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.
I was once known as 'Bryn Rogers', a member of THG (The Humble Guys).
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
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Nine
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Ten
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eleven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twelve
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Thirteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fourteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fifteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Sixteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Seventeen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eighteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Nineteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twenty
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twenty One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twenty Two
In England, the summer had arrived which was bad for the gaming world, and we were all getting bored.
Companies did not release much of the good stuff, instead opting to keep it back for November hoping to cash in on the Christmas splurge.
Warez were thin on the ground and we were getting more of this CD-ROM shit coming through which the German traders were reveling in.
...'I used to play Chess before more interesting games emerged such as RPG's'...
Most of the early stuff was shit. I remember a Chess game that consisted of 38 .zip files, each of them just the right size to fit on a 1.44Mb floppy disk.
Out of interest, I leeched it from some BBS out of curiosity. It was a standard PC chess game with a whole load of fancy graphics to boot.
After unzipping it all which took bloody ages, I then had to use the DOS 'subst' command to fool it in thinking it was running from D: (A typical CD-ROM drive letter).
I gave it around 10 minutes and then deleted it in disgust.
More disturbing was the emergence of FAST (Federation of Software Theft), a UK based company intent on busting software pirates.
FAST was not anything new and so far we had disregarded them until very recently when a UK Amiga based BBS had been busted.
Source
I can't recall the name of the FAST head bloke who seemed intent on taking down the UK BBS Underground but he was quite the anti-Christ at the time.
There was no internet in 1993 but word got around quickly that ‘Beast’ the sysop of Arcadia had his doors demolished in the early hours and all his gear confiscated.
Whether the report had been exaggerated or not, I don’t know but it did put the willies up me.
To make things worse I had recently added a second node to The Demon’s Forge which had cost me a fair packet.
Within a matter of a few days, I decided The Demon's Forge had to be taken down.
I was very strict about who I allowed access, employing hardline tactics like Eddie Haskel of Spamland who was my mentor of the sysop world.
Lamers were not allowed, besides celebrities such as The Power Lamer and fake real life celebrities.
'Bernard Manning' springs to mind, who was yet another of my aliases that gave people a lot of shit in the messaging system, just like he did in real life courtesy of his Embassy Club in Manchester.
No 2400 users were allowed to connect besides Suicidal Tendencies (@trolleydave) and Jolly Roger who lightened up the messaging system with endless banter, arguing with the fake Bernand Manning quite often telling him he was a fat bastard.
I was not sure whether a plant had infiltrated the Forge and was not going to take any chances.
Beast had taken a sword for us all, and even though we had got off to a bad start (he was an arrogant motherfucker), all was well between us now.
Sometime in June 1993, the Demon's Forge admitted it's final login and then closed its doors forever leaving Hi.T.Moonweed's, The Flying Teapot the sole THG member BBS in the United Kingdom.
On questioning Hi.T.Moonweed about keeping open the last bastion of The Humble Guys, he was quite blasé about things and didn’t seem to give a shit about FAST.
A few people moaned and groaned about the collapse of The Demon’s Forge, particularly Razor Blade of Razor 1911 who had built up a stack of upload credits.
Razor Blade never did visit me again. I have never seen him to this day. I bet he would love to read all this stuff I'm writing.
To be continued...
All images have been cited and are under the category 'Labelled for Reuse' or are in the public domain.
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