Software ‎Confessions and Ramblings of an Early UK Computer Software Pirate.

The REAL Playdoh

The REAL Playdoh

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Firstly, if you haven't already guessed I'm the original Playdoh from the original early / mid 90’s PC CD Rom era.

All the events took place many years ago in the UK where I no longer reside. This is my story as I remember it. Some facts could be slightly wrong as the passage of time has been so long. I hope some might find it interesting as to what went on in the "warez" scene back in the 80s and 90s.

The Early Days

For me it all started back in the early 80’s with my first Computer, the Commodore Vic 20. Each year at Christmas my parents would buy me at least one BIG present. Previous years it had been a CB Radio (Realistic TRC-2001), A colour 14inch TV, A dual tape to tape stereo system, a portable boombox etc. This year, just before Christmas I spotted a large rectangle box on top of my parents’ wardrobe. Yup it was the Vic 20 starter pack. This included the Cassette tape drive and basic programming books and tapes. I nearly peed myself when I saw it !!

Just after Christmas that year and having tried to learn the Vic 20 programming and failing miserably, I turned my head to the gaming side of things. This for me wasn’t all that good on the Vic 20. I eventually moved onto other computers like the Atari 800 then the Atari 800XL.

Even before I owned the Vic 20 I was fascinated with games. My friend in the last year of primary school had an original Atari console. I would constantly go round and play “Pong” and “Space Invaders” on it. Later I would start popping over the road close to where I lived. The local Leisure Centre had the latest arcade games that I would play after school. I remember listening to Club Tropicana whist playing Donkey Kong, Phoenix or Gorf. Oh, and the “Poppet” sweets in the vending machine … Haha, I loved them. Great times.

After being exposed to most of the early home computers, either by owning them or playing with my friends’ machines, a magical thing happened. The Amiga was launched. This is when I seriously got hooked. The massive jump from the cassette tape to the Floppy Disk was huge for me, just as the Floppy to CD Rom will be further down the line.
 
The Amiga

With my obsession of the Amiga came the obsession of having the latest and greatest games & utils etc. Don’t get me wrong, the demo scene on the Amiga was awesome, but the games were where it was at. The price of a brand-new game was so ridiculously expensive for such a young kid at the time, the only way to get the latest and greatest was to unfortunately pirate.

I originally started to trade cracked games and utils in numerous ways. I would hunt out fellow “Traders” via the classified adverts in the computer magazine “Micro Mart”, or via adverts in the “Loot” newspaper (which was very popular at the time). If you don’t know what the loot was, think eBay but in newspaper form. After contacting fellow traders, we would trade via the royal mail.

The trick we used back then was to get a large, padded envelope which we wrapped in brown plastic tape with a pocket for the address. The pocket was like those that DHL use on their parcels. We would place a card with our address on either side and pop it into the pocket and use clear tape over it. We would reuse the padded envelope and “flip” the address card to return the traded floppy discs. The main thing we would do to save the postage cost was to put clear sticky “Scotch” tape over the stamps. When the postage machine at the sorting office franked the stamps as used, we would just lick our thumb and wipe it clear off ready to use again. Sometimes you would get a smart-arse postal worker who would just score the stamps with a knife or similar, so we had to buy stamps again, but this was not that common. I would trade with others from all over the UK.

Another way I traded was via the computer clubs. OMG they were rife with pirating back then. A relative and I would be regulars at the main Denton or was it Hyde computer club in Manchester? Anyway, it was one big swap fest. Ultimately, I found after a while I was the one suppling all the latest “warez” to that club, and other clubs at the time. Each week I would walk in with a double disk box full of the latest Amiga games and utils, to be swamped by regulars looking to get their hands on my swaps first. I felt like Elvis lol. The reason I was getting all the latest “warez” first was because I became involved higher up the chain.

Whilst trading via the post and the computer clubs I started to dabble in the BBS side of things. I bought myself a US Robotics 14.4 modem. The Pink / Purple one that looked like a Stylophone. Slow as hell but it was my gateway into the Bulletin Board side of things. Once I found the right boards to trade on things really took off.

