R.I.P Thorsten Otto

[Darklord]

I didn't see it mentioned here (yet) so I thought I would post it...

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=46188

R.I.P.

[exxos]

Oh wow, that is terrible, what the hell happened :(

EDIT:

I've cloned his site the best I could. Problem will be php scripts which are obviously not going to work.

[Cosmic Puppet]

Sorry to hear this.

[Badwolf]

This has left me genuinely saddened.

Thorsten was one of the true heavyweights in the Atari ST technical community. His work is everywhere and has pervaded a huge percentage of the things I work with and on.

I didn't have many direct interactions with him, but when I did he was polite and helpful and obviously brought an enormous knowledge to bear in his commentary.

You only have to look at the things on his website (https://www.tho-otto.de) or some of the repositories on his GitHub (https://github.com/th-otto?tab=repositories) to see his influence.

Probably the two biggest things in my immediate consciousness are his work on porting the latest GCC versions to our flavour of 68k and the truly staggering reverse engineering work carried on on all version of TOS from 1.0 to 3.06 which meant you can now build byte-exact versions with modern tools.

The final thing I'll say is that on any number of occasions I've seen people address him as Otto (perhaps an easy mistake if you're not familiar with Thorsten as a given name) and whilst I can't obviously know what was going on in his mind at these times, not once did I see him raise a metaphorical eyebrow or even correct his interlocutor. I like to think that's simply who he was.

Deepest sympathies to his family and those who knew him well.

BW

[rubber_jonnie]

Very sad news, another bright light from the community gone.

[sporniket]

Ouch, very sad. I still can't read atari-forum for now on my mobile phone, would not have known before long...

[JezC]

Incredibly sad news.

Condolences to his family and friends.

No words I can think of can adequately capture his contributions and knowledge for our Atari community.

He will be greatly missed.

[tOriman]

Very, very sad news...

R.I.P

Simply I can't say more...

[Atari74user]

Oh wow that is sad, as others have said a sad loss, not only for being a pillar of the Atari community. Thank you for being just that Thorsten!

My condolences to family, friends and those who knew him.

[sandord]

I'm so sad about his passing... I respected him a lot and he helped me out (mostly with C stuff) a lot of times. Rest in peace, Thorsten... :cry: