The Past Life Of Bacchus

1986-06-01

The initial period

After being visiting an old classmate - Mats M÷ller - on a regular basis, playing games, I finally got the money to buy my first C64 with drive. It was a demo machine on the shop Diskett and the drive was a early 1541 - a white one very alike the 1540, with all of it's alignment and heat problems. The drive went out of alignment several times very shortly after the purchase and the computer soon had a non-working RESTORE key, which was due to a broken motherboard, so I got new contents in the shell! I actually sold the trashdrive as soon as I possibly could - I couldn't have it away on a regulary basis on re-alignment even if it didn't cost anything. The replacement was a drive I later got to know as a 1541C, the "rattle and hum" drive ;-)
Early 1987

The period of the first steps

I was very amazed by the intros on games and the names soon were on my list of all time heros! Lancelot, Ivanhoe, Sir Galahad, Mr.Z, Pinge to name but a few. I realized learning machinecode was the way and cracker was the thing to be!
1987 

The LCT period

Joined the group LCT - Lunds Cracking Team. Members were;

  • The Scarlet Pimpernel (TSP) - Mattias Bergstr÷m - Leader and quite decent coder.
  • Mr. Coconut - Mats M÷ller. Didn't have any special "profession" but tried graphics.
  • The Panther - Peter - never met him. He had an Amiga!
  • The Saint - Christian Grandi - Quite kewl graphician.
  • Ade - Fredrik Ademar - A true multitalent! Joined as a coder, but also soon showed skills in painting and under the CPU label he coded a music editor that was quite stunning.
  • Playboy - That was my name at the time - coding and cracking.

Already from start I thought the name LCT was pretty lame (even if I didn't know that term at this point) and I wanted a new one!

1988

The CPU period

I considered myself being some sort of co-leader for LCT and I enlisted:

  • Mr.Lead - Andreas Svensson - According to the application coder, cracker and swapper but turned out to be swapper and ripper ;-)
  • Mr.Wedge - Anders Janson - Coder who also showed skills in producing great music! He coded his own music routine - no editor but all in source - but later reverted to musician only. He was the one to introduce me to assembler and Macrofire was the thing we replaced out TFC II monitors with.
  • Gaston/Bacchus - I changed names from Playboy to Gaston as I actually was stupid enough to write a letter to Playboy Inc for appoval of using the handle - I got an answer and they turned me down, which I was stupid enough to accept. I was Gaston for about two weeks before I turned Bacchus; this after finding that there already was a Gaston in the group Thundercats.
    •  I decided that we should rename the group to CPU, Crackers and Programmers Unlimited. This was a definite crack for the group as TSP still used the LCT name for his productions - I guess one could say we split up at this stage.
    1988-12-01 The Oneway period

    Questor was a friend of Mr.Lead's and when Questors old group split up he was looking for more members. The newborn group's name was OneWay and it actually still lives! Members from start were;

  • Razor - Leader, graphician
  • Questor - Swapper
  • Galleon - Legendary coder (Cruelcrunch) and also decent cracker.
  • Mr.Lead - From CPU, see above
  • Mr.Wedge - From CPU, see above
  • Ade - From CPU, see above
  • Bacchus (me) - From CPU, see above
    •
    1988-12-13 The FairLight period

    One of the things that really impressed me in the meritlist of Mr.Lead was the fact that he swapped with Strider of FairLight. On this day, this really payed off big as Strider asked Mr.Lead to join FairLight with a few skilled friends - the ones were the ex-CPU:ers. He wanted us to rename into fitting into the previous history of Tolkien related handles. Some did change handles but not according to the style suggested perhaps.

    • Mr.Lead -> Grayhawk - Andreas is still in the group but his level of activity makes justifying a place in the group very questionable.
    • Mr.Wedge -> Wedge (Strider wanted him to be "The Dark Overlord" but Anders didn't like that at all. He wanted a handle, not an essay ;-). Anders is still in the group on the Hall of Fame section of the memberlist.
    • Ade -> Phred. Fredrik was kicked for serious lazyness.
    • My first crack for FairLight was the game "Batman - The Caped Crusader".

    Pretty soon after the beginning of the new year I was more or less left to run the c64 section of the group. I had been a leader of the old CPU members who were now more or less what was running FairLight 64 so I was the natural successor of Strider but did nothing without his approval.

    This is the group I am still in and I have no reason what so ever to leave! I love it here and I feel fortunate to have left the state with a group with computer friends - They are all now friends with computers! I hope you get the distincion here!
    1994-11 Leaving the rudder

    At the Tribute party, the group had a serious discussion. After a long time running the group, I felt it was time to leave the leadership to someone else. My wife was expecting our first kid and I had to focus a bit more on work than I had been able so far.

    The successor was actually two - Sledge and Tabasco, but rather soon it showed that Sledge was the only one doing the job as requested so he was left alone at the post. This is the state we are still in.