After a while trading and doing the computer club thing, a close friend called me around to show me something new. Back then I had always been faithful to the Amiga scene, but things were about to change big time. He asked me to get into his car and we drove to another friend’s house, well shack really. It was an old outhouse that was probably once used as an old coal shed or something. It was tiny! The place was made worse as it was covered top to bottom in old radios with barely any space. Anyway, we all squashed in and closed the door behind us. I still remember thinking I hope nobody drops one. Fast escape was impossible.
 
The IBM PC

The friend of my close friend who we shall call “Paddy” asked me if I had an IBM “PC” computer. I shook my head and told him I was an Amiga only guy and that IBM’s were just for businesses. He proceeded to pulled out a CD Rom disc and loaded it up it on his CD Rom reader. Boom … in super fast time (compared to Floppy that is) up came Rebel Assault by Lucas Arts. I was blown away. My jaw dropped to the floor as I had never seen anything like the graphics or game play. Just as the jump from Cassette to Floppy was massive, the jump from Floppy Disk to CD Rom was another humongous leap for me. I realised pretty fast that computer CD Roms would be the future. Thus, my next obsession the IBM PC was born.

Due to the cost of upgrading to a new PC at the time I had to think of a way to raise the funds. Being in a situation where I had a child to support and a super low paid job at $28.80 a week (Yes YTS) I had to come up with something. As my close friend was already into PC’s (he ran his own graphics business) and had just bought himself a CD Rom reader, he shown me a CD ROM he just bought that was created by a guy called “Mr Blobby”. I was like wtf .. who calls themselves Mr Blobby hahahaha. I later realised it was a marketing masterstroke as you would never forget the name of a CD series called “Mr Blobby”!

After seeing the “Blobby” CD Rom and all the data it could fit on one disc, along with the information you can buy a machine that “burns” the data onto a disk, I thought I can do that. That would be the way I could afford to get the funds together for a new PC. Create and sell CD Roms. I already knew how to get the “Warez” before most people as I had seen the PC BBS’s advertised along side the Amiga ones. I also already had decent “cred” (under a different name) in the community, so changing over from Amiga to PC shouldn’t be that hard.

I proceeded to think about how I could either become a distributer or how I could raise the funds to buy my first CD Writer to create my own Cd’s. The only thing I had of value was my car. It was a nice car worth about 7k at the time. It was also around the same amount to buy the only CD Writing machine that could be sold to the public at the time, a Kodak single speed CD Writer. The kodak blank discs at the time cost 20 Pounds each. Later I would find out that only two other producers were using CD Writers to burn warez CD”s in the UK. One was Ghost who was the first and who lived in Bradford I think (I never did meet him), and the other was Blobby in Manchester. “Mr Blobby” as it happened was two people. One clever mofo who did the coding and protection on an Amiga 4000 (if I remember right) and the other who ran the business side of things. There were also about 3 others who were close in with the “Blobby” side of things. Fun fact .. the Voodoo CD series was also created by the “Blobby” gang if I remember rightly.

After deciding I could sell my car to fund the CD Writer, I spoke to my close friend who took me to see another one of his friends who dabbled in PC parts and other things. The idea was that to save on costs I could build my own PC. Up until that time I hadn’t even thought of something like building a computer at home could be possible. After arriving at the friend’s house (we shall call him Derek), I was relieved to see that he did all his business in the Kitchen and not some cramped outhouse. Anybody from Manchester reading this may know who Derek is, he dabbled in lots of things, but all from his Kitchen in South Manchester. I was to find out Derek (who became my boss later in life) was such a nice guy. Nice until you crossed him type of guy!

Upon entering the kitchen, I was offered a drink etc. then down to business. Derek was the friend who my close friend got his Blobby cd from. Derek was a distributer for Blobby and knew them well. I told him my idea of starting my own CD series after I got the CD Writer and that I had the connections to source the software that was different to the Blobby cd’s. My close friend vouched for me, and suggested Derek put up all the parts for a PC which I could build to help produce the new CD Series. I would supply the first of many CDs at cost, until the cost of the parts was covered, then he would pay normal distributer rate. Derek agreed and within 15mins I was walking out of his house with a box full of brand-new top end PC parts, including a brand-new monitor.

The very next day my close friend taught me how to put my very first PC together. During the next few months my close friend helped me out immensely. He was the one who did all the graphics as well as other things for the CD series that we created together. Unfortunately, he is not with us anymore, but I will never forget everything he did for me around this time of my life.
 
