Late in 1986 a parcel arrived at the offices of ZZAP!64, with a letter and a disk from some “Dutch 64 freaks” who called themselves the 1001 Crew. The first demo on the disk showed part of Bob Stevenson’s picture of Tutankhamen, and it filled the whole screen. “Somehow, the 1001 Crew have managed to dispose of the border,” the magazine wrote in December, “and as you hopefully can see from these screen shots the effect is quite stunning.” The pictures were made from expanded sprites, some of them “‘in’ the top and side borders”. The writer admitted: “I’ve no idea how it’s done, but really I hope someone puts the effect to good use in a game!”
Fast facts
- From: the Netherlands; named 1001 Crew in 1985.
- Active: until 1988.
- Founder: Honey (Joost Honig).
- Platform: Commodore 64.
- Known for: the first opened side borders, credited to its coder TSI in Border Letter I (April 1986); cracked games; the Card Cruncher packer.
Swapping and cracking
Joost Honig, known as Honey, told the story of the group in an interview with the website C64.COM. It began in early 1983 with a few C64 owners in the same area who had come from the VIC-20 and the ZX81, met in a local computer shop and started swapping games. Around 1985 they called themselves “1001 & the Cracking Crew”, later just 1001 Crew. The number was a nod to 1103, an earlier cracker whose name appeared on many cracked games, and “Cracking Crew” came from the breakdance group Rock Steady Crew.
The group grew into a network of cracking groups across Europe, among them the Swedish Cracking Crew, Danish Gold, Radwar in Germany and Teesside Cracking Service in Britain. Honig described his days: after school he opened the post, tested and copied everything, and had the outgoing parcels in the post box before six o’clock. CSDb lists hundreds of 1001 Crew releases, most of them cracked games from 1986 and 1987, such as Uridium and Wizball. The group’s own tools included the Card Cruncher packer, which CSDb credits to TSI. Honig said it “compacted files smaller than any other compressor”, and that the group licensed it to other crackers.
The side borders
The C64’s VIC-II chip draws a border around the picture, and normally nothing can appear there. The border can be removed because the chip switches it on and off at fixed points on each line. The sides are the hardest part: to open them, a program has to change one register on exactly one processor cycle, cycle 56, on every line it wants open, which means code timed to the cycle. The open borders entry explains how.
The scene’s lists of “world firsts”, compiled long afterwards and open to correction, credit TSI of 1001 Crew with the first opened side borders, in April 1986. CSDb dates TSI’s demo Border Letter I to that month and credits its code to him, with Rob Hubbard’s music. Honig called the side-border sprites “the first in the world”, done in early 1986 in Border Letter I. The group released them as a demo instead of in a game intro, he said, “to make sure the whole world would see it”. Later demos moved the scrolling message into the middle of the screen, and ESCOS, the “Expanded Screen COnstruction Set” behind the pictures ZZAP!64 printed, removed all the borders. Honig was careful not to claim everything: “1001 Crew did not open the middle top and bottom border for sprites. I think that was done by Flash.” The same lists credit the Flash Cracking Group with opening the upper and lower borders in October 1985.
The magazine coverage had a side effect. When 1001 Crew visited the PCW show in London in 1987, Honig recalled, they signed autographs, which he put down to the ZZAP!64 article.
The end
1001 Crew kept releasing into 1987; ZZAP!64’s Compunet column in June 1987 pointed readers to “1001’s MOVIE II, a full screen scrolling message of greetings”. The group worked with Future Projects on cracks from late 1987, and CSDb dates its end to 1988. Honig left the scene around then and became an entrepreneur running new-media companies. The group held a reunion in 2002.
Sources
- “An interesting parcel…”, ZZAP!64 issue 20, December 1986, p. 131: 1001 Crew’s disk, the full-screen Tutankhamen picture and ESCOS.
- Compunet column, ZZAP!64 issue 26, June 1987: 1001’s Movie II.
- Joost Honig, interview, C64.COM (web, secondary): the group’s origins, name, network, daily routine, Card Cruncher, side-border sprites and Border Letter I, ESCOS, Flash and the top and bottom borders, the PCW show, the 2002 reunion. http://www.c64.com/interviews/honig.html
- CSDb, group entry for 1001 Crew and scener entries for Honey and TSI (web, secondary): founding and end, the Future Projects co-operation, members, releases, and TSI’s credits for Border Letter I, Card Cruncher and ESCOS. https://csdb.dk/group/?id=81
- CSDb, release entry for Border Letter I (web, secondary): April 1986; code by TSI; music by Rob Hubbard. https://csdb.dk/release/?id=7304
- “World firsts and records”, Recollection (web, secondary; based on the Codebase64 world-firsts list): side borders, TSI/1001 Crew, April 1986; upper and lower borders, Flash Cracking Group, 11 October 1985. https://www.atlantis-prophecy.org/recollection/?load=world_of_demos