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<head> <title="...forever..."> <font=monaco10.fnt> <image=back.raw w=256 h=256 t=-1> <buf=4760> <bgcolor=-1> <background=0> <link_color=128> <module=console.mod> <pal=back.pal> colors: 251 - black </head> <body> <frame x=0 y=0 w=640 h=1400 b=-1 c=-1> <f0><c253> -- --- -- ---- ------------------- Little Big Atari Story by Trophy ----------------- --- -- ---- -- - I. Monochromatic Existence I've been visiting my friend's house with parents in the begining of 1988 and there I've the first occasion to see Atari 520 ST with floppy-drive SF-354. Man it was a real shock for me. I knew some things about computers like C-64, Atari 800XL, ZX Spectrum and some other 8-bit machines of the 80s. But this was unbeliveable to see so many colours, to hear this great music - far better than Speccy internal buzzer. Why were colours the most important? Because in 1987 Poland wasn't independent, it was the fall of communism era. Some older people and others in my age remember that there where no colors anywhere. Everything was dirty, clothes were blue or grey, buildings were all grey except these, where soldiers or police lived (we had citizen's militia - milicja obywatelska, no police). Strange days. The sky wasn't blue either, as I remember it was always raining and there where a lot of dark clouds. The people had faces like masks, made from grey wax with dark eyes, they were sad all the time. Everything was boring and everyone was looking the same way. It wasn't good to look better than others, it wasn't even possible. I was a lucky child. My father was (and he still is) Electrotechnician Officer in Polish PLO (Polish Ocean Lines). He was working out of our country and he had a lot of occasions to buy blue jeans, addidas shoes, nice and colorful clothes, better food in beautiful and colourful packages all these cold drinks in mysterious bottles and cans. We were colecting them, exchanging between friends because it was the symbol of better life. There was a bit of hope that one day we will live a normal way of life in a colourful world, with smiles and all this stuff that some of us were watching only on pirate VHS videos, magazines (about fashion & style ). All these tools were coming to Poland from the West. Especialy from Germany because lot of us have their families living there..... Strange historical curves, the war, communism and all this shit make these people desperately looking for a chance to live in another country. So my father was working on vessels as an electrician and he was earning some money, it was not enough to live in a good conditions but there weren't a lot of things to buy in Poland during the communism. He was buying a lot of things, old TV-sets (color TV was a kind of luxury even in the late eighties in many houses), videos, clothes when he was abroad and then he was selling it in Poland. Thanks to this we have been in better situation than many others. But as I remember we were always living together in one room with kitchen and bath. The life was monochromatic and boring. One day he gave me German advertisement of 8 bit Atari with a big photo, a lot of colorful screens from games and programs and a long list of games with the original covers. Wow! I was shocked for the first time. I just fell in love with computers that day. The dreaming was the only way to have some fun, I wanted to cry but a man should never cry even in the worst situations. For the 8 years old boy it's a thing of honour. It was in 1985..... But let's come back to 1987. In 1987 political strengths were splitting, distributing and mixing. We all felt that something strange was filling the air. We didn't know it was the Hope Even the sky was more blue than just a few years before (the most strange thing I remember from my childhood was the War State in early 80s - it was totally black and white, today we know it is red like blood). Computers were coming to Poland day by day, all of them, but it was the entertainment for the richest guys and for the sons of communist party PZPR members. Yes, but they were coming. Even if your father was fighting with the government - the strange theatre remotely controlled from Russia - you have some friends from school, street, culture houses (I mean something called in Polish - 'MDKs'). Some of them have computers, because their parents have enough cash to buy one, or someone was working abroad (most people were working on vessels in my city, it was the easiest and the most legal way to contact the normal world). The first magazines like 'X' (donated by Polish Army), 'Informik' (a section of 'Mlody Technik', quite good commusnists magazine - 'Young Technician' in English), Bajtek (the most important) and then Komputer (PC World Komputer today) started to present computers, games and programming on a shitty paper.... But something was growing in the atmosphere. The sun was yellow and the sky was blue like never before. And then I saw an Atari 520ST in my friends house. He got it from his aunt from France. And I knew - I just wanted to have the same computer. Then came 1988. Everybody knows that communism is dying. The first street fast foods in strange places were opened. Some people for the first time met 'the hamburgers', 'the cheeseburgers' and so on... My father wanted to buy me a Timex 2048 in Pewex shop - strange place where you can buy anything from the outer world - but you had to have dollars or 'bony PKO', that were the equvalents of dollars printed in Poland and looked like money from Monopoly game. Strange things... I wanted a Timex but my father said that next year he will start working for Germans, he will earn more and maybe there will be a small chance