The letter collection of legendary Dutch C64 cracker Honey of 1001 Crew has provided us with a stream of treasures over the past years. Now, after five instalments, this fountain has run dry: Today, we give you the final update. It includes some fascinating materials from 1986-1987, such as letters from fellow compression expert Matcham and some well-known crackers from the very early days of the C64 scene. As always, the images can be viewed in the gallery below. The update includes letters from:

We start the New Year with a bang. The archive of C64 scener Rough had been sitting here for almost three years – until last month our heroic student assistant scanned over 400 pages in one go. With this update, we present you 269 letters by 127 individuals from 16 countries. They stem from the years between 1989 and 1998, while Rough’s most active phase was between 1989 and 1992. As a self-declared “legal swapper“, Rough had a lot of contacts within the early C64 demoscene. While they were spread over Europe and beyond (there are letters from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom), Rough’s focus laid, besides his native Germany, on Austria and Hungary. Almost all big names of the early Hungarian C64 scene are present in his papers. You can download the high resolution scans, complete with metadata, from our file archive at /swapletters/rough/ and browse this massive update in the gallery below. Here’s the list of contacts represented in this update:

Abyss, Acid Ripper, Agnus, ALF, André, Andy Capp, ANS, Art, Asterix, Bad Boy, Bird, Blue Thunder, Böög, Cancer, Captain Freedom, Chris, Columbus, Cone, Creb, Crime De’Sign, Crossfire, Cruiser, Damien, Dash, Dean, Defjay, Dense, Design, Donatello, Dr. Loot, Duff’90, Exorcist, Falcon, Firefox, Flat, Frank, Frankieghost, Freddy, Fresh, Gabriel, Gazer, Gazza, Goofy, Great, Greg, Gyozo Lee, Hawkeye, Hornet, I.S.M., Ice a.k.a. Heathcliff, Ice-T, Icon, Ivory, Jayce, Jazzy D, Jesus Priest, Joachim, Macho, Mad Butcher, Mad, Major-X, Manchild, MCI, Merlin (NL), Merlin (SE), MMC, Mnemoth, Modesty, Moren, Mr. Perfect, Mr. Wax, Neutron, Nobody, Nothingface, Overlander, Oxygene, Painkiller, Panther, Paradox & Abyss, Play Power, Ratman, Ray, Razor, Rebel, Rune, Satan, Scanner, Scorpie, Scummkid, Slayer, Slime, Spectator, Spook, Starkiller, Steve, Storm, Stranger, Sunny, Syllinor, T.C.B.O., T.E.H., TCH, TDP, Tech, Teen, Terminator X, TG-Acme, Thomas, Thunderhawk, TMN, Tom, Toobin a.k.a. Flatline, Topic, Tornado, Toy, Trident, Trigger, Twilight, Ultrafox, Vigo, Warlock, Whisp, Wildcat, Xerx, Yeyus, Zixmon

Famous Scottish Atari ST cracker Zippy a.k.a Absu, member of the groups Cynix and The Medway Boys, who was very recently interviewed on Codetapper.com, provided us with photographs from his letter archive. This time, we bring you a very special portion of these documents: The inbox, so to say, of the Cynix P.O. box in Merseyside from 1992-1994. Most of these letters stem from less-known sceners or even complete outsiders, non-scene fans and users of Cynix cracks, encouraging the group to continue cracking in a time where the Atari software industry was already in decline. They were answering to a poll of sorts, initiated by Cynix themselves, who, in the scrolltexts of several crack intros, urged users to write them if they did care for Cynix to continue cracking. And they did – from all over the world! In what is just a small surviving part of the letters Cynix received, we find letters and postcards not just from all over the UK, but also from Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Iceland, Serbia, Australia, Greece, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Slovenia. These letters – some by people who would become prominent Atari sceners, some by unknown home computer users – testify not just to the transnational audience an active cracking group could reach, but also to the fact that the cracking scene and its protagonists mattered to a lot of people far outside the scene itself. These are literally fan letters, hailing whom the authors perceived as heroes for letting them enjoy software for free.

You can download the high quality photos and metadata sheets of these 74 letters from our archive under /zippy/cynix_po_box/, or browse through them in the gallery below.