Here below, I wish to present some old stuff - a nice report from a Satellite party. Have a nice trip back, to the third edition of this nice copy-party...

This was another, this time third, Satellite edition, and took the place on November, 4-5th 2000 in „The Slav” (Slowianin) club in Szczecin, Poland. I had a pleasure to visit this mutli-platform party, what can be surprising to some of you who know me better ;). The 2000 edition was co-organized by Norwegian dudes and two names were used - Satellite 2000 & Kindergarden party. Polish site was represented by the Appendix federation. Altogether, according to my fast calculations, the party was visited by over 100 ppl, the local medias gave an over-exagerrated number of 350 visitors. Those 100 guys were in majority the Amiga freaks, then PC users, and a bunch of Commodore 64 sceners. The latter ones, as usual, shown what the Commy is able to do =). But let's start from the beginning....

All started on Saturday morning, at 8 AM. I warmly welcomed Spider at my place who came with a TONE of hardware, literally). After this TKK came by a car. We packed everything in and, about 11 AM, went to the party place. 30 PLN for the entry, a small badge and we were inn mainly among the Amiga freax. As soon as we got installed, the party dudes started to be curious about our hardware. So we launched some nice demos to make them happy :). Soon FENEK/ARISE, (who by the way, was the first one from „our scene” who has arrived on the party) joined us.

JACKOBE/OXYGEN 64 showed next. As soon as he did, I could have some notorious subjects talked with him. Well, we ended quite fast, since he was not too fancy to talk :). The Amiga enthusiast, after having got their dose of amazing Commie capabilities, returned to their stands. GAŁY/TROPYX joined us and while we were shaking our hands, the organizers started a „silly-vocal-song” compo. Ouch... that was painful... But we did not care :). I was talking with GALY, and FENEK had his coder-talks with JACKOBE.

We have not noticed and the afternoon was already up on us. We were allowed to connect our C64s to the big (well a big part of canvas) screen, hehehe. One may imagine what does this mean. Yes, we were able to show all of those unbelievers, what the Commodore 64 can do! First shot - ofkoz Deus Ex Machina! The Amigamen started to lose theirs jaws. Even the security man at the entrance was amazed. Why him, one may ask? It turned out that he was an old Commodore hardcore user, but lost his contacts in 1998 and has not been up-to-date till the Satellite party. I wish to mention, that the sound-system was perfectly and very well balanced (even TKK agreed, who is known of his golden SID ear).

After this, another kickers were presented: +H2k, Mathematica, Digital World and few others... There, we heard the jaws dropping sound. One of the funniest moment was with aforementioned Plush’s demo. The technical dudes got a little bit fooled when the demo presented the screen-off short effect-part thinking something went wrong :).

I had also a pleasure to meet SEBALOZ/LEPSI DE, who has just arrived. We watched some effects, and soon after were informed that the demoshow would be interrupted since another crazy compo was on its way. Well, another crazy-compo murmured, but well. A party is a party... I will never forget how ppl were amazed by the capabilities of the mighty Commodore 64. That ruled BIG way :).

Time flew by pleasantly and passably. The main compos got shifted an hour or so... I was bored, so I decided to relocate one of the tunes I like. Operation was a success. I was not able to relocate another tune, thou. Gosh, it was not too possible to work in such a noisy environment. Impossible I tell ya! But hey, instead, I learnt some interesting facts, Fenek told me. Mainly about „BumpMania” aka „Pijak Potrafi” demo by Arise.

At, about 18:00 (more or less...) DATA finally showed up. A little bit late, as he said ;). And this was true since there were no free place left at our desk. We had to find a new power supply connector. I did it, but also I accidently switched, at our desk, all the machines off . Sorry guys, if you do still remember this :). Our last contact who visited the party was c1t0z, who has both a Commy and the Amiga.

Finally... Finally the competitions have come. First - the Amiga (you know, Amiga dudes are soooo impatient ;)) competitions i.e. 4-channel Amiga Music. Not too ambitious I must admit. But who remembers it now??? Next - C64 Music Compo. There were no differences for music format - „Zak Compo” and so called „Reflextracker Compo” were put together, unlike it used to be on the North Parties. Simply – only one category. There were 5 tunes and I was happy to submit two HANK's tunes. The organizers did not have a C128D, so DATA came with the rescue and on his machine the music compo was presented.

