5 ms·

I grew up in midwest small town USA, around 3500 people, in the 80s. I attended monthly C64 user group and it was pretty much nothing more than copying each ot

by fm2606 2y ago

I grew up in midwest small town USA, around 3500 people, in the 80s. I attended monthly C64 user group and it was pretty much nothing more than copying each others software.

lubujackson 2y ago
Me too. My dad would go to "the computer club" and bring back some diskettes. Best part was, most of the games were hobbyist efforts so I'd get a true floppy (5 1/2") that held maybe 320kb? And each side would have like 10 or 15 games each. There was a later period on PCs in the 386/486 era where you would buy a magazine and it'd come with a CD loaded with games - back when shareware was a perfect vessel for marketing games that were easily stolen - good enough to sate a broke kid but also led to many Xmas gift wishlist items. iD had so much street cred in my circle.
- vyrotek 2y ago
  Hmm. I never really knew where my dad got this mountain of Amiga disks. A mix of legit and not. As kids we would always find something new to play digging through them. https://x.com/vyrotek/status/1722050918265274434 https://x.com/vyrotek/status/1722050918265274434
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  My neighbor in the early 90s was a 747 pilot on a regular route to Hong Kong. We’d give him a list of requests and a couple bucks and he’d come back with disks of whatever we wanted.
glonq 2y ago
Ditto for the Atari user group meetings I attended here in Vancouver in the mid 80's.
appstorelottery 2y ago
Yeah, same for an Aussie Amiga group in '88 - wholesale piracy, everyone running XCOPY - looking through each other's disk-boxes and copying. I remember seeing ads in the local paper for software at $2 per disk, send SAE for free calalogue. The pirate scene for the Amiga back in those days was huge. We even had a local group that traded on an international scale, hooking everyone up with the big groups in Europe. Fun times for sure!
leptons 2y ago
Here in Southern California in the 80's and 90's we just called them "copy parties". We'd even hold them at respectable places sometimes like a bank's conference room someone somehow managed to get access to. Everyone brought a little folding table, and their C64s, and later Amigas. I was also part of some cracking groups, making intros for them - FBR, Agile, Intense, TSM, and some others. I was also involved in some warez BBSs, making customizations to the BBS code. We did all the phone phreaking stuff too. And as a consequence of being too involved in some of these people's lives, I now have both an FBI and Secret Service file on me. I had no repercussions, but my friends sure did (for the phone related stuff). The stories I could tell... It really was the golden age of warez.
xoxxala 2y ago
We had an Apple II club in Southern California in the early 80s that did the same thing. Couple dozen of us meeting once a month and sharing floppies. Multiple systems with 10 disk drives and using Penulticopy to make nine duplicates at a time. We all ended up with far more programs (mostly games) than we could ever use in our lifetime. I eventually started a small dial-up BBS to trade warez amongst friends and play some multiplayer games, but stopped when the number got out and strangers started dialing in. Completely freaked me out and for the next few months thought the FBI was going to be knocking on my door. I spent more on blank floppies during that era than legal software.
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
Yeah I was that weird guy that had multiple 1541 floppy drives at club meetups... lol

by fm2606 2y ago

I grew up in midwest small town USA, around 3500 people, in the 80s. I attended monthly C64 user group and it was pretty much nothing more than copying each others software.

lubujackson 2y ago

Me too. My dad would go to "the computer club" and bring back some diskettes. Best part was, most of the games were hobbyist efforts so I'd get a true floppy (5 1/2") that held maybe 320kb? And each side would have like 10 or 15 games each. There was a later period on PCs in the 386/486 era where you would buy a magazine and it'd come with a CD loaded with games - back when shareware was a perfect vessel for marketing games that were easily stolen - good enough to sate a broke kid but also led to many Xmas gift wishlist items. iD had so much street cred in my circle.

vyrotek 2y ago
Hmm. I never really knew where my dad got this mountain of Amiga disks. A mix of legit and not. As kids we would always find something new to play digging through them. https://x.com/vyrotek/status/1722050918265274434 https://x.com/vyrotek/status/1722050918265274434
kridsdale1 2y ago
My neighbor in the early 90s was a 747 pilot on a regular route to Hong Kong. We’d give him a list of requests and a couple bucks and he’d come back with disks of whatever we wanted.

glonq 2y ago

Ditto for the Atari user group meetings I attended here in Vancouver in the mid 80's.

appstorelottery 2y ago

Yeah, same for an Aussie Amiga group in '88 - wholesale piracy, everyone running XCOPY - looking through each other's disk-boxes and copying. I remember seeing ads in the local paper for software at $2 per disk, send SAE for free calalogue. The pirate scene for the Amiga back in those days was huge. We even had a local group that traded on an international scale, hooking everyone up with the big groups in Europe. Fun times for sure!

leptons 2y ago

Here in Southern California in the 80's and 90's we just called them "copy parties". We'd even hold them at respectable places sometimes like a bank's conference room someone somehow managed to get access to. Everyone brought a little folding table, and their C64s, and later Amigas. I was also part of some cracking groups, making intros for them - FBR, Agile, Intense, TSM, and some others. I was also involved in some warez BBSs, making customizations to the BBS code. We did all the phone phreaking stuff too. And as a consequence of being too involved in some of these people's lives, I now have both an FBI and Secret Service file on me. I had no repercussions, but my friends sure did (for the phone related stuff). The stories I could tell... It really was the golden age of warez.

xoxxala 2y ago

We had an Apple II club in Southern California in the early 80s that did the same thing. Couple dozen of us meeting once a month and sharing floppies. Multiple systems with 10 disk drives and using Penulticopy to make nine duplicates at a time. We all ended up with far more programs (mostly games) than we could ever use in our lifetime. I eventually started a small dial-up BBS to trade warez amongst friends and play some multiplayer games, but stopped when the number got out and strangers started dialing in. Completely freaked me out and for the next few months thought the FBI was going to be knocking on my door. I spent more on blank floppies during that era than legal software.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago

Yeah I was that weird guy that had multiple 1541 floppy drives at club meetups... lol