Oct 24, 2020
Dan Noguerol (Farb): Atari 8-bit Software Preservation
Initiative
Two interviews with the same person, recorded more than four years
apart. Dan Noguerol is better known to the Atari community as Farb.
He is the mastermind behind the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation
Initiative, and years ago created SIO2Arduino, an Arduino-based
disk drive emulator.
I interviewed Farb on August 29, 2019, where we talked primarily
about the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative. That
interview took place at the Fujiama Atari event in Lengenfeld,
Germany. Our friend Roland Wassenberg sat in on the interview.
Shortly after doing that interview, I learned that Randy Kindig had
also interviewed Farb, on April 20, 2015, but got busy and hadn't
published the interview.
So in this episode, two interviews with Farb: my more recent
interview first, then we'll go back to 2015 to hear Randy's
interview.
...
Since this interview was recorded, I received my SuperCard Pro, and
have used it to digitize a couple hundred Atari disks. I've also
digitized dozens of Atari cassette tapes. With the Software
Preservation Initiative web site, the process has gotten a lot
easier. The Kryoflux and SuperCard Pro hardware and software still
isn't as foolproof as I'd like, but there's been progress on that
front for sure.
Next, Randy's 2015 interview. In it, they discuss the Software
Preservation Initiative, which was at a much earlier stage at that
point, and SIO2Arduino. SIO2Arduino is an Atari 8-bit device
emulator that runs on the Arduino platform. It connects to Atari
8-bit hardware and emulates a single Atari 1050 disk drive. In the
years since this interview was recorded, the project has largely
been made obsolete by projects like the S-Drive-MAX and FujiNet.
But Farb's work on SIO2Arduino, and making it open-source,
absolutely laid the groundwork for those newer hardware
projects.
Atari 8-bit Software
Preservation Initiative
SIO2Arduino
web site
SIO2Arduino
at GitHub