An Interview with Gene Chandler of Great Lakes Software
By Dan Eicher 
September 2003

Q: How did you get started with the TI?
A: My parents bought one for me in 1981, I immediately wanted to program  a video game.

Q: How old were you at that time?
A: Fourteen.

Q: Assuming you started with just a console. How long did it take you to figure out that writing a good video game in TI Basic wasn't going to be a snap? This must have led you to want an expanded system. What new hardware did you decide on?
A: I purchased a joystick and speech synthesizer immediately, then Extended Basic, then an expansion box, then memory upgrade, floppy drive, then dual floppies, then a ramdisk.

Q: What modules did you acquire? When moving to Assembler, did you ever consider development with the Mini Memory?
 A: I did develop a lot with the Mini Memory module.  Looking back now I can hardly believe we were able to build complete and fun games and other applications and run them in a 4k memory space!!! 
 
Q: What Language did you write your commercial applications in?
A: Basic, Extended Basic, TMS9900 Assembler.

Q: Who were your programmers and how did you find them?
A: There were two; myself and Richard Paquette. We were high school friends.

Q: Which program was your best seller?
A: Joy Paint '99, also Banner '99 and Certificate '99 were good sellers.

Q: During development of Joy Paint '99 did you look at the other graphics software such as TI‑Artist and Graphx? Did you do any kind of competitive analysis? Did you ever meet Chris Faherty of Inscebot?
A: Yes we did look at those applications, which were both excellent in their own ways.  Competitive analysis was part of the development, as we did consider many things such as file format compatibility and lacking features in the others for example.  I believe I did meet Chris briefly at a cocktail party at the Chicago show one year.

Q: How did you handle all the variations in dot-matrix printers,  I'm sure that was a headache!
A: In deed it was, we limited ourselves two Epson and Oki 9 pin only.  That was enough and covered a wide range of users.

Q: Who else was involved in Great Lakes at the time (Programmers, Investors, etc)?
A: My father Gene Chandler Jr, was known to help us at shows since at the time;
I was too young to drive!  Richard Paquette also helped at shows and with some programming, Gary Goerke, another school friend, also helped at shows.

Q: How did you make the jump from Extended Basic to Assembler?
A: Both feet first.  I started slowly writing simple programs, playing, having fun comparing speed of the same program written in Basic vs Assembler.

Q: Did you ever consider writing software for the Geneve?
A: We did make a version of Joy Paint '99 for the Geneve but had too few sales to continue a special version.			

Q: Did you ever think about writing a Yamaha 9938 version of Joy Paint?
A: Maybe I would if I knew more about platforms supporting 9938.  Now you've got me wondering....

Q: What was the biggest technical hurdle that you ever overcome on the TI?
A: Creating code, from scratch in assembly language to draw a straight line in graphics mode, and to draw circles and ellipses in assembly.  Controlling the Epson printers, loading and saving files.

Q: What gave you the biggest feeling of accomplishment?
A: Having positive reviews published in MICROpendium.

Q: What is your most memorable TI moment?
A: When I sold the same software to independently shopping husband and wife separately on the same day at a show in Chicago.

Q: What was your favorite piece of TI hardware?
A: Speech synthesizer, and the joystick.

Q: What was your favorite piece of software that you didn't write?
A: I liked the game Tombstone City.

Q: During your development days, did you develop any development tools to aid you? Did you use any third party tools?
A: Some simple tools to do search and replace on multiple files, also, I built a ramdisk from the kits that were so popular, so I could compile code faster than floppy.

Q: Who was your favorite TI personality?
A: Bill Cosby, Craig Miller.

Q: If you had unlimited time and money, what program would you have liked to have written
for the TI?
A: A really good full featured word processor, or a graphical role playing game.

Q: Did you ever produce any hardware?
A: Not for sale, but I did make  a small batch of screen capture trigger switches and enjoyed building the ramdisk.

Q: Where were you on "Black Friday" ‑‑ the day TI announced it was pulling out of the home computer business? How did you take the news?
 A: I learned about this while I was at my friends house working on some Apple II programming with him.  I was disappointed and hopeful about all the rumors at the time, for example about the rumor that GE might buy the rights and continue with the computer design and possibly release the 99/8

Q: Who picked the name "Great Lakes Software"?
A: Great Lakes Software was suggested by my mother Carol Chandler
 
Q: Who wrote your ads that appeared in MICROpendium? How was the copy prepared?
A: Mostly I wrote the ads.  We sometimes even used our own graphics programs to create them!
 
Q: Some folks are reluctant to give sales figures, But, if you have no objection, it would be interesting to know approximately how many copies of your products were sold. I'm not asking for an "audited number" but just a general idea. If you don't want to answer or make an estimate that's perfectly OK.
A: Well.... lots.  I remember selling about $3000 worth of software in one day at a good show.  For a high school kid I was pleased.   We had a few sales to some distributors in the $1000‑$2000 range every couple months.  It was not so much about earning and income at that point as it was about the experience and the fun, the money was a side result of creating a business out of my interests and skills. 

Q: Do you think you lost any sales to piracy?
A: I think we did suffer some loss to piracy, as all software companies did.  In the final years as the TI‑99/4a software sales declined, we were just supporting our products out of loyalty to the TI community and for a computer system we loved.  Actually those are the main reasons we got
involved with a commercial software offering for the TI in the first place, the money was secondary.
 
Q: Do you still have your TI equipment?
A: Absolutely.  All of it.

Q: Do you have any anecdotes about your TI days: happy customers, unhappy customers, equipment struck by lightning, critical disk clawed by cat, being delayed at Canadian border, getting lost on way to show, the tribulations of  being a "rich" vendor while staying in a Motel 6, development "Eurekas", and so on?
A: I remember showing my girlfriend Kelly at the time (Now my wife!) a 75% complete prototype of Joy Paint '99, and she just looked puzzled like I was showing her a blank sheet of paper. She like most people at the time had no appreciation or understanding for what software development was about, or computing in general was about or how people that used these things enjoyed them so much.  It was hard for someone like me who was so close and involved to the computing scene to understand how regular folks didn’t have a clue.  Today things are different, computers are in our culture and embedded into everything everywhere now.  Software means "computer programming" to most people now and no longer refers to "t‑shirt and socks",  but it really was a different world back then.  Nowadays my wife Kelly even finds bugs for me in my current software development projects, and she is now internet savvy like most Americans.  Our three kids 6, 4 & 2 all use computers now and think nothing of it.
 
I find it amazing that in only twenty years the computing power at our disposal is now approximately 1000 times greater than before.  Clock speeds are now 3000 mhz versus 3 mhz twenty years ago.  I have nearly 10,000 times as much memory on the computer I am using now to type this than I did on my first machines in the 1980's.  Looking forward, do you think we will all have 3 terahertz processors with 2.5 terabytes of ram sitting on our desks in 2023?
 
Q:How did you come up with ideals on what program to write next ie. people were asking for it, things that you saw a need for, programs you thought would be fun/interesting to write?
A: I wrote what I thought was fun and interesting.  As a user myself I saw what was popular and what everybody was doing and searching for and I went out to invent some of it.  Graphics was more fun for me than say, writing a disc copy utility, so that is why most of what we made was graphics related.
 
Q: Are you related to an Ernest Chandler? Ernest Chandler is mentioned in the authors appreciation section of Harry Brashears, Desktop publishing on the TI Home Computer. 
A: My full name is Ernest Eugene Chandler III.   Harry Brashear as I recall was among my faithful users and customers of the various software programs we offered.

<E.O.F.>