Interview with InsaneTTM - Razor 1911 Founder
I was just browsing through some old files when I found out a very old issue of Inquisition. I guess most of you have no clue what that is - and those of you connected with the scene won’t probably remember either. Inquisition was a warez bulletin released by sceners for sceners back in 1995 and it featured various scene-related charts, interviews, statistics and analyses. Yes, that’s the time when only few people knew about the scene and it was much harder to get involved. In those times, it was also very common to disclose much more details about group’s sites, leaders, members and BBSs. I thought some of you might find this 15-year-old interview interesting, so here it is for you:
---=[ 5. Interview - InsaneTTM - Razor 1911 Founder ]--------------------------
INQ: Okay, I'd like to welcome you to this Inquisition interview and would
like to thank you for taking the time. Very first question, what is your
full handle and where are you from?
TTM: Sure, no probs. As long as there are no emergency calls I hopefully can
answer all the questions. My handle is InsaneTTM, I come from Trondheim
Norway. TTM stands for The Tractor Maniac. 
INQ: Could you briefly describe the founding of Razor 1911 and how the first
few years developed?
TTM: We were just kids. In 1985 the three founding members where at the
incredible age of 13, 14 and 14, so you can imagine that alot of games
were played. But, after a while we soon started to get interested in
demos. The specific date is not remebered but, during October 1985 three
guys, Myself, Secotr9 and Dr NO, decided to get a kewl name.
INQ: Who is "we," that is, who helped you found razor and what did each of you
do?
TTM: After going through piles of bad ones we ended up with Razor 1911.
INQ: Where did the name come from? Why 1911?
TTM: Well in the beginning nobody had dedicated stuff to do; it was just
like - Hey guys lets start a group.
INQ: So Razor started as a demo group on what platform?
TTM: Well, a friend of ours called Hellmates came up with Razor and we
instantly felt that this one was great. The number was actually 2992 in
the very beginning but was later changed to 1911. The reason why we
wanna have a number is that every kewl group at the time being used
numbers - like Flash Cracking Group 1941, Section 8, Electronic Cracking
Association 1998, ABC 1999, Jedi 2001, 1103 and so on. The platform
Razor started to work on was Commodore 64. The number 1911 is $777 in
hexadecimal. Because at the time, a lot of kids used 666 and such
childish stuff; we just went the opposite way as 7 is the number of the
good.
INQ: How did razor grow and when do you think were the best times for Razor?
TTM: Hmm.. We grew up from the Commodore 64, to the Amiga. On the amiga, our
very first releases came. It wasn't actually until 1989 our first
releases came. We had problems getting our hands on the originals, as
every new group with no structure had. But, then everything started to
roll. We got our first overseas member, Zodact, that had a board. So,
we went into the modem scene at the same time.
INQ: What was the competition like with INC? What about Fairlight or THG?
Who was the most competitive, and what was the competition for in the
early days? I mean, with the modem scene, and the distribution of
releases.
TTM: Now we did games on a regular basis for a while, and on the amiga until
91, we had some 50 releases. Then, the next step was to get into the PC
world. At the time we got into the PC, as you said INC and THg were the
leading forces, but after all the years in the business, we had a lot of
contacts everywhere and were able to get some real action together. We
were so fortunate that in our close neighborhood we had a young cracker
named Darwin. A lot of amusing stories about those days. He once had to
crack the game over the phone to some guy in the US before leaving for
school in the morning, didn't have the time to upload it!! And then went
home during his lurch to check that it finally was released. And from
there on everything grew and grew.
TTM: The best days for Razor must have been on PC during the spring of 93. We
had enough cards to have the rule the entire scene. We're talking about
the 1993 edition of Razor's European courier team consisting of
RazorBlade, Devil, Hoppermania, GrimLock, Insane TTM, Slain and Digital
Justice which made the every other courier teams in the world look like
plain amateurs.
INQ: Was this around the time Darwin was busted?
TTM: Nope, Darwin wans't busted. He actually was outta the scene in 93.
In fact as he was and still is a close friend of Razorblade. My most
memorable moment probably was the easter of 93. We had 5 huge releases
in 4 days. Trading round the clock; it was the most thrilling
experience. We just beat the crap out of everyone else on all 5
releases. I had almost no sleep for the days, should just go to bed.
When the phone rang and said "We got a release in a couple of hours, get
ready." The sadly in a forthnight, when were at the ultimate top. I was
busted, together with Baal and Gene here in Norway. S9 and DRno luckily
escaped.