Next - C64 Graphics Compo. Well, saying the truth it was a small defeat. Only SPIDER submitted his pixels in the number of two. Thus, the compo did not take place. The orgas made a condition of minimum 3 pieces per competition.

Here are the results for the C64 music compo...

1. Hank - „Hot Style”
2. Reiter - „Dusty Vinyl”
3. Hank - „Exit”
4. Data - „Blow2”
5. Data - „Contrast Zak”

Personally, HANK's zak „Exit” was my favorite...

Intro competition followed, but I was (present) not there. SEBALOZ was leaving and I wanted to have a final exchange with him. He and FENEK are really cool dudes. Did not know them personally before.

I wanted to leave the party as well (and be back the next day – I am a happy Szczecin city citizen) but finally I stayed at the party place. My sister (she was there with me) went home, thou me and DATA saw her off to the bus stop. Meanwhile some techno DJ, in my opinion not a very gifted one, made our after-midnight time more pleasant. Since together with DATA we are not into such a techno type, we decided to find a calm place and talk. So was it. I learned DATA some basic code techniques. Soon we were joined by JACKOBE.

After the DJ set, the demo competition started. Finally. After the competition, I must admit, IMHO, that the entries were not breathtaking. Truly, quite good, but not amazing productions. So together with DATA we continued to talk till... 6 in the morning. Then, JACKOBE decided to leave us while SPIDER and FENEK were still sleeping for good.

In the morning (well, or the late morning for us ;), the price-giving small ceremony took place. The Amiga demo compo winners were given a 286 motherboard bundled with a small hammer. You may guess what they were supposed to do with it :). The process of destruction did not went too smooth (or the 286 was made of titan?). Why? Guess which element broke first. No, not the main board, but the... hammer, hahaha :). The main board was so tuff, that I got hurt by its flying CACHE memory. Yes, I got hit in the leg. A tuff guy... or rather girl ;). The furious about that Amiga dudes started to jump on it, kick it and all that stuff, but they could not reach their aim. Finally, after virtually DOZEN of tries, they did it... They broke the hammer once again, and THAN, broke the 286 mother board... :). Finally...

At about 8ish in the morning, DATA, C1T0Z and me, we went to pay a visit to SHAPIE (hi dude!). After this pleasant but short meeting DATA went home, and me together with c1t0z went to my place. There we were contemplating our C64 machine by watching cool demos. C1t0z said that even Amiga is not able to generate such a charming sound. Especially when it comes to Taxim’s tunes. To amaze him more, I opened my Commie and presented to C1T0Z the internal C64 sample-amplifier! He was in AWE...

In such a pleasant atmosphere, our Satellite 3.0 experience reached, as well as its report, the deserving end. The results I got from SPIDER, who woke up a little bit late (for us) and stayed till the end. He was surprised, since the price in the C64 Music Compo was.... the Amiga 500! Yes! SPIDER, never the less, decided, without consulting with HANK, to sell it to GALY. Why? And well, simply, because he was not able to take her home. Well, personally I think, that HANK should have decided that, and not SPIDER. But well, I hope they got it clear on their own playground.

As a curiosity I want to mention, that Reiter's sample made a big hype among the Amiga users. Some of them were notoriously asking for a D64 file :).

Final words.

Well, this report is a relaxed one. So please forgive me any lack of detailed information. If I made some mistakes – I am sorry (but who would remember it now, anyway?...:). My final note? Not sooo bad. I was expecting more, but hey. As for my first copy-party... I was expecting a MEGA-COOL outstanding party :). What is not always a case... The biggest deception was the lack of participants. Without them, the party is... as we know it.

Party attendants: Fenek, Spider, TKK, Gały, Jackobe, Sebaloz, Data, c1t0z, H.M.Murdock and his sister.

Hardware brought to the party place: 2 x C64 (Spider and Data) + 1x 1541 TKK. C128D for the orgas, many Amiga 500 and one or two PCs...

Your truly:

H.M.Murdock/Tropyx/Oxygen64/Draco/Lasser

Report originally written on December, 2000 (yes, 16 years ago).

Translation: Sim / Wanted Team, Lamers, Resistance, Titan...