How big of a pirate were you back in the day?

ZeroByte · Post by **ZeroByte** » Wed Apr 14, 2021 8:30 pm

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but back in the day, I was quite the little buccaneer when it came to my software library on my C64. I estimate that only 1:10 of my floppies were official game floppies, and the rest were Bonus brand single-sided disks having the write-protect notch cut on the reverse side using a hole punch. Fast Hack'M (also on a Bonus disk) stayed near the front of my organizer. Almost all of my games had loaders with better music than the ensuing game, plus some combination of raster bars, smooth-scrolling text (greets), or self-congratulatory paragraphs talking about how few minutes it took to crack this particular title / how many cracks the author had done, etc.

Some of my fondest C64 memories include finding other games on floppies I'd copied while at a friend's house, or having a 'sleep-over' where sleep = hooking 2 drives to the computer and doing a "git clone" of each other's library.

I never had a modem, though, or else who knows how many more boxes of floppies I might have needed...

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Wed Apr 14, 2021 8:56 pm

Ahem

let's just say I sailed many high seas, and that this screen was burned on my retina on the C64:

Only when I earned some disposable income a few years later I could purchase more software but by then I already had an Amiga. At first though, most of the software library for that one was also duplicated from questionable sources.... so yeah, in retrospect, not proud of it, but everyone did it you didn't know any better as a kid. Also it was the only way to play things on the computer because we had almost zero $$ as a kid and my parents didn't support the hobby at first.

All is good now ?

edit: Double Hack'em is what we used mostly with dual 1541's to duplicate stuff while playing a game on the computer itself. Remarkable piece of software.

x16tial · Post by **x16tial** » Wed Apr 14, 2021 9:17 pm

As an early to mid-teenager, I did the best I could at purchasing software. I had a paper route and bought most of my computing hardware/software myself (except the odd birthday or Christmas). But I also shamelessly copied software too, but I can't say I'm "ashamed" of it. In the day where you could blow $30, $40, $50 on software that sucked, and not be able to return opened software to the store, and there weren't really "demo" versions or even Shareware at that point. I'm sorry, I don't really feel bad at all about it; that could be all the money I made in a month or more. I picked and chose what I spent my money on and I copied the rest. I don't consider it taking any money out of the pockets of the creators because 1) I wouldn't have purchased it in the first place. and 2) I never resold any copied software.

Jeff Pare · Post by **Jeff Pare** » Wed Apr 14, 2021 9:29 pm

Never pirated any piece of software, but oddly enough I did provide offsite backups (first on cassettes, then floppies) to many of my friends who did the same for me; obviously I had to test these backups often to make sure they worked properly.

x16tial · Post by **x16tial** » Wed Apr 14, 2021 9:50 pm

21 minutes ago, Jeff Pare said:

Never pirated any piece of software, but oddly enough I did provide offsite backups (first on cassettes, then floppies) to many of my friends who did the same for me; obviously I had to test these backups often to make sure they worked properly.

?

ZeroByte · Post by **ZeroByte** » Wed Apr 14, 2021 10:16 pm

@Jeff Pare ? can't top that one!

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:18 am

I had a lot of copies back then, mainly from friends. If one of us got a game, we all got it, if we could figure out how to copy it. It's just what we did back then, we even shared some at school.

That being said, it was rarely ever more than a few of us, and we did buy a LOT of games. lol

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:38 am

In my country there were so few licensed software, that in my early computing years I did not know about it. Pirates ruled the marked. I bought lots and lots of copies of software, music, movies without knowing or understanding it was all pirate. But even when I learned about it later, not much changed, because there was no choice. I still used pirate copies, bacuase I did not have other options. And yeah, we also made many copies at home...

JimmyDansbo · Post by **JimmyDansbo** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:53 am

The first game I ever purchased was Planet X3. It was the only game I ever purchased until Attack of the PETSCII Robots which has not arrived yet.

codewar65 · Post by **codewar65** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:25 am

Only one piece of software. Spyhunter for the C64. It seeked laser hole protection on the disk and proceeded on error. I bit nybbled the disk to be seek track 39 instead of the bad track, thus error. Took a bit, many "WE PROSECUTE PIRATES" counter messages, but I was able to make a copy for a friend.