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- F A C E T O F A C E W I T H F A M O U S S C E N E R S
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- <link=xi.scr>- X I - / S A T A N T R O N I C</l>
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- a great bloke with Slovak blood flowing in veins!
- one of the biggest atari enthusiast on earth!
- travelling on countless parties all over the Europe!
-
- caught to the interview by Grey / Mystic Bytes
- ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- - --- ----
-
-
- Grey: Yo, my slovak friend! Welcome to our modest thresholds :)
-
- Xi: Hi Grey
-
- Grey: Eh, as usual we have to start with more or less boring stuff at the
- beginning :) Please throw us some details about your real life, what
- are you doing when your Atari is switched off? :)
-
- Xi: My Atari... switched off??? This is something impossible for me. :)
- I remember the times when my 8-bit was running nonstop, in this last
- year my Falcon has been switched on pretty much nonstop - at least for
- mp3 replaying ;) But OK, I know what you think. I'm working in two
- companies. In the first one I'm a consultant with specialising in
- 'Laboratory Information Systems' - I travel across the whole of
- Slovakia, it takes me about 10 hours per day. In the second one I'm
- working part time as an engineer of counting machines for bank papers.
- Along with this I study part time at the Technical university in
- Kosice, I'm in my 3rd term actually.
-
- I think everyone can see I have nearly no time for my hobbies. And
- I have a lot of them.. from sport - amateur climbing, cavern exploring,
- rollerblading... through book reading, music listening.. electronics...
- collecting... to exotic plant cultivation... plus many more things :)
-
- Grey: When did you begin your trip through the exciting world of fuji? Could
- you try to recall these times?
-
- Xi: The first Atari I saw was as small boy through a friend of mine from my
- neighbourhood... it was in the era of communism, when it was quite a
- problem to get a computer from the "West"... but the first moment I saw
- it I knew I wanted this cool computer.. but it took some years before
- my parents bought me it... I was in middle school in that time...
-
- Grey: How did you know that something like the "demo-scene" exists at all?
- Do you remember the first scene-production you ever saw? What was it?
-
- Xi: Well I got knowledge of the demoscene a very short time after I got my
- first Atari. Since no official software dealers existed in Slovakia,
- programs were spread via so called 'Atari clubs'... and so I'd go along
- with a blank cassette and come away with a full one without any idea of
- what I had there and then I'd spend looong hours exploring what I had..
- thanks to this way I got my first demos and in this time I was
- fascinated by polish productions... but regarding some concrete demo
- I don't remember, it's a long time ago...
-
- Grey: Who was a founder of "Satantronic" group and why the hell did you
- decide to create prods under this label? It's a bit of a weird name,
- don't you think?
-
- Xi: The founder of Satantronic is me... how did it all begin? Since the
- first day I got the computer I knew that besides playing games I wanted
- to code too so I began to write programs in BASIC. After a while these
- programs began to look better and I wanted to have some label other
- than my name. The first label me and my friend from the neighbourhood
- used was 'POKERO', after my friend moved away I wanted to create a new
- label - I wanted to make it so when someone sees this label he wont
- easily forget it (and to be maybe provocative a little bit) and to be
- original in the same way. I think I succeeded.
-
- Try to search via google the word 'Satantronic' and I'm sure 99% of
- the links will be about us...:)
-
- Maybe this will be surprise for someone, maybe I'll flabbergast
- someone, but not me or any other member of our group is the spawn of
- satan... and our group meetings aren't satanic rituals... ;)
-
- Grey: Your group was and still is pretty active on the 8-bit Atari scene.
- Where does the strong love of these computers come from?
-
- Xi: In Slovakia is a sentence: "old love doesn't corrode" and this is the
- case of my small Atari... it's my first computer and I wont have such
- a sympathy for other computers as I have for this one... Simply, it's
- something I can't give up for anything... to put it into a box and to
- leave it to gather dust..... never!
-
- Grey: Hopefully you are also a lucky Falcon user :) On the official
- "Satantronic" site we can read about your plans concerning this great
- scene-toy. Unfortunately except for your 4ktro with the blue "fire"
- effect, nothing has seen the light of the day... :( Did you decide to
- give up all your coding activities on the Falcon? Or can we expect
- anything more in the future?
-
- Xi: What I want to do is one thing, and sadly, what I -can- do is another..
- so my plans for the Falcon are still big but as I wrote - I'm limited
- by the brutal absence of free time, so at least from me it's better not
- to wait for something big... and since I'm the one and only Falcon
- owner in my group, it's clear Satantronic is not going to release
- anything big in the near future... :(
-
- However I think from the Slovak Falcon scene we can maybe expect some
- surprises...
