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Break Into Chat

breakintochat.com/blog

Computer history, recovered software, and interviews about BBSing, the Atari ST, ANSI art, and more.

Computing historyAtariDemoscene

’15’20’25
Posts
128 from 12 Dec 2012 to 26 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (8 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://breakintochat.com/blog/feed/

2026 5

  1. Recycling ANSI art: Tracing the origins of Fire Escape’s logon screens
  2. The mystery of the Solar Realms Elite title screen
  3. The many ANSI title screens of Barren Realms Elite (BRE)
  4. Don Lokke and “Mack the Mouse”: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 5
  5. The business of BBSing: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 4

2025 8

  1. Eerie and “Inspector Dangerfuck”: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 3
  2. BBSes and the artscene: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 2
  3. Filling in the blanks: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 1
  4. Remembering the late Yaakov Kirschen
  5. April Fools’ Day prank on Dark Force BBS
  6. A time capsule for 314 Day: St. Louis-area BBS message networks
  7. Some love for VT52 on the Atari ST
  8. Digging in to “Nosh Kosh,” the Jewish Pac-Man clone

2024 12

  1. IGNITE – The first all-IGS artpack!
  2. Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 6: Legacy
  3. Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 5: Point and click
  4. Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 4: The artist and the community
  5. Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 3: The adventure begins
  6. Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 2: Larry Mears
  7. Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 1: Introduction
  8. I’m heading to Atlanta — plus, Jack Tramiel’s phone numbers
  9. The college basketball bracket … in ANSI
  10. Revisiting my ANSI tile map
  11. Try Kirschen’s games and software on the Internet Archive
  12. Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Magic Harp” for Commodore Amiga

2023 4

  1. Our latest special collection: The ACE-St. Louis “NewsLine”
  2. Unearthed: My old OASIS BBS Atari floppy disk
  3. Slides yield glimpses of Kirschen’s lost “Magic Harp” software
  4. Talking about Kirschen’s software at Arch Reactor

2022 10

  1. Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Music Creator” for IBM PC
  2. Unearthed: Kirschen’s Atari ST projects
  3. Unearthed: Kirschen’s independent Apple II projects
  4. Unearthed: Kirschen’s Apple II games for Gesher
  5. Bringing dry bones back to life: The Kirschen software collection
  6. Ten years of Break Into Chat!
  7. Thinking about Jadzia, C.G., and our ephemeral digital lives
  8. Joe Reiss, creator of the “Spoiler-Free Opinion Summary”
  9. Remembering the S.O.S. — the Spoiler-Free Opinion Summary
  10. Appreciating the physicality of floppies

2021 1

  1. “Creaks” scene 45: Goat glitch

2020 12

  1. Jon Radoff’s BBS-related correspondence
  2. Paul Witte and Herb Flower, creators of Thieves’ Guild
  3. I completed my 7-year quest to play Thieves’ Guild
  4. A different way to play, part 5: TWTerm
  5. A different way to play, part 4: GTERM
  6. A different way to play, part 3: OOIITERM
  7. A different way to play, part 2: Pit Terminal
  8. A different way to play: front-ends
  9. Tutorial: Telnet to a BBS using a terminal program in the Hatari emulator
  10. Unearthed: Dark Fortress for the Atari ST
  11. Unearthed: My Atari 8-bit cassette tape
  12. Slack API documentation mentions BBS door games

2019 4

  1. Fidonet archive update
  2. Gary Martin, creator of “TradeWars 2002”
  3. Archiving 300,000 Fidonet messages
  4. Using high res on my Atari ST with the CosmosEx and a wire

2018 2

  1. Modding an iPod 3G to use a CompactFlash card
  2. New ANSImation: Star Trek: The Trouble With The Rangifer Tarandus

2017 6

  1. Web browsing on the Atari ST with a CosmosEx
  2. I rescued “Mom and Me” for the Atari ST
  3. New ANSImation: Star Wars opening crawl
  4. New parallax ANSImation: Millennium Falcon dodging asteroids
  5. Detention Block AA-23
  6. RS232 WiFi dongle for your retrocomputer

2016 4

  1. Who needs SVG when you’ve got ANSI?
  2. My first ANSI portrait
  3. Converting movie clips to ANSImation
  4. Jon Radoff, creator of “Space Empire Elite” and “Final Frontier”

2015 6

  1. ANSI mermaid swims in parallax
  2. “From Here to Eternity” launches today
  3. Shooter Jennings, creator of “From Here to Eternity”
  4. Talking BBSes on the Electric Dreams podcast
  5. ANSI tile map
  6. Parallax-scrolling effect … in ANSI

2014 15

  1. Merry Christmas … Atari STyle
  2. Hatari, Lantronix, and CosmosEx: My quixotic quest to play “Thieves Guild”
  3. A Star Trek font for the new Star Wars movie?
  4. The vicious circles of Google Plus
  5. Introducing my new game, “Doubles”
  6. Mother’s Day: “Mom and Me” for the Atari ST
  7. ATASCII animations
  8. Second collection: BBS-related podcasts
  9. Trade Wars vs. Legend of the Red Dragon: Which was the most popular?
  10. Hearing from my software heroes
  11. Introducing our first special collection: Door World Magazine
  12. Jewels, bats, and balls
  13. Talking BBS games on the Bobby Blackwolf Show
  14. Me vs. the Super Bowl
  15. Seth Robinson talks LORD and Planets: TEOS with Matt Barton

2013 32

  1. One year of Break Into Chat
  2. Happy birthday, Atari Jaguar
  3. “On The Media” revisits a BBS “ghost town”
  4. Hollie Satterfield, creator of “Space Dynasty”
  5. Space Dynasty memories
  6. Another BBS game under development
  7. ANSI_GFX_ADVNTR
  8. Birthday screens using GIF -> ANSI converters
  9. Kevin MacFarland, creator of “Assassin”
  10. Assassin memories
  11. More VT-52 demos
  12. Bolivia vacation: Photo and video editing choices
  13. Visualizing 314: The directories, the data, and the caveats
  14. Visualizing 314: The St. Louis scene in charts
  15. Visualizing 314: Fire Escape’s BBS Directory
  16. The future of news, as predicted in 1993
  17. Austin Seraphin, creator of “Barneysplat!”
  18. Barneysplat! memories
  19. From newsletter to magazine
  20. The FBI’s Atari files
  21. Telnet to a BBS using a PC terminal program within the DOSBox emulator
  22. Kids drawing on computers, then and now
  23. Emulation is time travel
  24. BBS door games + microtransactions = Zynga
  25. Joel Bergen, creator of “Global War” and “Global Backgammon”
  26. Global War memories
  27. Video: “The Joy of ASCII with Bob Ross”
  28. Amit Patel, creator of “Solar Realms Elite”
  29. Solar Realms Elite memories
  30. BBS doors: innovative social games?
  31. BBS Documentary clip: TradeWars
  32. VT-52 demo: Beat Nick Part 2

2012 7

  1. “Why I love my ATARI Computer”
  2. The Commodore 64
  3. The Christmas we got an Atari Jaguar
  4. Forget his joining Twitter, how about the time the Pope got a 1-900 number?
  5. Telnet to a BBS using a terminal program in the Hatari emulator
  6. So it begins.
  7. The birth of “Break Into Chat”