The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Nine

Source

This series is dedicated to my friend ‘The Pieman’ who hosted ‘THE P.I.T.S’ BBS in New York City and sadly passed away in 2016. I know his son ‘Blake’ will be reading this sequence of stories with anticipation.

We will never forget you man, you were one of a kind.

Also I would like to say a big thank you to Fabulous Furlough, ex-leader of ‘The Humble Guys’ who helps me fill in the gaps of what happened almost 30 years ago, The Slavelord who has given me a plethora of memories from the early days and to Suicidal Tendencies (@trolleydave) who remembers more about the UK scene than me.

The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) is a continuation of my previous series, The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops

Other articles in this series:
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Two
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Three
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Four
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Five
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Six
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Seven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eight

WARNING: Bad Language ahead, please put the kiddies to bed.

April 1991
The time was around 3pm on a Sunday afternoon and we were looking to wrap up the event but there was a little problem.

Just how do you wake up a sleeping Vampire during the day?

We tried a few things such as increasing the TV to deafening volume levels, prodding, poking, shaking which had but all failed and I was seriously thinking of throwing a bowl of water over a snoozing Hi.T.Moonweed to awaken him.

Source

Unfortunately, that would have the side effect of soaking my furniture so that fleeting idea quickly left my head.

I had seen some heavy sleepers in my time but this was extreme. In desperation, I hailed Night Ranger to give me a hand and together we tipped the sofa over causing the slumbering Hi.T.Moonweed to tumble from the armchair on to a carpeted but nonetheless hard floor.

“What the fuck”, came a muffled and startled groan.

More expletives directed at anyone in earshot came next while the rest of us struggled to stifle both laughter and relief simultaneously.

I handed him a cup of tea in a form of mock apology. He took it grudgingly and looked at us all bewildered.

‘Sorry dude, this is the only way we could wake you up’, I explained, a little too smugly trying not to laugh.

He nodded accepting the judgement as if it was a regular occurrence and took a sip of the tea.

Source

One of the last things Hi.T.Moonweed explained to me before the party broke up was that he had been talking to The Pieman about converting his BBS software from LSD to PCBoard.

‘He wants the Euro’s to call his BBS’, he explained to me.

The ‘Euro’s were the European traders and generally crazy German dudes such as the Luke and Duke Skywalker brothers and Haegar Thrust as well as the likes of ME! (Bryn Rogers) and Hi.T himself.

These german guys took warez trading to another level having multiple dedicated lines and traded apps to several Pirate BBS’s that automatically uploaded and downloaded using the HS/Link protocol.

I frequently spotted these three insane traders on other ‘Hot’ BBS’s such as 'The Elusive Dream' and 'The Eclipse'. The latter appeared to be a particular favourite of theirs.

Source

Word was that they had written some app that traded automatically without any interaction. The German race has always been efficient but in this case, it was somewhat misdirected.

Within the next few weeks, The PITS was transformed into a variant of PCBoard with ProDoor and my friendship with The Pieman really started to gain some ground.

Hi.T.Moonweed was confirmed as a co-sysop of The PITS and had done a great job of remotely configuring this large multi-node BBS into something that would ‘attract the Euro’s’.

As I mentioned once before, befriend an anarchist and they will be loyal to you. I was quite sure The PITS would not get its C: drive remotely formatted as many other BBS’s had in the past.

Source

With Candyland gone and The Slavelord leaving THG, it seemed like The PITS was now the new recognized THG Hub and World Headquarters.

This did not put The Pieman's basement in the league of the Geneva Convention with hundreds of diplomats meeting in three-piece suits.

Each Pirate group needed to have a World HQ, and then some other HQ’s such as Canadian, European etc.

It was quite ridiculous but a done thing and by this time THG’s dominance as the master cracking and releasing group was starting to fade a little.

Source

Other groups such as the newly formed USA/Fairlight, TRSI/TDT (In Europe) and Razor 1911 were starting to show dominance, obtaining original’s quicker than THG and showing they had the organisation levels to follow through with the cracking and distributing to the major BBS’s.

It was each groups desire to be the eLITE dUDEZ, or maybe the eLiTe dUdeZ or even better l33t dudezzz. The younger and more stupid you were the more you used this kind of terminology.

It did play on this and used to wind people up frequently. It was all part of the fun and the young lads took it ever so seriously, and all this German trading bullshit sparked an idea into my head that was to manifest itself into a comedy show.

An new group that was the most eLiTe of the eLiTe was about to be born.

To be continued...

All images have been cited and are under the category 'Labelled for Reuse' or are in the public domain.

Small Pirate Icon Source

.NFO files courtesy of the .NFO libraries at https://defacto2.net

If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.