Time to Buy the CD Writer

Having sold my car, I now had the funds to purchase the CD Writer. The only company at the time that dealt in such specialist items was a company called CD Revolution. They were based in Chertsey, Surry and only sold the Kodak branded CD Writer. As I had no car anymore and my close friend didn’t fancy the long drive there and back, we decided to get the National Express coach. Now we could have just paid via card and got them to ship it to us but being pirates that wouldn’t have been very smart.

Once on the coach it was a sit back and relax for a few hours. Once we arrived, we had to walk to where the business was. Luckily it was a nice day. The actual company had a small showroom with some machines and computers on display. I told them I would like a Kodak CD Writer and I think I got a SCSI card and cable as well as some discs. The writer used an external SCSI. All in it came to 7k. As I didn’t want to be tracked, I gave a false name and address for the invoice and proceeded to pull the 7k (all in 50s) out of my jeans pocket. The look on the guy’s face was priceless lol. I think he thought we were trying to pay with dodgy 50-pound notes or something. Anyway, he disappeared with the cash into the back and a while later appeared with a big box the size of an old VHS recorder. It was a light box but had KODAC CD Writer in big letters all over it. I asked him for a bag, but he said he didn’t have one big enough! It’s then I thought oh shit we must march through Chertsey to the coach pickup with this 7 grand machine under our arm with everybody knowing what it was.

Luckily, we made it to the coach. As we attempted to get on the coach the driver told us the box is too big and MUST go into the hold with the other luggage. OMG I nearly died. I was like this box is worth a lot of money and it must travel inside the coach. He wasn’t having any of it so we had to place it as carefully as we could under the coach. The journey back to Manchester was hell. We zigzagged all over the damn UK dropping people off. Every time we would stop, I’d jump up and check nobody was taking the machine instead of their suitcase. Eventually we made it, as did the machine. It was late when we got into Manchester, so again we had to walk through the center with this 7k machine under our arm. Now city center Manchester is a lot more dangerous at 10pm at night than a placid late afternoon Chertsey. Eventually we made it to where my friend had parked his car. What a day!

To be continued .......
 
The Test

Having purchased the CD Writer and having built the new PC, we set about testing everything out. Moving from the Amiga I was just used to everything working with no issues. This new PC, omfg. You had to set all the IRQ’s manually, so you didn’t get a hardware conflict. This and DOS was totally foreign to me. Lucky for me, I had my close friend to teach me as I went.

After getting all setup we proceeded to try our first disc “Burn”. I can’t remember what we tried to copy first, but it went like this. Start “Burn” … 54 mins later .. Poof ERROR. Oh fook, that’s 20 quid down the drain. Try again … 51 mins later .. Poof ERROR, and the CD Rom would eject. OMG .. another 20 quid down the pan. And so, it continued until we finally got it burning correctly. I think in all we wasted about 8 or 9 discs.

The Name

Now we had everything up and running we decided our first CD ROM should make a statement. An announcement that we have arrived. We decided to have a brand-new big game on it that had just been released. I think the game was Rebel Assault 2 or something similar. Whatever it was, It took up a whole single disk. What we didn’t realise is that people wanted more than one game, they wanted multiple games and utils for their money. Quick lesson learnt. We sold about 3 copies of Playdoh #1 and successfully “burnt’ about 40 or so. If you are looking for a very first edition Playdoh #1, good luck. They are super rare lol, I don’t even have one. In fact, I don’t have any anymore, but we will get to that later.

Once the first disc was worked out, we had to come up with a name for the series. My friend who was on the phone (my very first orange mobile with plastic bendy antenna if I remember) suggested a few stupid names. I was sat staring whilst thinking at a pot of Playdoh my daughter had left on my desk the day before. Then it hit me. “Playdoh” …. that’ll do ! … If Blobby can be called Blobby, we can be called Playdoh. And so, it was.

To be continued .......
 
I collect vintage computers and games systems. Atari 2600, VIC20 etc...
 
I installed a HDD in my Amiga1200, it was a 6GB one and needed a custom file system. I done this in UAE software, creating partitions etc... Boots to desktop in about 5s although I do need more RAM.
 