-
- Grey: What do you think about the Falcon scene in general? Is there any
- chance it will survive as long as the 8-bit Atari scene?
-
- Xi: I think so yes... Its surviving doesn't depend on the age and hw
- performance, but on people who supports this hw.. and in a similar way
- to the small Atari scene we can see on the Falcon scene that yes, we're
- getting smaller and smaller, but still there are some newcomers about
- whom we didn't hear some years ago and now they are good coders,
- graphicians, musicians...
-
- Grey: And what's your first impressions since fitting your Falcon with its
- CT60 heartbeat?
-
- Xi: brutal speed!!! ... I couldn't believe that performance increase...
-
- Grey: Is there any chance that this new card could awake the sleepy Falcon
- scene?
-
- Xi: I think that's a strong possibility... as I could see at QuaST Party, a
- lot of people who were inactive for a long time on the Falcon scene,
- were quite impressed by my Falcon+CT60 and I think they were quite
- surprised about its performance...
-
- Grey: What kind of software would you like to see on the Falcon utilising
- CT60 features?
-
- Xi: With the arrival of the CT60 and the talk of a card with AGP/PCI/USB
- which is Czuba working on I think the overall performance will be on
- such level that there wont be any problem to use most ported software -
- look at things which are ported by Patrice Mandin, these things are
- unplayable on a standard Falcon but on a CT60 are performing well... so
- considering this I'm quite optimistic... of course, in each category we
- need some good software, for example a good optimized DiVX player...
- about new software, I see a big 'gap in the market' for making and
- cutting video, some good module player (.xm and so on..) would be
- useful, too.
-
- Another thing, there's a lot of programs coded for Falcon but not with
- an english version... for example such a great program as EZedit is
- only in french, afaik. But there's more examples, so I see some
- potential problems with how to spread quality software to all.
-
- Also I remember how you concretely asked me (I think it was at EIL99)
- what kind of software should MSB produce and how much demand there
- might be - you even spread some sheets with a list of possible software
- and I was struck by the 'Amiga emulator' entry... so, this is what
- I would like to see on Falcon... a good emulator of Amiga 500/1200.. ;)
-
- Grey: Let's hope that some things gonna be released at least! :)
-
- Grey: And hmmm... I couldn't skip this question in the interview! - You are a
- well-known party-traveller :)) Could you try to throw us all the places
- you've been?
-
- Xi: ;)... every year I visit 4-6 Atari actions and during that 8 years it
- was a lot of cities... The whole of Slovakia, in Czech Republic mainly
- Prague, Prostejov... in Germany, Dresden and in Poland (where I have
- the most of my scene friends) that are cities like: Orneta, Gdansk,
- Krakow, Opalenica, Warshaw, Wloclawek, Elblag ...
-
- Grey: Do You have any funny memories concerning any of these parties?
-
- Xi: it's a lot of fun every time... at each party you can experience
- something fun... that could make for a long interview...;)... but the
- most important thing is you have to have funny people around you... and
- these kind of people I met on every Atari action...
-
- Grey: Are You going to add another parties to your scene-diary? :) I mean
- about SV2+4 and QuaST 2004 for example :)
-
- Xi: Of course yes... I don't plan to stop my Atari activities or my party
- visiting... for the year 2004 I plan at least:
-
- Forever 5 - Trencin/Slovakia - brutal best 8-bit scene party
-
- Atariada - Prostejov/Czech Republic
-
- QuaST 2k4 - Orneta/Poland - this years' one was the one of the best in
- my life
-
- + SV2k4, Last Party - all in Poland, maybe EIL or some other one in
- the time instead of EIL
-
- Grey: Ok Xi, thanx a lot for spending your time over answering all these
- wicked questions! Can't wait to meet you on another Atari party! If You
- would like to greet anyone or send a special message to the scene
- community - just use the place below! take care!
-
- Xi: hmmm... my answers are probably crap, but what can we do... ;) in the
- hurry I couldn't come up with any better ones...:)
-
- I'll be glad to see you again, not only you, but all the other cool
- Atari blokes, whom I greet in this way...
-
- So see you people, I wish you as much fun with Atari computers as I've
- got until now...;)
-
-
- ::::: final message from Grey :::::
-
- Heavy hand-shakes must go to *Mikro* who was madly tormented by both of us!
- He was our "translator" 'coz Xi doesn't speak too well in english...
-
- You are simply THE BEST, dude! :)
-
-
- -- - --- -- -------------------------------------------------------------------
- CHOSNECK 4th appearance contact us:
- done by the dream survivors greymsb@poczta.fm
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