Antic The Atari 8-bit Podcast

Vince Cate, The Critical Connection   In my last interview, I talked with the creator of SIO2PC, which let Atari users use a DOS computer as its disk drive and printer. This interview is with the creator a product which - six years earlier - let Atari users use a CP/M computer as its disk drive and printer (and keyboard.)   Vince Cate owned a company called USS Enterprises, with just one product: The Critical Connection. Critical Connection was a combination of a specialized cable and software for connecting an Atari 8-bit to a computer running CP/M. The long cable had an SIO plug on one end and a 25-pin serial plug on the other, and some chips in the middle, allowing the Atari and CP/M box to communicate at 19,200 bps.   The Critical Connection was released in 1983, six years before SIO2PC. They shared many similar features: with it you could: use an entire CP/M floppy disk as an emulated 600K Atari disk drive, create 92KB CP/M disk files which emulated Atari 90KB disks, and print from the Atari to the CP/M