The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Two

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

WARNING: The article contains content of an adult nature. If you are easily offended, then please close down your browser session and read a copy of the Beano instead.

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Contrary to what you may have been expecting considering my predicament at the end of ‘Part One’, things didn’t turn out badly for me whatsoever.

‘Pete’ turned out to be one of the friendliest and honest people I have ever come across during my pirating days. He figured out my sexual orientation quickly, mostly due to casual chat about me having a girlfriend amongst other things.

What he didn’t understand was the fact that I was at his place ripping off software and not at home shagging said girlfriend. His manner and forthrightness always made me chuckle.

During either my first or second visit, he revealed to me in no certain terms that he was simply not into ‘floppy tits’ but preferred ‘hard dicks’ again in such a direct manner that I couldn’t stop laughing. I was no homophobe and preferred to take anyone I met at face value.

If he kept his hands well away from my nether regions I really didn’t care about what he wanted to do under the covers or back alleys. That was his business.

I concluded that he was a rather lonely person and welcomed the company of someone less than half his age or anyone in fact. I was there for the ‘warez’ but I can honestly say that he was a great bloke and I enjoyed his company.

Pete did have some health problems. One day he stuck out his tongue which revealed to me a brown sticky mess. This was not due to him licking some other bloke's arse at an inappropriate moment but his addiction to drinking whiskey and coke.

The doctor had told him on numerous occasions, ‘You are going to fucking kill yourself if you don’t quit”. The Doc may as well have ordered a brick wall to stop being made of brick for all the good it did.

We would regularly go to the local Off License, and return with cans of Red Stripe and a bottle of whiskey in preparation for a mammoth copying session.

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A single can of that strong Jamaican beer was about all I could muster even then. I have never been able to drink.

My first visit to Whalley Range was like Christmas. There was so much to copy and barely enough disks to go around. Copying games was an addiction to me during these times. Having everything was the goal, a sadly misplaced one but it was oh so important at the time.

I earned around £50 a week from my Kwiksave wage and that was subject to tax and national insurance. Atari games were notoriously expensive to buy, especially the American imports.

Games written by Broderbund or Electronic Arts such as M.U.L.E. and Seven Seas of Gold were around £25 even then. That was almost a week’s wage for me when I factored in that £5 a week ludicrous amount of board money I had to pay to my parents for simply living in their house!

Screenshot Captured using Emulator

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Floppy disks were also hideously expensive. £10 for a box of 10 was quite normal; these were the days before mass adoption and I had to visit the town of Nelson and some obscure distribution factory to seal these ‘bargain prices’.

Still, I never seemed to run out of blanks and amassed an amazing amount of games during the forthcoming months. Playing them was another topic. I did play some of them especially the early Ultima series, but it was mostly the addictive nature of simply accumulating them at the time.

Pete owned an Atari 800 computer, an 810 floppy disk drive and a monitor. A monitor in those days was rare and the clarity of his screen was something I envied. I had a 14’ CRT TV and my screen was constantly fuzzy and detuned. He also had an Archiver chip fitted to the 810.

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This was a hardware pirating tool designed to defeat some of the copy protection on the disks and at the time was not available for my newer 1050 floppy disk drive. I just had to get an 810 from somewhere.

One Sunday I turned up at Pete’s and after the usual ritual of me banging on the door, and throwing bricks at his window he admitted me to the den of piracy paradise.

Less than an hour later I was vigorously ripping disks off and we had a visitor. A young skinny bloke shuffled his way up the stairs giving me barely a cursory glance. I may as well have not existed for the level of attention I attained during that maiden encounter.

The conversation he was having with Pete is something I can’t remember, but he left after around 20 minutes and I was more than a little relieved to see him go.

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“Who was that”, I enquired?

“That was Rob, the local cracker and the guy who supplies me with all the warez”, Pete explained.

Of course, I had heard of him. His name was all over some of the games I had acquired. ‘Ripoff Software’ and ‘Ill Eagle Incorporated’ were two of his trademark signatures as well as the name of ‘RobC’.

I had met the local ‘Legend’ and had been passed by like I was some insignificant flea!

Nonetheless, I thought he just a plain rude arsehole. First impressions can only be made once and this was not a good start.

To be continued...

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