TMR Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 To be honest the financial side of the coping side ie where people were making money via BBS systems etc seemed to more come in with the Atari ST and Amiga & PC, I don't even remember it being big on the C64, it was more copy parties where people met at a place and just swapped stuff, I don't think there was a selling side in a big way, I never saw one. It was actually frowned upon by the majority of people in the C64 scene at least from what i saw, with individuals being slated in the disk mags or paper-based ones like Illegal for selling cracks they'd received to "local lamers" and most of the time being booted out of their crew for it too - i'm not sure it even occurred to me! As i saw it, things only changed in the 16-bit era because there was a massive influx of new people and the unwritten "rules of engagement" were watered down somewhat, although the big copy events were still all about spreading the love rather than cash, at least i'm told they were because i got invites as a "veteran scener" (a veteran in my early twenties...!) but wasn't interested. When he gets home its a file called FishEggs, when he runs it, it turns out to be Delta on the C64 LONG before it was out in the shops, already cracked and crunched. i suspect that's how the prototype version of Warhawk may have escaped on the C64, before it was "obfuscated" to remove the Star Force style end-of-level bosses - even the coders didn't bother keeping a copy so that would've been lost for ever had the cracking scene not archived it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svenski Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 Some great stories here. I ended up with an Atari 800XL from Dixons as for the price nothing came close to it. My parents had recently separated so them agreeing to buy me a computer for Christmas was probably after lots of complex and not very diplomatic negotiations I wasn't party to. Anyway, I wanted a C64 but that was only being sold with the MIDI keyboard bundle at the time, and out of the agreed budget. Second choice was a Spectrum but after seeing one hidden in the back of Dixons in Derby, I was left a bit unimpressed by it. So, it was the 800XL with 1010, software bundle and joystick. Good times, and it was still possible for a while at least to walk into Boots and buy new Atari games off the shelf. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 So i guess most of the 'disk swapping' (i.e swapping well dodgy atari or commodore computer software) was actually taking place in the actual shop.....well strange Mind you, i do remember a couple of times someone tried shoving their rob c menu disks into one of silica's 1050's, all i remember hearing was "no you don't" and the screen/monitor was turned off Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 Sadly Carmel the box shifting selling mentality was alive even then, we as Maplin were all reasonably knowledgeable about the stuff with myself being the most experienced on the product and if I may say myself a good salesman, you know you are good when customers ask for you personally When I doing electronic components it becomes a very personal thing with the customer as say you don't have a certain op amp you often had to rely on the customer to know his stuff and find replacements. Even tho electronics was not my strong point customers like me because I was fast and knew the catalogue code numbers off the top of my head, I never needed to look up in a catalogue for the thousands upon thousands we used. But venture across to Tandy across the road and suddenly you were in box shifter world, the staff had ZERO knowledge and the training was to wear the customer down by attrition, they badgered them, BS'ed them and basically miss sold countless items solely to gain commission which were were not paid, same pay for a 3p resistor as a 2 grand Atari sale. The Tandy style was to kiss the customers ass and as soon as the money exchanged hands the customer was just another person blocking the shop to them, after sales was non existent. When I took over the manager role my staff were trained to provide a service, low behold them if I caught them being off with the customer, regardless of how you felt you helped the customer. No box shifting here thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 I liked the C64 scene, was a friendly thing, I met people like Bod and Charles and it was at a more sedate pace, demo's were just as loved as games as was the music. The ultra geek quota was high tho, some very odd c64 people were about but like I say, it was a friendly thing. The one thing I still do love about the C64 scene is the archival side, there's a more dedicated side to finding the old games, there's less of the "I own the copyright" and more "lets save it before it is gone for good", I wish there was a bit more of that in the Atari scene. I found many Atari people to be very like Rob who you worked with TMR, Robb was a true blood Atarian through and through but there