Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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Michael Phillips worked as a bench technician at Atari from
February 1981 to June 1984, doing component level repair of Atari
video game systems, personal computers, and peripherals.

Because Michael is a lifelong stutterer, he didn’t want to do a
voice interview — but he was willing to be interviewed by email.
Because this is an audio podcast, I’ve enlisted Randy Kindig to
read Michael’s responses. You can also read the original written
version of this interview via the link below.

The interview was conducted via email, February 2015.

Teaser quotes:

“Beating the device in question...was part of being a good tech.
The key is knowing how hard and where to hit.”

“Misspellings, bad English and odd terminology were par for the
day. One guy once referred to the I/O cable as a
‘hose’.”

“One I vividly remember was an 810 [disk drive] that came back 3
times. The guy claimed it would randomly erase disks, but we could
never find a culprit...”

Read the original written version of this interview: archive.org/details/MichaelPhillipsAtariBenchTechInterview