Uploaded September 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The Famous Computer Cafe 1985-01-15 Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Aired on KFOX.
This is part 1 of the interview with Steven Levy. Part 2 aired the next day, and is available here.
The recording ended abruptly at the closing ad spot.
Digitized from reel-to-reel tape by Harbor Digitizing of Friday Harbor, Washington.
The Famous Computer Cafe recovery and digitization project was done by Kay Savetz in 2024. If you have access to other episodes of Famous Computer Cafe on tape, please contact Kay Savetz.
The Famous Computer Cafe 1985-01-15 Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Aired on KFOX.
This is part 1 of the interview with Steven Levy. Part 2 aired the next day, and is available here.
The recording ended abruptly at the closing ad spot.
Digitized from reel-to-reel tape by Harbor Digitizing of Friday Harbor, Washington.
The Famous Computer Cafe recovery and digitization project was done by Kay Savetz in 2024. If you have access to other episodes of Famous Computer Cafe on tape, please contact Kay Savetz.

![Michael Phillips, Atari Bench Tech — interview
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: https://archive.org/details/MichaelPhillipsAtariBenchTechInterview Michael Phillips, Atari Bench Tech — interview](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y-57RAo5S_w/mqdefault.jpg)








