Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Dan Horn stated as a programmer at Scott Adams’ Adventure International, where he programmed the Atari version of Treasure Quest. Then he moved to Infocom where he was technical director, then became head of the microcomputing group.
This interview took place on May 21, 2015.
Teaser quotes:
“The feelies were really the copy protection. If you had a feelie, you were compelled — not really for copy protection purposes — but you were compelled to have it because it was cool.”
“With the Atari we had, you know, thousands of colors. We had the rippling, shimmering effect, and we had all this other stuff. Now, most of it never got to an Infocom game. But it was cool!”
Dan Horn stated as a programmer at Scott Adams’ Adventure International, where he programmed the Atari version of Treasure Quest. Then he moved to Infocom where he was technical director, then became head of the microcomputing group.
This interview took place on May 21, 2015.
Teaser quotes:
“The feelies were really the copy protection. If you had a feelie, you were compelled — not really for copy protection purposes — but you were compelled to have it because it was cool.”
“With the Atari we had, you know, thousands of colors. We had the rippling, shimmering effect, and we had all this other stuff. Now, most of it never got to an Infocom game. But it was cool!”








![Store and Forward episode 10 — Back to Work in 2025
Full show notes (they are too long for YouTube) are at https://www.storeandforwardradio.org/2025/01/13/store-and-forward-episode-10/
Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (a project of the Internet Archive): https://archive.org/details/dlarc
Zero Retries Newsletter: https://www.zeroretries.org
Not mentioned on this podcast, but Kay recently did a presentation to RATPAC titled DLARC - The Free Online Ham Radio Library which is a great overview of the wide range of Amateur Radio (and other) material available in DLARC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egjdrt-ye1E
Kay discussed some interesting and specialized Amateur Radio newsletters recently added to DLARC including:
Amateur Television in Central Ohio (ATCO) - https://archive.org/details/atco-newsletter
425 DX News - https://archive.org/details/425-dx-news
What’s notable is that it has been published every Saturday since beginning publication… in 1991! (As a fellow newsletter publisher, Steve admired that level of dedication!)
DX World Weekly Bulletin - https://archive.org/details/dx-world
… and this historical magazine:
The Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review - https://archive.org/details/pub_the-telegraphic-journal-and-electrical-review
Steve said he was pretty sure he had seen a collection of this magazine just yesterday as he was picking up some magazines at the Bellingham (Washington) Spark Museum of Electrical Invention - https://www.sparkmuseum.org.
Steve discussed a bit of the backstory of his fiction story in Zero Retries 0183 - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0183 - Paying it Forward in Amateur Radio about a conversation between Jennifer, a young techie Amateur Radio Operator and Jada, a young woman in her teens about Jennifer’s Amateur Radio activities.
Steve then discussed a few of the items mentioned in Zero Retries 0184 - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0184:
zBitx portable HF radio - 5 watts, Software Defined Radio, for $149 - https://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/zbitx/
SignalSDR Pro - Software Defined Transceiver with 2 TX and 2 RX for $900 - https://www.crowdsupply.com/signalens/signalsdr-pro
KV4P-HT (Kit Available from Halibut Electronics) - Open source project of a “strap on VHF radio” for Android phones - https://electronics.halibut.com/product/kv4p-ht-v2/
Steve went on to discuss the recent unveiling of NVIDIA’s Project Digits which is a “1 petaflop desktop computer” and the potential for him to “talk to his desktop AI” (that would be running on a Project Digits computer) to develop a fantasized future radio system. This combination would be the equivalent of having a full time software engineer writing GNU Radio code, and Steve just uses the output of the AI in GNU Radio, tries it out, notes what works and doesn’t work, inputs that back into the AI.
Kay said that he would love to “browse” various digital modes automatically, and Steve said that we’re close to that, including:
DragonOS - https://sourceforge.net/p/dragonos-focal/wiki/OriginStory/
KiwiSDR - https://kiwisdr.nz/blogs/news/about-kiwisdr-radios
Signal Identification Wiki - https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/Signal_Identification_Guide
Radios are computers - with antennas! We keep having more and more (cheap) computing power to throw at radio communications!
As an example of how abundant computer power can make a difference in (Amateur Radio) radio technology, Steve discussed the innovation of “bit flip testing and correction” that John Langner WB2OSZ implemented in Dire Wolf Software TNC - https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf. See this presentation by WB2OSZ - https://archive.org/details/direwolf-software-tnc.
[Then some interesting related convo happened that doesnt fit into YouTubes 5000-character video details. See the show notes at https://www.storeandforwardradio.org/2025/01/13/store-and-forward-episode-10/ ]
Kay concluded the podcast by saying that DLARC added 1.1M pages of material in 2024! Store and Forward episode 10 — Back to Work in 2025](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jLnpy3yQJHE/mqdefault.jpg)

