Antic was the name of a home computer

Home computer

Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...

 magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 devoted to the Atari 8-bit computer line (Atari 400/800 and compatibles). Its ISSN is 0113-1141. It took its name from the ANTIC

ANTIC

Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller is an early video system chip used in the Atari 8-bit family of microcomputers as well as the Atari 5200 in the 1980s. The chip was patented by Atari, Inc. in 1981...

 chip, which produced the Atari line's graphics

2D computer graphics

2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...

. The first issue was published in April 1982. While it began as a bimonthly magazine, within a year it had gone monthly. The last issue was in June–July 1990. All told, 88 issues were published. A "Best of" book was also published.

Its main rival in the United States was ANALOG Computing

A.N.A.L.O.G.

A.N.A.L.O.G. was an American computer magazine devoted to the Atari 8-bit home computer line. It was known for its "advanced" programs in comparison to most type-in magazines of the era, especially its main rival, ANTIC, another long-lived magazine devoted to the Atari 8-bit line...

, another long-lived magazine devoted to the Atari 8-bit line. A lesser rival was the short lived Hi-Res Magazine.

In 1986, Antic spun off STart Magazine

STart Magazine

STart Magazine was a spin-off computer magazine started by ANTIC magazine. Unlike ANTIC, STart focused on Atari's new ST computer line. The magazine lasted 42 issues, from 1986 to 1991, actually outliving its parent. It originally started from Atari ST specific sections in ANTIC magazine, later...

, a sister publication aimed at the Atari ST

Atari ST

The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...

 line.
The daughter magazine would outlive its parent by about a year. When Antic ended, it continued as a section of STart, appearing in six more issues.

Typo

One feature of Antic magazine was a program called TYPO ('Type Your Program Once', and a play on typographical error). This was a program that generated a checksum

Checksum

A checksum or hash sum is a fixed-size datum computed from an arbitrary block of digital data for the purpose of detecting accidental errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. The integrity of the data can be checked at any later time by recomputing the checksum and...

 for each Atari BASIC

Atari BASIC

Atari BASIC is a BASIC interpreter for the Atari 8-bit family of 6502-based home computers. The interpreter originally shipped on an 8 KB cartridge; on later XL/XE model computers it was built in, with an option to disable it, and started when the machines were booted with no other cartridges...

 line entered in a program. By comparing each line's checksum with that printed in the magazine, the reader could be sure they typed the BASIC source correctly. TYPO was later succeeded by TYPO II, a smaller, faster program.

Versions of TYPO were also published and used (with permission) by Page 6 magazine

Page 6

Page 6 was an independent British publication aimed at users of Atari home computers. It was published between 1982 and 1998...

.

Contributors

Antic published articles from a wide group of contributors, but it did have some regular authors, including Jerry White and Ian Chadwick (author of the book Mapping the Atari

Mapping the Atari

Mapping the Atari, written by Ian Chadwick in 1983, is a location-by-location explanation of the Atari 8-bit family's memory map. It was one of the "must have" references for programming the platform, although it was published somewhat late in the machine's timeline...

).

See also

• Antic Software
  ANTIC Software
  Antic Software was the name of the software company founded by Gary Yost of Antic, a magazine for the Atari 8-bit computers. The catalog of software was bound into issues of Antic, and products were sold via mail order....
  
  – The software company founded by Antic.
• Atari User
  Atari User
  Atari User was a British computer magazine aimed at users of Atari home computers, and published by Database Publications between 1985 and 1988....
  
  – A British Atari magazine

External links

• Antic Magazine – At the Classic Computer Magazine Archive
• The Antic Magazine Library at the Centre for Computing History