Best remembered for his Pavloada fast loader for speedy cassette loads that even allowed for sound and animations to play during the tape loading, Pavlumanolakos joined Beam in 1984 as a programmer. The first Pavloada was created overnight by Pavlumanolakos as demonstration of his skills for his job interview.
Nigel Brennan tells the story explaining how during his job interview for Beam Pavlumanolakos sat there looking up the answers to technical question in a programming book on the Commodore 64 he had brought to the interview. Asked if he had actually ever programmed a C64, Pavlumanolakos admitted all he know about them was what he had read on the train on the way to the interview. When asked why he thought Beam should hire him? Pavlumanolakos offered to demonstrate his skills saying “tell me what you want and I will do it for you”. Alfred Milgrom asked for a “cassette fast loader”. Pavlumanolakos came back the next morning with a version of the Pavloada and was hired.
Gregg Barnett recalls Pavlumanolakos’ love of the creative challenge and how he was always striving to push the technology, setting goals such as the perfect smooth scroll on the Spectrum and later the Commodore 64.
The Pavloada was used on Beams games and sold to other developers. As his focus was on the creation of tools, Pavlumanolakos is not credited on many games but his contribution to Beam Software and their games was significant.
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