Well I'm from the same era, at around 9 or 10 years old my mate got the Vic 20. We were always round his house playing frogger. Either the same year or a year later I got my first comp the 48k spectrum, I still have it today.
 
For us kids in 70's early 80's remember that there was one kid who was able to copy speccy games. He did this on his parents tape to tape machine. But for some reason we always thought he had to have the volumn to max to make it work. For streets around we could all work out when it was copy time.
 
I had Spectrums when my friends had Commodore computers, then we mostly all went to Amiga.

Just recently (well, a year back) I turned down a top-of-the-range Atari, everything including monitor for £50. Bloke at work used it for his music stuff. I think it went into a skip :(.
 
I remember c90 tapes with about 20 games on, but was a bugger to find the one you wanted. Then I got my first Micro drive only two games on a drive but no messin' around with the tape volume and praying it didn't crash at 98% complete.

Enjoying your thread @The REAL Playdoh. I look forward to the next instalment.
 
Tape counter would help @sneaker lol

Definitely looking forward for the next instalment my self as well

Brings back good years and was amazing times ;)
 
I loved it when my brother got the Amiga after having the spectrum and commodore.
The Olympics and Winter Olympic game’s on the Amiga where great and I have fond memories of the competitions we would have with friends and family. We even had a cup for the champions.
 
The REAL Playdoh said:
The Amiga

With my obsession of the Amiga came the obsession of having the latest and greatest games & utils etc. Don’t get me wrong, the demo scene on the Amiga was awesome, but the games were where it was at. The price of a brand-new game was so ridiculously expensive for such a young kid at the time, the only way to get the latest and greatest was to unfortunately pirate.

I originally started to trade cracked games and utils in numerous ways. I would hunt out fellow “Traders” via the classified adverts in the computer magazine “Micro Mart”, or via adverts in the “Loot” newspaper (which was very popular at the time). If you don’t know what the loot was, think eBay but in newspaper form. After contacting fellow traders, we would trade via the royal mail.

The trick we used back then was to get a large, padded envelope which we wrapped in brown plastic tape with a pocket for the address. The pocket was like those that DHL use on their parcels. We would place a card with our address on either side and pop it into the pocket and use clear tape over it. We would reuse the padded envelope and “flip” the address card to return the traded floppy discs. The main thing we would do to save the postage cost was to put clear sticky “Scotch” tape over the stamps. When the postage machine at the sorting office franked the stamps as used, we would just lick our thumb and wipe it clear off ready to use again. Sometimes you would get a smart-arse postal worker who would just score the stamps with a knife or similar, so we had to buy stamps again, but this was not that common. I would trade with others from all over the UK.

Another way I traded was via the computer clubs. OMG they were rife with pirating back then. A relative and I would be regulars at the main Denton or was it Hyde computer club in Manchester? Anyway, it was one big swap fest. Ultimately, I found after a while I was the one suppling all the latest “warez” to that club, and other clubs at the time. Each week I would walk in with a double disk box full of the latest Amiga games and utils, to be swamped by regulars looking to get their hands on my swaps first. I felt like Elvis lol. The reason I was getting all the latest “warez” first was because I became involved higher up the chain.

Whilst trading via the post and the computer clubs I started to dabble in the BBS side of things. I bought myself a US Robotics 14.4 modem. The Pink / Purple one that looked like a Stylophone. Slow as hell but it was my gateway into the Bulletin Board side of things. Once I found the right boards to trade on things really took off.

After a while trading and doing the computer club thing, a close friend called me around to show me something new. Back then I had always been faithful to the Amiga scene, but things were about to change big time. He asked me to get into his car and we drove to another friend’s house, well shack really. It was an old outhouse that was probably once used as an old coal shed or something. It was tiny! The place was made worse as it was covered top to bottom in old radios with barely any space. Anyway, we all squashed in and closed the door behind us. I still remember thinking I hope nobody drops one. Fast escape was impossible.
Click to expand...
Bing Bong - Im sure john said your name was Adam? as i was part of delta and ran the 2 bbs`s in Warrington but worked close with the 2 Johns ill call them, I took over the Playdoh after the Blobby playdoh fight animation but also ended up with Blobby when things started to get hot and but in 1997 Gangs started to see the discs as drugs - Bowlers Comp Fair was running strong..
 
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