosh?
No, I think all the big efforts made it out.

> What was the biggest technical hurdle that you ever overcome on the
TI?
Definitely learning assembly language. That was really hard for me at
the time. 

> What was your favorite piece of TI hardware?
The GRAM Kracker. That was just an amazing piece of work. It was a lot
of fun for me because I got to learn a new programming language. TI's
G-code was actually pretty clever, and it solved a major problem of the time
(memory address space was really limited). It's just too bad that it was
so slow. 

> Who was your favorite person or people in the TI world?
There were so many. Peter Hoddie, Paul Charlton, Barry Traver ... I
can't even remember all of them.

> During your development days, did you develop any development tools to
aid
> you?  Did you use any third party tools?
I can't remember if I wrote any development tools myself. Towards the
end, I was mostly using Paul Charlton's Macro assembler for development.

> How did you get involved with the Geneve?
Peter Hoddie and Paul Charlton, whom I had known from before, got me
into it. The platform was really interesting, and I had a lot of fun working
on it. Working for Myarc was less than an ideal experience, though.

> What are you doing these days?
Until just a few days ago, I was working on the QuickTime engineering
team for Apple Computer. I've been working on QuickTime for ten years, but
finally decided to leave to take a break. I'm not sure what I'll end up
doing next; right now, I'm just planning on taking some time off and
seeing my wife more.