INQ: For cards?
TTM: After 10th of May 93, I have been out of the business. Just watching
what's happening with the group, and I am proud to see that WE still are
a major force. I was busted for CC, yeah.
INQ: How were the releases being distributed? To what boards? What baud rate
were these at?
TTM: At the end, we had 14.4 and 16.8 modems. As mentioned above, the courier
team from hell did the most of it during the golden age. We had one line
at our main board, and one line at every other major board around -
covering everything. Hanging in there downloading all the disks except
the first where the cracks usually are being placed - waiting for the
cracker to upload it and then, BOOM! We get it everywhere in just
minutes. Ahh, what a feeling.
INQ: What major boards were memorable for you?
TTM: Hmm... Major board. Digging in the back parts of my brain - Elusive
Dream and Pitts are our rival board. We have had like zillions of
boards during the time, but getting into the rivals boards is always a
great deal of fun.
INQ: How do you feel about subsequent leaders? What about TRC, Butcher, even
today with TSR and The GEcko?
TTM: On the issue of our leaders. The one I have had most contact with is
probably Butcher. He was a very kewl guy when you got to know him. He
was sadly busted too. Today's leaders I must say I don't know at all. I
won't get into the business again. As I have got a kewl job with full
INET connection.
INQ: What are you doing now? What do you think of the scene today? What
about BBS's? Are they better or worse than before?
TTM: I ususally hang around on the IRC all day to see when we release
something. Since I was busted 2 1/2 years ago, Internet has taken over
alot of the distribution, plus the trading scene is being shut down in
one country after another. So alot of sites are replacing boards as we
used to know them.
INQ: What do you think of the internet and the effect it has had on the scene?
Do you think the scene will survive?
TTM: As long as there is games/utils being developed there will always be a
scene around.
INQ: Do you think that there needs to be some sort of "elite" for the scene to
function correctly? If so, what makes someone elite? Do you think that
the net has increased the lameness in the scene?
TTM: There will always be "elite" and there will always be wannabees. And for
the scene to function properly there will always be a need for elites to
be there. Elite could stand for somebody that can organize properly.
INQ: The CDRip/NET question.
TTM: Hmm.. CDRips. There are two kinds of CDRips.
1. The good ones by usually quality groups.
2. The lame/bad ones froim new groups trying to break into the scene.
The latter is like ripping everything that was suppose to be released.
Like 60 disk releases! If you are a SysOp and read this, nuke people
that upload such stuff x5 at least.
INQ: Do you think there will ever be a time when games are too big to pirate?
INQ: What would you say the disk limit for a rip should be?
TTM: Hmm.. Well I won't say anything because the quality of games vary, but
more than 30 disks is like meaningless to me. One of my flatmates came
home with a 29 disk game here one day. I don't understand why people
care about copying of all of the disks.
INQ: Well, thank you very much for your time, and it was very nice talking.
This interview was conducted on November 28, 1995 by Darwin/DWi.
just a little heads up that you spelled his name wrong in the title
Very cool indeed. I find it funny that this group is older than me, but they’re not too far from here either
Razor1911 for ever.
@dam: that’s actually quite funny - it’s mispelled in the original issue of the Inquisition too.
I fixed it
30 disks as in 30 1.44 floppy disks ?
Woot.. I remember the scene back in 1995… in a group called Hellfire, did Amiga & PCs releases.
Met Hoodlum, LSD and various other sceners at ECTS in London… John Loader on our backs.. them were the days…
Whole issue:
http://www.mycal.net/Group42/warez/inq/inq7.htm
Crazy days. I remember getting Quake on floppies before it was released on CD. Back then CDRs were stupidly expensive.
Nice interview
and also interessting to read.
its times like these im proud to be norweigian^^
The text is not being displayed right in Opera 9.52
There are words on the right side missing
very interesting, 4 me everything related to the scene is interesting!
Payzor.
Pay some bucks!
Meh
WoW!
Razor is founed by a Norwegian like me.
I am totaly thrilled.
Thx for the txt, good reading
It’s times like these i’m proud to work for the law.
Do not move away from your computers, an agent will come by to pick you up shortly.
haha ^^
cool!
I didn’t know they were from norway!
GO NORWAY
just too bad there isn’t that much of a
good organized groups left at the time..
and a hell of alot of idiotic groups
that releases junk. and seriously, cracking
a game, and makes it go so slow that it’s
destroying the fun of the game, that’s not
cracking, just doing stuff wrong.