were times when he came across as manic about it, it was Atari or nothing and how dare you have a copy of a program. He knew his stuff tho I wonder if he ever got married to that inflatable doll (Just my cruel way of saying he was very nerdish about the computers) The worst thing about the C64 scene, carrying a 1541 about...Bloody things were like washing machines Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 I liked the C64 scene, was a friendly thing, I met people like Bod and Charles and it was at a more sedate pace, demo's were just as loved as games as was the music. The ultra geek quota was high tho, some very odd c64 people were about but like I say, it was a friendly thing. i was probably one of the odder ones to be honest... some things never change. =-) I found many Atari people to be very like Rob who you worked with TMR, Robb was a true blood Atarian through and through but there were times when he came across as manic about it, it was Atari or nothing and how dare you have a copy of a program. He knew his stuff tho i used to jokingly give him and the other members of The Dentrassi (a local ST demo crew because we were at that point where the demo scene could, if need be, pretend it had some distance from the crackers) some grief, partly because they were coding demos in high level languages and i was a bit of a snob about such things back then but mostly because they kept trying to claim that the early Mad Max C64 covers in things like the Big Demo sounded better than the C64. i had so much fun swapping the board out on the shop's C64C so it could play samples and leaving things like the Turbo Outrun intro playing... =-) I wonder if he ever got married to that inflatable doll It was an inflatable sheep, wasn't it...? Or did Gary buy that one for someone else's birthday, possibly Hamish? i remember that it sat in the "kitchen" for weeks until someone threw it out because whoever the intended victim was wouldn't take it home. =-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 i was probably one of the odder ones to be honest... some things never change. =-) You odder than Bod..Lol...No...I met Bod aka darren loads of times down at a guys house who called himself Wiseman of the Accumulators (geeky or what) and knowing the pair of you well I can say Darren out odds you i used to jokingly give him and the other members of The Dentrassi (a local ST demo crew because we were at that point where the demo scene could, if need be, pretend it had some distance from the crackers) some grief, partly because they were coding demos in high level languages and i was a bit of a snob about such things back then but mostly because they kept trying to claim that the early Mad Max C64 covers in things like the Big Demo sounded better than the C64. i had so much fun swapping the board out on the shop's C64C so it could play samples and leaving things like the Turbo Outrun intro playing... =-) Demos should always be in assembler, its an unwritten law surely....Poor Rob was his own worst victim It was an inflatable sheep, wasn't it...? Or did Gary buy that one for someone else's birthday, possibly Hamish? i remember that it sat in the "kitchen" for weeks until someone threw it out because whoever the intended victim was wouldn't take it home. =-) You lads in Canterbury were a dodgy lots Unlike Kevin and Brian Count your lucky stars we never introduced you to Bill the fruit and veg man from directly opposite us, or Big Bill as he was known...His party trick was............ Disgusting.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 You odder than Bod..Lol...No...I met Bod aka darren loads of times down at a guys house who called himself Wiseman of the Accumulators (geeky or what) and knowing the pair of you well I can say Darren out odds you Well, i meant generally rather than odder than the extremes... but yeah, Bod's reputation usually precedes him. i think Nigel from the Canterbury staff ended up working with him at Demon around 1996 or thereabouts? Demos should always be in assembler, its an unwritten law surely....Poor Rob was his own worst victim He wasn't alone though, i think there were half a dozen of them in the crew doing ST demos and other code (no games, at least that i remember) in GFA BASIC and STOS, coming into the shop once or twice a week to talk about their latest code. All things considered i was quite polite, but all the Amiga coders we had coming in were hardcore 68000 bunnies and less subtle than me. =-) Dear Rassilon i feel old just thinking back...! