AN
INTERVIEW WITH
GRAZEY OF PHF
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As I write this, I know UMD 8730 is 99% completed as I do have a running
preview lying on my harddrive and believe me it's HUUUUUUUGE ! Anyway it's not
available now but I hope it'll be when you read this !
UMD being a very long project and Grazey suddenly feeling idle, I use the
occasion to harass him with loads of questions ! He he that's what happens when
you're a superstar ! :)
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STS : Hi Grazey ! Let's try not to bore our readers with your long time
scener's life and cut it short :) What is your name, age, occupation and scene
background ?
Oooh a gentle start... Phil Graham, aged 32, I work for the HM Customs
(rubber gloves at the ready), scene background briefly.. Started coding on
the C64 in 1983, culminating in a 1 disk music demo similar to UMD called
Who-Zone! , then bought an ST - did somenaff sample demos, music rip disks...
then of course the UMD series (1-5), did some stuff on the A1200 but nothing
ground breaking... I will be helping Cal/PHF on his PC conversion of the
classic Fasoulas shump Sanxion soon.
STS : Tell us when that UMD 8730 project started. And why 8730 ? Tho I'm
no compil collector I strongly doubt you released +8000 issues of UMD :)
UMD was started in 1998 with the intention of being released at the ST News
conference in December 2000. 8730 ? I think most people know by now but it's
the sum of the C64 & ST Sound chips (SID 6581 + Yamaha 2149).
STS : Last time we heard about UMD 8730 was at the STNICCC held in 2000.
What's been going on since then ? How come UMD came out almost two years after
being previewed at STNICCC ???
Ugh... the delay.... well UMD was finished in my mind at STNICCC. However
I'd asked Tao/Cream if he'd write a tune for the intro, I'd envisaged maybe
a 3 minute medley of ST zaks. I wasn't expecting a gigantic 21 minute
monster!!! I really wanted to do the tune justice by coding an intro which
in some way lived up to the tune. I received the final tune from Tao * 1 *
day before STNICCC, not even a top coder like me *ahem* could code a 21
minute fx extravaganza in a day. So instead I gave copies of the main UMD
music selection screen (with awful Grazey Graphics TM) to attendees of the
party. Once back from Holland I embarked on the intro, 2 years ? 2 years !
Well it was quite a busy time in my life, firstly I have a full time job
plus my girlfriend and I bought a house. But finally I finished the blasted
thing in October 2002.
STS : What problems did you encounter when working on UMD 8730 ? What took
you so long ? Did you plan this compil to grow that huge ?
One of the biggest problems was making the demo Falcon compatible. I don't
have access to such a machine so it like coding blind. In the end I came to the
conclusion that 100% Falcon compatiblity was impossible, what a weight off
my mind that was !! The other problems mainly dealt with composer's music
drivers.
UMD contains approximately 100 different music drivers, each poking around with
memory, self-modifying code, steeling registers, etc... a real nightmare to
get them working together!
As for the size of it, I had no idea how large it could get... ;-))) I guess it
contains at least 90% of all ST chip music. I'm steadily going through
Automation 1-512 listing tunes which I aint ripped yet!!! Notice the YET !
STS : Now that UMD is out, do you have other plans ? It seems like a life
achievement ! Does it mean you're going to get scene retired or are you going
to continue with other projects ?
I feel like retiring, but I still like dabbling in monST and ripping tunes !!
The exclusive announcemeent is that a new update should be released at the next
EIL party. I will try and rip more tunes to break through the 5000 barrier !!
(madness I know!), by then I should have a Falcon too so I'll fix many drivers
to work on Falcy! :) Other plans include working with Cal on Sanxion which I
mentioned previously.
STS : Should we consider PHF a single member crew ? You seem to be the only
active member now. Will you go on with that label or would you rather join
other crews and work with other people ?
Well that's not strictly true, Cal did the DBA6 conversion in the UMD intro.
It's just that he's into the PC now, so expect PHF PC releases. He coded a
brilliant 3D fish tank program in Delphi which should be hitting the PHF
web-site very soon. We've always been a very diverse crew, I'm sure not many
have released stuff on ST, C64, A500, A1200 AND PC! :) As for joining other
crews I think that's very unlikely. But I must admit I've really enjoyed
working with other sceners for UMD.
STS : Btw, I don't remember meeting you on Atari parties, will we hav a
chance to meet at Error In Line 3 for instance ?
Yes, hopefully we should be there. That's as long as Cal has money left
over from his trip to New Zealand in February.
STS : You've been a scener for a very long time, so tell us what you think
of the current scene.
See my other article hopefully! But in one word "friendlier"! [note of sts
here we're talking of the Old School Sceners Views On Our Scene item]
STS : That leads us to the new school debate :) Do you still think you
belong to the Scene these days or do you feel like a stranger over there ?
Of course I belong to the scene!! I speak on #Atariscne all the time, how
many people on there are old sceners ?? I must admit I don't even know why we
even use the old/new school terms ? Anyone care to tell me when the old-scene
ended and the new-scene commenced ?? We are all simply demo sceners.
STS : With your experience, you surely have opinions about the survival of
the ATARI scene. Do you believe in the CT060 savior? What's your point of view
regarding accelerated Ataris ?
They don't interest me, I felt the Amiga demo scene went down hill when
productions needed 040 processors, 8mb of RAM etc. To me all ST demos should
run on a basic machine (with an allowance for 1mb memory but that's all!),
otherwise you'll alienate the majority of owners.
STS : Okay here we go with our brainstorming ! Complete the following
letters with any crazy stuff that may be wandering thru your mind :
G : Glynis - my partner
R : Rock N Roll - took me 3 hours to relocate it by hand in 1990!! arrgh!
A : Amiga - nice machine, unfriendly scene
Z : Zombi - excellent atmospheric tune by Whittaker
E : Easyrider 4.0 - THE dis-assembler
Y : Yorkshire born & bred
P : PC-Relative - the hard part of hacking!
H : Hull City - the other half of my leisure time!
F : Friendship
STS : Thanks for giving us some of your time to answer our questions ! We
hope you'll not stop doing things now that UMD 8730 is out !
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