Author Archives: gotpapers

Merry Christmas From “Got Papers?”… and Pete & Jamie!

The first year of Got Papers? is coming to an end, and it’s time to thank all contributors to this project. A staggering 431 items have been scanned, categorised, and uploaded since the launch in April, and about three times the amount of artifacts is still waiting to be processed – which will hopefully happen quicker than before, not only due to our volunteers, but also thanks to Gargaj/Conspiracy, who just developed a metadata processing tool for us as an early Christmas present. The credit for the overwhelming amount of materials must go to 49 contributors from all over Europe – sceners who have searched in their basements, wardrobes, and attics for long-forgotten materials and made an effort to share them with us. Thank you!

2016 will be an exciting year for the project – most importantly because we have just received an absolutely stunning donation. Skylab & General Zoff, two C64 pirate veterans from the 1980s, mostly known for their group The Movers, gave us their complete archive for scanning – over 500 pages of intro sketches, stickers, sourcecode snippets, software lists, scrolltext drafts, paper magazines, and, most importantly, hundreds of private letters from sceners all over the world, received by these two teenagers between 1986 and 1989. To provide a sneak preview into these materials, we give you today a Christmas card [metadata] sent over 25 years ago to Zoff & Skylab by another 1980s cracking and swapping duo – Pete & Jamie a.k.a. Thor & Zeus of the legendary British C64 group Teesside Cracking Service. So, we only need to repeat what they wrote back then: “Have a great time at christmas & new year guyz!” (and “girlz”, we may add).  See you in 2016!

Mixed Demoparty Materials

Today’s update features paper materials from late-1990s/early-2000s demoparties from Fzool‘s collection, including a rare tUM’99 votesheet drawn by C64 paper graphics legend Zapotek, and an Evoke 2000 flyer by Noize of Kolor.

• 0a000h 2003 visitors brochure [metadata]
• Ambience 2000 poster [metadata]
• Buenzli 2003 flyer [metadata]
• Computer’s Hell 2000 invitation [metadata]
• Evoke 1999 flyer [metadata]
• Evoke 1999 poster [metadata]
• Evoke 2000 flyer [metadata]
• Mekka^Symposium 1998 visitor survey [metadata]
• Mekka^Symposium 1998 votesheet [metadata]
• tUM 1999 flyer [metadata]
• tUM 1999 votesheet [metadata]
• tUM 1999 votesheet (master copy) [metadata]

The scans have been processed by Irokos.

C64 Covers as Naïve Art

When I visited C64 scener Goat/Laxity to pick up his C64 disk covers collection for scanning, there was one pile that he didn’t want to pass on at first. “Why one would want to preserve such primitive disk covers?”, he objected. Still, I took the covers with me, and here they are. While there had been some amazingly skillful disk covers in the previous updates, the ones presented today are admittedly not on par with them. Nevertheless, they are important to get a picture of the C64 scene beyond its “elite”. For every top swapper with loads of contacts and “0-day stuff”, there were hundreds of kids swapping with a few contacts only, dabbling in PD software and old cracks, and yet seeing themselves as part of the same scene community as the “elite”. Obviously, they wanted to have their own disk covers, like the “big ones”. Sometimes, these covers are the only product they left behind. Their somewhat clumsy designs do not need to be judged on terms of “lack of skills” – these covers can be seen as examples of naïve art, compensating the lack of adherence to any aesthetic rules with a lively will for self-expression. In fact, some of these coves look surprisingly up-to-date, and could just as well be a product of post-modern hipster aesthetics.

• Accept disk cover by Greenhorn, 1993 [metadata]
• Two Acme disk covers by Hanni, 1995 [metadata1] [metadata2]
• Creatures disk cover by Franco, 1992 [metadata]
• Crossdome disk cover by Madrom, 1995 [metadata]
• Digital Art disk cover by Xonix, 1994 [metadata]
• Dinomania disk cover by Greenhorn, 1993 [metadata]
• Disk cover by JJ, 1996 [metadata]
• Error 2000 disk cover by S.U.C.K., 1996 [metadata]
• Logiker disk cover by Logiker, 1993 [metadata]
• Nasti Boy disk cover by Nasti Boy, 1994 [metadata]
• Plutonium disk cover by Greenhorn, 1993 [metadata]
• Reiners Public Domain disk cover, 1994 [metadata]
• Secret Lab Productions disk cover by Cosmo, 1990s [metadata]
• Tiger-Crew disk cover by Greenhorn, 1990s [metadata]
• Tiger-Crew disk cover by Greenhorn & Logiker, 1993 [metadata]
• Tiger-Crew disk cover by Little John, 1990s [metadata]
• Tiger-Disk #29 disk cover, 1996 [metadata]
• World D-Sign disk cover by Fan-TC, 1994 [metadata]

Ancient C64/Amiga Pirate Materials #2

Here is the second batch of materials provided by an anonymous contributor (click here for the first instalment). Once again, you can browse through the paper relics of the very dawn of the home computer cracking & demo cultures – fragile traces of long forgotten individuals and groups as well as of those who came to be considered as scene legends later on. Among the more unusual scans from this update is the disk cover done by the early Amiga group Warfalcons. Even though Amiga floppy disks did not technicaly need paper sleeves, Warfalcons still made a batch of these – just like the usual ones on the C64, but in 3,5″ size.  Another remarkable artifact is a letter from a Belgian Amiga swapper around 1986 – typewritten on his father’s busines card. Another example of how much early digital subcultures had to rely on analogue techniques.

• Letter from CCC/Firesoft Inc. (Belgium) to undisclosed recepient, around 1986 [metadata]
• Cleveland Distribution Service sticker, mid-1980s [metadata]
• Commando Frontier sticker, between 1987 and 1989 [metadata]
• Dominators business card, between 1986 and 1989 [metadata]
• D.S. Compware sticker sheet, between 1986 and 1987 [metadata]
• Italian Spreading Service sticker, mid-1980s [metadata]
• Plutonium Crackers sticker sheet, around 1986 [metadata]
• Soldiers Against Protection sticker, between 1986 and 1988 [metadata]
• Stars promo card, 1986 [metadata]
• The Fall Guys business card, 1987 [metadata]
• The Light Circle rubber stamp, between 1986 and 1988 [metadata]
• The Organized Crime sticker, between 1987 and 1988 [metadata]
• The Orgasmatron Crew sticker sheet, 1987 [metadata]
• The Warriors 1881 sticker, between 1986 and 1988 [metadata]
• The Wizards sticker, around 1987 [metadata]
• Unknown cartoon cutout, mid-1980s [metadata]
• Warfalcons disk cover, around 1987-1988 [metadata]