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilaskey Posted December 8, 2012 Author Share Posted December 8, 2012 He wasn't alone though, i think there were half a dozen of them in the crew doing ST demos and other code (no games, at least that i remember) in GFA BASIC and STOS, One thing from my ST days that still makes me chuckle was that a friend of mine and myself did an ST demo. It was probably the only 100% 68K assembler program I ever wrote. It was nothing too fancy in terms of graphics, it was basically a slow slideshow of a few Degas images, digitised photos I think. The main feature was that it played a 'remix' of Move any Mountain by the Shamen. My friend spent ages chopping it up and doing really good loop points. All I had to do in code was pull in the still pages and trigger the various samples in order to produce a pretty high quality rendition of the song that lasted about 5-6 minutes, all off a single floppy disk. We sent it to one of the big ST mags who gave it 95% in the same issue they gave Jeff Minter's latest 94%. Chuffed, beat Jeff :-) Long since lost the source and my copy of the final demo, never seen it anywhere online so lost forever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilaskey Posted December 8, 2012 Author Share Posted December 8, 2012 And speaking of magazines. For many years I used to read Computer & Video Games and type in the listings which often produced some gems as well as the odd stinker. Anyway, I decided to have a crack at it once my coding skills were up to it. I decided on a variation of the Kingdom games - how much grain to sow, how much resource to use etc with an update on population, food, reserves at at the end of each round. I decided to make it the ultimate version so it was a m/c and Basic hybrid. It had redefined character sets, display list colour changes (Can I just say, if you grew up on Atari Basic, it's really hard typing colour and not color when you're in Atari brain mode :-) ). there were scroll regions, custom display list, pretty much everything you could throw in there. Spent ages working on it. Ended up super polished, looking good. Bought the latest issue of CV&G to get submission details and discovered they had stopped publishing listings. Doh! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 Yeah I bumped into Darren at one of the trade shows, he said he was working at Demon..Good help anyone getting help from him Doing demo's in Basic..Lol....Mde me think of this from the Lemon C64 site last week.. Tuatara Software, LLC is proud to present a demo version of our first game - Quetzalcoatlus !! What the guy failed to say was although he called himself the 'Lead programmer' the actual game was made using the Gary Kitchen Gamemaker software, software that was not very good in its time, ok, it was rubbish. Lead programmer lol...Not GFA basic but close As for you Ian, all that work and they stopped the listings...Gutting... Is the game lost as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 Tuatara Software, LLC is proud to present a demo version of our first game - Quetzalcoatlus !! What the guy failed to say was although he called himself the 'Lead programmer' the actual game was made using the Gary Kitchen Gamemaker software, software that was not very good in its time, ok, it was rubbish. That popped up on here as well and reasonably polite about it too... doubt i'll be getting a review copy. =-) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilaskey Posted December 8, 2012 Author Share Posted December 8, 2012 As for you Ian, all that work and they stopped the listings...Gutting... Is the game lost as well? Yep. I sold all my 8bit stuff back around 1990. Regretted it and bought a 130XE and 1050 some time later but lost al my original disks, source code etc. Idiot. Had some fairly rare stuff too. It was when 8bit stuff was virtually worthless so only got about £50 for the lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilaskey Posted December 8, 2012 Author Share Posted December 8, 2012 Oh and don't ask what I got my either the Mega STe or Falcon. ARRRGGHHH!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 Yep. I sold all my 8bit stuff back around 1990. Regretted it and bought a 130XE and 1050 some time later but lost al my original disks, source code etc. Idiot. Had some fairly rare stuff too. It was when 8bit stuff was virtually worthless so only got about £50 for the lot. I had mixed luck with my bits, my initial stuff was all thrown out when my mother died where I had storied it, the whole bloody lot thrown in a bin and NOTHING I could do. I then got a few more bits but again ran into cash and storage issues but this time I went down to the Computer Exchange 'Retro' shop that had opened near Warren St Tube, the guy in there had no clue of the value and I could have sold him anything as he didn't have a clue how it worked BUT I did show him everything working and walked out quids in on the deal. I still regret not keeping my first set of gear with me but there was so much and we were living with the in laws in one room. There was some good stuff in that lot inc an incomplete beta of the Computer House board and the custom multi OS from the same guys Let alone a million and one disks and carts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 Oh and don't ask what I got my either the Mega STe or Falcon. ARRRGGHHH!!!!!!!! Quid the pair, bloody doorstops, not computers them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 That popped up on here as well and reasonably polite about it