/Glacies ^^
Martin, please release more stuff like this! Fun to read,true scene history.
funny how he mentions a friend with 29 disks - that’s like less than 42 megs.
@20, cc:
But still, it’s 29 disks. You have to copy it one by one, boring.
Man, i miss those days, i remember spending days and days downloading Men In Black, i believe it was 100 disks (200 megs compressed), it was maybe the last game released on floppies.
Original F]\[Crew
respect
cool post i remember the original, i ran The Last Drop bbs for hellfire
F**k off Big Brother (16).
I think you didn’t stole anything in your life!?
The law …bla …bla …bla…it’s made by people…
This is the best post on RlsLog.net ever!!!
I live in Trondheim, I personally know one of them, although have yet to speak with him.
Funny you should bring this up, thanks though.
Those were the days. I do love 29 disk game = insane….LOL
/pwd
I Remember downloading a 30 disk game on a modem and it took all night to download 40MB, and if anyone picked up the phoneline you were fscked. Now I can DL a 700mb divx file in 2.5 minutes with usenet and Fios lol.
Fairlight is soooo much better
Scene history/stories could be awesome, and hacker history, martin post some more please
Don’t bother, it’s not any sort of rls, it’s not even fresh! ffs.
Thanks for this posting. Nostalgic old me recalls those day with joy. And yes - post some more.
Bring back some memories, i was active in the amiga days.
I remember smoking hash with some trsi members @ the crystal party in 92 (the year of the state of the art)
I still have my a500 with spreadpoint, trsi & melon. dezign stickers.
I remember spending nights calling at&t & sprint.
Wow it does bring back old memories. I was using bbs then and shortly after gravitated to IRC. In some countries (me Canada) we may have to go back. How so much faster all our computing is today. Thanks for the post.
A very GOOD history write up.Keep It Coming.
Thanks.
The true history of our generation!
ahhhhh the good old days… Boxing / PBXing all over the world trading
This was when it was like: Oasis +44 XXX XXXXX OR Cement City +44 N0T 4 Y0U , Duck N Cover , Welsh Coast.
The scene was truly underground. US Robotics modems FTW !!!!! Courier baby !
Good post. Me myself, if left the scene when the internet started to take over. The internet just let everyone in… Trust me in this, bro’s.. It was more fun when you had to have a stack of cards.
anyway, much respect to the razor1911 guys. But - they were swedish as well.. one founder was Laric (swedish cracker) if i remember right. anyone?
good one!
LOL, man those were the dayz. nice post.
NUKED [out.of.sync.around.4th.question] !!!!!!!!!!
Proof:
—–> INQ: Who is “we,” that is, who helped you found razor and what did each of you
do?
TTM: After going through piles of bad ones we ended up with Razor 1911.
=====> INQ: Where did the name come from? Why 1911?
<—– TTM: Well in the beginning nobody had dedicated stuff to do; it was just
like - Hey guys lets start a group.
INQ: So Razor started as a demo group on what platform?
<===== TTM: Well, a friend of ours called Hellmates came up with Razor and we
instantly felt that this one was great. The number was actually 2992 in
the very beginning but was later changed to 1911.
In 95 I traded 4megs of ram for access to a BBS in my city. I remember my mom picking up the phone which disconnected me, then quickly trying to reconnect only to find the line busy. Hahah, great memories.
If you see that many norwegians on The Scene is living in Trondheim, it’s because NTNU (Norwegian University in Technology) resides there. Most “Norwegian Sceners” have been educated from that school (after my speculations).
>>> TTM: There will always be “elite” and there will always be wannabees.
Now, guess which one are the people behind RLSLOG.net
Thanks for the post, but I’ll wait for the R5
http://www.defacto2.net is probably the biggest portal of warez scene nfos and stories and interviews like this. They’ve got a gigantic archive there.
This interview was conducted on November 28, 1995 by Darwin/DWi.
So not 10 years late or anything?
i entered the scene the first time in 92 93, cc;s were in back then and anyone with access to a decent generator back then was a living gild brick so to speak, small town in northrn ontatio canada and im getting approached internationally of alllll sorts to do devious things for devious people.
it was ruff back then, good thin i lived a block from the university d:c)
kUu
irc since it started
Wow , this brought back some memories…
I used to be wares modem trader in a group called Liberty who created the Whitebox phreaking prog back in the early 90’s in Australia …
Was great fun making free calls to bbs systems all over the world and getting latest amiga games & made alot of friends.
