The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Five

If you read The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops , then I can tell you this is going to be in a similar vein to that series. Yeah, it's going to go on and on and maybe never end. Ready?

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The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops will go into some detail over the next few weeks.. er article's about part of my life when I was young, misguided and brash.

Like many, I was once a Software Pirate. That's not unusual in itself but I have a few stories to tell about what happened, and I'll try and not bore you all to tears.

Other article's in this series:


The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Two
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Three
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Four

At this point in time, I was in the employment of one Henry Boot Construction of South Yorkshire.

Having escaped the chains of Kwiksave, I was still a skinny lad armed with a big jacket, steel toe capped boots, a white helmet and was charged with teaching burly 16-year-old lads who wanted to be builders about Information Technology.

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I wasn't much older than them, but and for that reason, I felt I could communicate with some of them. Lugging around THREE VIC-20 computers and three monitors in a pickup truck from site to site was my daily routine.

‘Classes’ included up to twenty of these thick set lads who mostly didn’t give a shit about computers and so tended to misbehave often.

It wasn’t up to me to discipline them and the punishment was severely dished out by the bulding instructors or assistants in the form of, ‘Go home without pay’. It was harsh but worked very effectively.

Months went by, I managed to rip-off most of Blackbeard's endless games collection and came across a utility by someone named SlurpyMan. The utility transferred disk games from to tape to disk and retained the loading screens. It was something I manually did but was still intrigued.

SlurpyMan lived local and I had seen his work and code before we had ever met.

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I was to discover that he also wrote games and had submitted one to Alligata software for publishing. This was someone I wanted to meet. Less than a week passed and Blackbeard introduced me to @steddyman.

The original name he was to use later in the 90’s when I was a member of the legendary cracking group, ‘The Humble Guys’ (THG) came from the trousers that he wore that were always a little too long.

They used to drag along the ground while he walked creating a ‘slurping sound’, while picking up a healthy amount of dirt, crap and grime to boot. I felt sorry for his mum who had to scrape off all the shit from his many pairs of muddy trousers.

1986 came and left and people were talking about these new 16-bit computers that were arriving on the scene. The Atari ST was looking a bit good in my eyes, and the Manchester contingent of Pete and RobC had both ditched the old Atari’s, Commodore 64’s and moved on.

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The micro scene was fast moving and one had to simply keep up with the Joneses or be left on the sidelines.

These new machines were hideously expensive, and so the Commodore 64 and all the peripherals had to go to pay for this new beast. The other new thing was the floppy disks, they were the new format of 3.5’.

I managed to dump the Commodore on somebody and scrape up the cash for this new monster machine which I bought in Preston. New computers were always a learning experience, each one being completely different from the last and the ST was no exception.

The Atari ST was based on a new operating system named GEM. Windows here and windows there but where was the command prompt?

I needed some of these new-fangled floppy disks too and some games. A trip to Manchester was needed and a visit to Pete’s place had all my new blank disks filled with the latest stuff.

What was apparent is the fact that we the pioneers didn’t have much to copy. The ST was very new and all I can remember about it was ‘The Pawn’ from Magnetic Scrolls.

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I had bought this supposedly all singing all dancing new 16-bit state of the art computer and the most exciting game was a bloody text-based adventure and a few other bits and bobs.

Some other games turned up in the next few months but I was frankly disappointed. I had not done my homework and had paid the price for jumping too early.

I remember quite clearly my purchase of the Atari ST 520FM in January 1987, and then again clearly selling it in May 1987 to some unfortunate soul who thought it was the future.

The ST had had its day in my world as something else had arrived that to me seemed leagues ahead of Jack Tramiel’s offering. I had seen a Commodore Amiga.

To be continued...

All images have been cited and are under the category 'Labelled for Reuse'

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