too... doubt i'll be getting a review copy. =-) He got savaged on Lemon, I was the most polite of the lot and that's saying something. He based the whole 'company' on the gamemaker software, the web site of it is a side splitting / or worrying read. "We aim to produce....", its one bloke and Gamemaker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 He based the whole 'company' on the gamemaker software, the web site of it is a side splitting / or worrying read. Website... bloody hell, i didn't even look at the address of the download to notice there was a domain behind it! i've seen a lot of 8-bit "business ventures" that seem to be a few opcodes short of an assembler, but this is the first time i'm aware of where someone's tried it with GKGM... y'know, if that didn't make him seem quite scary to approach (as in "nutter on the bus" scary) i might've offered my "services" converting it to machine code under a pseudonym. Got to love the forum though, it has 40 members but three of the four sections are empty (and two are about baseball) and one of the threads asks people to "post your Installation / Configuration Issues", is he expecting people to play it from a CMD hard drive or something?! Rats... sorry, this is heading off at a serious tangent from the original topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 Yes, agreed, back to Atari memories..Come on folks All stories welcome.. Funny or sad.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richard_g Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 My youth was filled with home built (PE) Pong, Compukit UK101, Nasom, then the usual zx81. I got a NewBrain when everyone else was saving up for Spectrums. I witnessed the 400 and 800 at a Cardiff branch of Laskeys circa 1981. They were so far ahead of their time and far too expensive for my folks. Just recently I've started collecting some retro comps and the Ataris are figuring large. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarigungfu Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 My youth was filled with home built (PE) Pong, Compukit UK101, Nasom, then the usual zx81. I got a NewBrain when everyone else was saving up for Spectrums. I witnessed the 400 and 800 at a Cardiff branch of Laskeys circa 1981. They were so far ahead of their time and far too expensive for my folks. Just recently I've started collecting some retro comps and the Ataris are figuring large. I remember seeing the newbrain in an issue of personal computer news. A magazine I used to love reading! http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/mags/pcn/top_lvl.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Wright Posted December 8, 2012 Share Posted December 8, 2012 I can't believe I posted this *four* years ago - time flies... some of my UK memories http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/119164-atari-800-xl-screenshots-needed/page__hl__+intoto#entry1439075 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted December 10, 2012 Share Posted December 10, 2012 Re: Pilot software, don't recall it being also called software city I only remember Pilot software because I always used to pop in there weekdays, if i were delivering up that way (when i was working in the west end) and also because I bought my first ST from there (an ex demo single sided stfm) Whilst they didn't have much s/w on show for the A8, they had shed loads of stuff for the MSX from what i remember (mostly cartridge software though) I also remember finding a cheat for the amiga version of gold runner (microdeal) while i was playing it (can't recall the key combo now) Weird thing is i do remember the famous End of Line (EOL) sales that lasky's used to do for unsold electronics (including computers etc), i recall picking up (back in 1987 this is) a 130xe for 25 and a speccy 128 for the same (i think) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sack-c0s Posted December 10, 2012 Share Posted December 10, 2012 (edited) I can't believe I posted this *four* years ago - time flies... some of my UK memories http://www.atariage....to#entry1439075 This made me laugh a bit... More esoteric reminisences: - The man from Intoto in Nottingham allowing me to buy Artworx' Strip Poker at the age of, erm, 12 or 13, but telling me to wait until the other customers had left. IIRC Intoto (it was down Hockley wasn't it?) was owned by one of my dads mates, so I never tried that for obvious reasons How I miss those swopping sessions at the Nottingham Microcomputer Club... Edited December 10, 2012 by sack-c0s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted December 10, 2012 Share Posted December 10, 2012 (edited) I can't believe I posted this *four* years ago - time flies... some of my UK memories http://www.atariage....to#entry1439075 Excellent read Mark.. I hope you didn't get RSI from playing Strip poker too much 12yrs old, just about the right age Edited December 10, 2012 by Mclaneinc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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