Shame the group got busted , I didn’t but I sold all my gear and got a life and a girlfriend lol…
Amiga R.I.P.
shouts out to old peeps , Skidrow ,Scoopex , FairLight , Red sector , Anthrox
i am 21 now so was 3 years old in 1989
could someone explain briefly what cards are in the context of the post? the technology they used sounds pretty ingenious
@50
Cards ?
Calling cards from at&t and such.
I used to dial the center, spell all the numbers of “my” account.
Then spell the BBS number, being french and 15yo didn’t help.
Cannot express the feeling of connecting overseas BBS then just DL the l8test stuff thanks to some supplier accounts.
gr8 dayz
Lotus turbo esprit was “us”
Oh yeah and i got caught.
At a copy party near Paris.
Then at an assignment regarding this previous event.
the cop in charge showed me listings of supposedely personnal messages.
I stopped like a good surrending french
Holy crap. Flashback for real, as some above post.
Things I never thought of for some years does come to mind. I remember when I dealt with tKC (Keyboard Caper, deaf cracker from South Africa) and Midi Maniac (distro sysop in SA) around those years, early 90’s. Getting tutored by DaVinci was another milestone I hope I never forget.
Sad that I in the same thought also realize that I’m old aswell haha. Up untill the DoD bust(s) life sure was pretty fly.
…and does anyone remember TRiAD? =)
I need to sit back and read up on these old logs for sure.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
’nuff said
It’s too the benefit of the scene that the internet is so wide-spread now, now the only thing illegal they do is distribution.
Hehe.. definately feeling aged by this story. I too remember the good ol’ days.. wares bbs’s with your daily ascii goodness. Razor1911, Fairlight, Core, D.O.D (Drink or Die), APC, and so on. Seeing disk xx/32.. 14.4 dial-up downloads.
I remember the excitement when Ultimate Doom was released.. c:\pkunzip ultdoom.zip
Aaah, memories.
ansi + crimson, rzr, trsi, inc, flt and all thosegood boxes, 888’s… bring back the c0dez! HACK THE PLANET!&@#^%!&*%
/me snapsout of regression to past teenage angst… now just hack the pentagon!
For some information on cards and the old scene (C64), have a look at my website at http://recollection.c64.org
Looking for contact with The Butcher actually, regarding his time in Eagle Soft Inc.
hehhe I remember the BBS days…using door mods to play DWANGO and using 1.44’s and running pkzipfix alot because disks were just junk in general….
Hah! BBS’s had this release 15 years ago!!! rlslog.net pwned AGAIN!
I was the first in my neighborhood to have a 14.4 modem. Picked it up for the discount price of $700 USD. It replaced my 1200 baud
@ adikt - lol 14.4 was the sh1t, wasn’t it?!?!
This was a cool read. I think there should really be a documentary made about the history of the scene. There are so many 15 to 20-year-old kids now in the scene, who have no idea how it started and what it was like in the early days.
Most don’t even know what the term BBS is. The BBS Documentary that came out a couple years ago featured a TINY bit of info on the scene in one of its sections, but not nearly enough.
I’m not even old enough to have been involved with the pioneers, but I remember being around 14 or 15 and (before the WWW really took off) and dialing up to local and long-distance BBS’s.
I remember the first time I got elite access to one; it was such a big deal back then to be able to download those old crappy games that were only 1 or 2MB in size (at most), but took all night to download.
Then the WWW brought the Internet into the mainstream around 1995 or so…it changed everything. And I know this sounds like a joke today, but back then there was a whole vibrant scene on AOL, because back then, AOL was one of the most popular ways to get access to the Internet. (LOL it reminds me of Windows 3.1)
Anyone remember using WarDialers to dial random phone numbers all night while you slept to try and find phone codes?
You wouldn’t believe what you could get away with back then, as far as phishing was concerned. People were phishing AOL accounts and CC info left and right. And the “scene” was primarily kept alive in AOL chat rooms, like “Warez” and “Gamez.” There was software that allowed distributors to send “mass mails” (or MM’s) out to people, consisting of hundreds of apps and games. Or you could pick-and-choose… It’s similar to the warez bots that are still used on IRC today.
And if you didn’t use AOL to access the Internet, you had a standard provider and had to rely on finding the best IRC channels. It wasn’t until much later that warez actually hit the Web.
Eh…brings back a lot of memories…I even built a working Red Box back then, but since I was so late to the scene, it only worked for about a year before the phone companies made it impossible to get free phone calls from pay phones using tones.