for an Atari ST. I didn't know what to do - I was panic and anger. My father knew about it but he wanted me to make decision alone. I said to my father that I will wait another year to get the Atari, if it would be possible. He was proud of me, I knew it... Of course I was using computers in MDKs and playing some games on my friend's machines. Some demo-like programs always inspired me. It was the longest year in my life. But I was hard. In the begining of 1989 my father come back home from the cruise with the big, blue box signed Atari 520 STm, 512 KB RAM, 192 KB ROM and the beautiful photo of a computer set. It was ST with color monitor SM 1224 displaying very colorful fractals, a piece of Mandelbrot's Beatle if I still remember. There was also a little white box for the floppy drive SF314. And two games... Chubby Gristle and Winter Games. I have to thank this guy that sold the set to my father in Botlek Shop. The games that he choose for me were really great. First one was a nice kind of platform game. I loved it because it was similar to many platformers I played on 8-bit computers. The second one was great - we're playing it with the whole family. And it was just one year after the beautiful Winter Olympiad in Calgary Canada. Lots of fun, lots of colors - my life was changed forever... And then I bought my first two packs of BASF 3.5" DD - I still remember the moment when I unpacked them. I was excited formating the first disk doing step by step routines from Polish Atari ST User's Manual translated from English and spread using photocopiers - yes, illegal copies, but it was the only way to find literature. This User Manual and some other translated books (written using a typewriter and some hand drawings!) were give to me by my uncle. He was working as an electronic engineer in Gdansk and he was very interested in the Atari ST. Greetz to my uncle. I had an original German Instruction and short ST-Basic Programer's Reference but it was useless for me. I could only read and write Polish and Russian because all of the children in primary schools had to learn Russian as their second language. English was totally political incorect, German also, but they were teaching the language in some schools. In mine too. It was very important because I have a German version of TOS - g reat, each week I was understanding more and more... But unfortunately Russian was used more and today I don't use German. I was a notorious buyer of computer magazines and books of every kind connected with computers. A great period of learning the basics and living in a changing (normalizing) reality. My love of Atari mixed with political wars in my 12 year old eyes - the age of colour and victory. I was starting to know what the difference is between communism and democracy - it's like using B/W TV set connected to your ZX81, with no sound and playing games on colour monitor and a 16-bit Atari ST full of incredible sound and stunning musax. I've learnt how to hate communists and why... They were colour stealers. I also gave up learning Russian - I had always problems at school. Today I'm rather not proud of it but I still can talk or read something. II. The first steps and falls In 1990 I was quite advanced user of STs. Each Sunday I was going to 'Gielda Komputerowa' in Gdynia (in the communistic 'House of ...' or 'Shipyard Worker House') for new software for my Atari. I was always going there with my best friend Suchy, he was ZX Spectrum+ owner and we were trying to buy the same games. Sometimes it was possible because Speccy was quite good suported even in the begining of 90s. So we were playing games on ST or Speccy, buying and exchanging them. I met a lot of people on Gielda. Especially I want to thank to some pirates like Grzegorz and Andrzej (If I still remember corectly their names) for selling me cheap ST software. And of course to Mikolaj - he was also copying them. The pirate software was the best way to buy anything because there were no originals on the market and we had no copyrights in Poland. You know, for 50 years 'Big Brother from the East' was watching us and stealing the best ideas. Copyrights were just a kind of illusion. So on the gielda's were tons of software, copies of original instructions and hardware for anykind of machine. Also for my lovely ST. Gielda's was the thing that I will always remember - the days of fun. In about 1991/92 Grzegorz (the younger brother of Andrzej) showed me GFA-Basic and a book about it printed by SOETO. I bought it and I discover the new dimension, then my friend that already have had Amiga 500 played me some modules on Sound Tracker (remember this version, it was the first probably with 'three, two, one...' samples at the begining). I was shocked - this sound rocks But next week I went to Gielda and bought Sound Tracker and Noise Tracker. I was happy collecting others samples, modules but each time I heard Amigas I was a little bit sad that my Atari was not playing so clear. I even wanted to sell the Atari and bought Amiga 500 but something was telling me not to do this. So I was still having a lot of fun with my Atari, money I had for Amiga 500 I used to pay for RAM expansion to 1 MB and hand made sampler for ST with Polish program (quite good these times) to edit the samples. Great hours of fun! And then Amiga Lamers from rich houses were o ccupating Gielda and the computer press. They were just masturbating themselves talking about their lovely Amigas all the time, especially about games. They used A500 like the console with keyboard... I hate them. Some Amiga scene people were different but at the begining of 90's most of the Amiga guys were just lamers-gamers. One day I saw ULMs 'Darkside of the