Triad C64
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Triad is a Swedish cracking group founded in 1986 and is widely recognized as one of the most popular software piracy organizations ever to operate on the Commodore 64 platform.
The Triad in its basic form consists of three members. The group is therefore independent of its members - if one leaves, there is still two left and the group will stay alive. The basic meaning of the word Triad is thus that it's a group that will survive its members. To the members of a Triad, the group is more important than their own personal careers.
Late 1986 Arrow and Fred of CoD were swapping intensively with guys all over the world. Typically they would receive 4-8 parcels a day with new stuff. Arrow got in touch with Ixion in 3001 and soon got to know they had a somehow stable access to originals. CoD and 3001 began cooperating for some time, as CoD had lots of contacts abroad, and 3001 had fast, short, high quality cracks. 3001 also knew Mr Z and his friend "the old man" RND. Now these three gangs (3001, CoD and Mr Z + RND) with three distinct functions (Originals, Spreading and Cracking) saw a possibility of forming an interdependent Triad. As a result Triad was founded 1986-07-28 at 21.30 by Arrow, Fred, Skydive, Ixion, Lucifer, RND and at last, but in no way least: Mr Z. On 1986-08-08 the heavy-metal lover Arrow and Fred spread a simple intro with a Swedish flag on top of the screen announcing the event.
When Ixion, who had been functioning as the main organizer of Triad, quit the scene to concentrate on his university studies in 1988 the golden triangle was handed over to 801DC. 801DC put down a lot of work to keep Triad alive during some shaky months before Jerry was taken into to group and the leadership was passed to him, with the blessing of the old founders. In 1991 801DC died in an airplane accident, missed by all his friends in Triad.
Throughout the autumn 1986 Triad was really into the groove. Ixion counted 80 cracked games in 3 months, and the wheels kept spinning. Both Ixion and Skydive were "in" the computer business (ie they worked in a computer store in Västerås, Sweden), and had thus instant access to new games. However another member of Triad knew some guys at the importing company HK Electronics. (For personal reasons, we will not name this person.) HK Electronics was a company stared by Heikki Karbing, and was the dominant importer at the time. During the autumn 1986 the guys from Västerås understood it was no use buying the games through the store, as they could get them instantly through HK Electronics instead. They were of course instantly cracked.
So, in the spring of 1987 a Triad member got a call from HK Electronics inviting Triad to a chat. Sales had decreased by 80% in Västerås and 20% in Stockholm - in just three months. They wanted to get Triad and other crackers on "better" thoughts, to think about what they were doing in hurting the software vendors. Prior to this, someone had been trying to frame Triad. Up to the 1st of January 1993 friendly swap for non-profit was not illegal in Sweden, so no one could be nailed for merely swapping stuff, warez, pirate copies or whatever you call them. However it was seen as absolutely illegal to sell such copies. (In fact it wasn't illegal, as the copyright law in Sweden was much too outdated, but you could always nail someone selling games for tax-crimes or similar, like running an unregistered enterprise.) Cyberpunks like Triad were all safe and legal.
For example: someone called up a Triad swapper and wanted to buy a copy of the by then quite old game Flight Simulator. The Triad swappers knew it was illegal to sell pirate software and didn't sell any copies. However Fred had an original of the same game around which he sold instead. Later someone called up Arrow and said he had talked to Ixion, who should have promised him to buy a game through Arrow. Arrow refused. "We're not into that kind of business", he replied. On running a double-check, he found out Ixion had never talked to this guy. Many people thought Triad was a real cool group and wanted to join these days. There were some two "hangarounds" who called themselves members of Triad, but were in fact not. One of these guys had placed an advertisement in Dagens Nyheter (Sweden's biggest newspaper) offering games 3 days prior to release date! These were games Triad had obtained in advance. Some members of Triad went to see the guys at HK Electronics. They offered HK a "deal" - if HK would keep supplying Triad with originals, Triad would not spread the cracked games in Sweden at all, just abroad - mainly the United States. HK didn't buy into that idea. Unfortunately we don't know very much about what happened then - just that the Triad member who had used his contacts at HK in order to obtain originals was somehow put under pressure by HK. He didn't like this and quit for all time, reluctant to even talk about C= 64 and underground hacking for a long, long time. An overly mild guess would be that he took this incident very hard. For a long time following this incident, Ixion refused to spread any Triad warez in Sweden. Only the most trustworthy were given the latest cracks.
During the leadership of Jerry, Triad evolved not only as a cracking group, but also as one of the finest demogroups ever to grace the Commodore 64 scene. Examples of well-known demos are; (1990) Suckpipe, Lickpipe, Red October, (1991) Utopia, Wisdom, (1992) 3RD Stone from the Sun, Red Storm, (1993) Mind Control, (1994) Portfolio 2, (1995) No Control, (1996) Mind Expander, (1998) Refugee, (1999) Horsing Around, (2000) 26KG, Manhood, (2001) Feedback, Emission, Manhood 2, (2002) Over the Edge, (2003) Macho Programming, Harmonious, The Set Up, (2004) Under The Edge, Borderline, Pride, (2005) The ThrockMorton Device, 78-80, Sphaeristerium (together with Instinct and Horizon). All in all, Triad has released more than 200 demos in various sizes during the years.
A list of all members of Triad during the years, inactive as well as active, can be found at: http://noname.c64.org/csdb/group/?id=132 (probably not a complete list).
In 2000, Triad made a short appearance on the GameBoy Color scene and released the demo 'Stripped'.
Today, Triad continues to develop fresh content for the C64, such as animated demos, musical SID soundtracks and various software tools.
[edit] External links
- Triad website
- Triad at CSDb
- Triad history Written by King Fisher and Jerry of Triad (1996).
- King Fisher interview A brief history of Triad and an interview conducted by HamsTeR of Scenelink.