LOL…there are probably teenagers reading this and wondering why in the hell you’d even want to use a pay phone…All I can say is you had to be there…There was a time without cell phones, without iPods, without the Internet (meaning WWW), etc…It was always about cracking the system, just like it is today.
only one bbs board stood out from the rest in the uk, ‘unknown pleasures’
the need to trade warez on floppy disk was replaced by the legendary blobby cd’s :o) was the last number near number 70? , also tango’s etcs.. maybe with the warnings brits will face from the ips’s, warez on dvds will make a come back ??
“There are so many 15 to 20-year-old kids now in the scene, who have no idea how it started and what it was like in the early days.”
Yepz, but back then it was mostly 15-25 kids aswell, with only a few exceptions. The crackers were most demo-/game-scene programmers being bored. When the teamed up with the BBSes/sysops/carders thinks got big quickly … Funny how multi-billion multinationals are pwned by a couple of kids, over and over again for years on end
Most crackers probably just did it to show off their skills and get brag-rights (at least in the beginning) like others played sports, just for the fun of it. The people surrounding them (traders/sysops) turned it into business. Everyone needed big bucks and phreak-tricks to cover their expenses adn the kids could also use some pocket-money
Now most of these oldschool “evil crackers/hackers” turned into (mostly) law-abiding industry-leading pro’s pushing the technology forward …
@ Wax - Yeah, but finding boards that were 14.4 compatible and not still 2400 was a waiting game. Same thing with the 56k delema a few years later
This is nothing. I remember in 1965 we had a group which used to pirate programs on punch cards. Ah, the good old days, we were so young and foolish. I know one guy who used to carry around data which was spread over more than 76 punch cards. I do suspect in was pr0n though, because the 0’s always looked worn out.
I still have dozens of warez compilation cd’s from before 1995, i might be swayed to rip them and torrent the images for some of you guys.
i use Animecache username on TPB if anyone wants to get in touch.
^^^^^^^^ No thanks. a.b.old.games
Those were the days, first I dabbled somewhat in the C64 scene and later got an Amiga (500->1200->4000). Did some reverse engineering on the Amiga and coded some tools and extensions for AmiExpress. Still got the original Amiga Rom Kernel Includes & Autodocs, etc ;-). Was CoSysop on a nice BBS so those tools came in handy.
US Robotics, Zyxell 14k4, 19k2, 21k6, it took forever. Luckily i had very early on internet access through the university network ;-). That was great fun until one of the ftp/fsp sites greeted visitors with “This site is under federal investigation…”. Those days are now long gone, guess I’m getting old…
Lol @ 67!
My first rig that I started grabbing warez was an Atari 400 with a membrane keyboard (I soldered a 48k ram upgrade on the system board), a 300 baud modem and a cassette drive.
I remember calling old Amiga bbs in USA
Centrum bbs (CRYSTAL HQ)
Ivoluntary Death bbs
Danse Macarbe
14.4 rocked back in the early days
Lol @ bbs names
Centrum and Danse macabre where the places i used to go
Woaw. :O
what is a razor1912?
This brings back such memories. I remember those early days. I was the one who worked with Lurch and hosted Inq & WWN on hooked (now long gone). I recall reading all the issues just ahead of publication and editing those early web pages over 9600 dial-up. Thanks for posting this. =)
@ Mixx
Funny thing, we were in the scene at the same time then.
I remember chatting with some of the better traders at the time,
Rygar
Zelnik
Papillon
Swayzar
If you called CENTRUM i am sure i remember who you are. As i was there quite often, actually use to party with ReEeT-Mon and Loverboy (Involuntary Death)
I sure wish the SCENE was still around, oh well. Times change but memories LAST FOREVER!
Bugger me to days, that was fricken crack up reading all the stories of old. Reminds me of playing L.O.R.D - Red dragon edition and waiting for the pages to load on my 2400 baud modem hahahaha
Thanks for the memories guys
…now I’m sentimental…
Drekka mere!
Please post more stuff like this, it has been great reading up on the history of something I wish I hadn’t missed out on
I love eit when this site gives us something more than just the next release news. Sure, it’s great that you give all the release news as soon as its available but it seems that, when you post something a little different, I usually find it interesting and this time, judging by the comments here, most folk are fascinated by this stuff so don’t hesitate in posting a few more non-release posts.
thanks for this one, loved it.
Here’s a pic of Buzz and Insane TTM at a copy party held at their local school 7-9 October 1988.
http://nakiel.com/buzz_n_insane_ttm_stjoerdal_okt_1988.jpg
@6 thanks for the link
Martin, this is quality stuff m8. more!