Spoon' - WOW! Great STuff... I was tracking a little bit, mosty learning how to do it. My favourite was Audio Sculpture, I was painting in DPaint, dumbling in GFA, then in Maxxon's Pascal that really rocks in his time. It was compatible with Borland's compilers for PC... But my Atari days were counted. In 1992 I've passed exams to Secondary Scool to class with computer science profile. Yeah! Math, Polish and a short exam on programming. We had to write 3 programs in Basic or Logo on the piece of paper and pen - stupid thing... Greetz to the PC-Ditto authors because I had an occasion to use the PC on my ST especially to train PC Logo ;-) Yes! I was the hard-coder of Logo that I learnt well on Speccy during the time of computing in MDKs. The teachers told all the parents that they're using PC at school and my father decided to buy a PC. I was using both the ST and PC - it was great feeling to use Borland's Pascal 6.0 on PC and Maxxon on ST. But in the begining of 1993 I decided to sold the ST with all disks. I had to be mad ! My friend bought it but 3 months later someone steal the computer except the floppy drive it was strange and horrible. I have some cash and I bought a bigger hard disk for my PC. I still have no sound card, except Covox. The modules were playing clearer via Covox than on the ST, but there where no serious player or tracker for PC (Scream Tracker in text mode was crap). The soundcard for PC was so expensive and sounds awfull in may aspects. Shock ! I wanted my ST back. I was planning on selling the PC and bought the Mega STE set or Falcon. But the second one was too expensive for me. Finally I bought a soundcard for my PC. My friend showed me Second Reality and Unreal by Future Crew and I joined the PC scene. I've decided to be a coder. It was 1993. So I change the way of thinking. There were a first PC Polish party organized in 1995 - called 'Proba Generalna' ('General Probe') and it was great thing to feel that something new is growing. The same atmosphere were next year on 'Proba Generalna II' but the next parties were getting worse and worse. The quality of productions were better each year but there were something wrong. I realized that on PC scene 'frendship' is just a word. I didn't understand what were doing on PC parties people from Amiga scene. Mostly musicians (like XTD) and graphicians - they were not using PC to create something. Another question - why on the top charts of PC scene were always guys from Amiga scene ? Anyway, it was a lot of fun creating something, even on PC as long as DOS was the main operating system for PC. There were no video accelerators and coders had to write everything alone. The code optimization was the coolest thing in that time - to be faster, smaller, better. But coding in x86 real-mode really sucks and switching to protected mode, using DOS extenders was only solution. I think the PC scene died today - even looking on these 'lovely' productions in C++/DirectX under Windoze is just an illusion. The PC should be a computer used just for earning money. There is no fun in it because the technology is changing to fast each month. There're also some compatibility problems in software/hardware and scene shoudn't be technological slave. I also remember people playing games on PC parties - it was real shock seeing two guys with Quake or something like this 15 minutes before deadline. I realized that I don't have enough fun on PC scene with my friends from the group and we decided to do something just for fun. We have formed a group in 96 and started working on some serious music and graphics manipulation. The band name is 'TerraForms Project' (www.tfp.of.pl) and we have recorded 4 albums up to today. Soon, we realised that our work is not suitable to PC scene and we decided to leave it. III. Is the story ends ? In 1997 I discover PacifiST and I fall in love with Atari again. In 1999 I know that I have to bought the ST again. I was looking for 4 MB STE (I was dreaming about it in early 90s) but I couldn't find any. I asked my best friend from the studies. When we meet at the first day in University of Gdansk we started talking about computers. He had also ST... and he knew who had one to sell. I bought 1040 STfm and started to look over the Internet for software and demos. The first I've seen on my ST since 1993 was Leonard's/Oxygene one an a lot from the past. But many of new productions were not working on ST with just 1 MB of RAM. Hopefully I meet Grey/MSB by an accident. When I was looking for ST I found Dely/AArea (http://www.atari-area.net) but he was living to far from my house to meet with him. But he gave me telephone number to Grey. And in the short time I bought my lovely Falcon 030... THANX GREY !!! The guy that sold me the F030 was studying at the same Department like me but without Grey's help it would be impossible for me to find him. From 2000 I'm member of Atari-Area crew and I'm mainly collecting newses, rumours, stuff and software for Atari ST/STE/Falcon. It's a Polish site maintained by Dely (Greetz to you!). There is a lot of things to expand. I've HDD, CD-ROM, 14 MB RAM (16 MB SIMM PS2 FPM connected to Paskud's Interface) but I don't have the coprocessor. It's not good because some things reqiure it but I looking for it. Hopefully, I came back to the roots. So, is the Atari Scene dying if there are still new members joining the STream? Greetings to all the people I've met these times and to all the readers of this article. -- --- --- --- ------- -------------------------------------------------------- CHOSNECK team contact us: people faithful 2 da roots! atarimsb@wp.pl ----------------------------------------------------- --- --- ---- --- --- ---- </frame> </body>