3. The history of Ericade

You are listening to the Ericade Radio Network. Good evening and welcome to another hour of Amiga Retro Music. Yeah, hello guys. It's me and it's time for Amiga Flashback. The second edition, we're gonna talk about the history of the Ericade Radio Network. Stay here and I don't know, listen perhaps.

original dub is the name of this masterpiece if I may say so it's good it's a good thing we're gonna go over to velomatrix in a while but first let me tell you about the whole story how it started with this radio station and it started in the big era of bbs's or bulletin board systems if you remember yes in 1993 I started my first bbs it was called Ericade bbs which is kind of interesting nameMy father told me that I cannot steal names because I wanted to start a software company and I said I wanted to be named Accolade and as everybody knows that did exist. So he said you should have Ericade instead and that's Eric my name my first name and Arcade so Eric Arcade Ericade there we go. So the Ericade BBS started on the 18th of October 1993 and that's yeah well that's the beginning.

Such a happy tune, isn't it? You should know something about me, I love radio. That's been my media since the 80s when I was a kid and recorded my own radio shows. Yep, they sucked, but hey, it was fun to make those. in the 90s, I wanted to become a real audio engineer and radio DJ. In a way, I became both. In a way, I became none because I have never held a, well, salaried position. I have never been paid for it.but I have done it as a community service and for many different occasions. So, well, the radio station started two years later in 1995 and it was only loosely connected to the BBS. Well, that's an interesting story, but some music before that.

What's cooking? Well, the song I guess. anyway, where were I? Well, 1995 I started a broadcasting station, a radio station called Radio Ungarforskare Stockholm, which was a joint scientist project within something known as the Federation of Youth Scientists. Yeah, it's a cool, really nerdy organization, perfectly the way I wanted it. So we started out and it was not connected to the BBS, but the BBS became part of an information channel.and 1995 we also held two different competitions where we let people make modules, Amiga modules and we put them on the air for them. So some of the music you hear on this station were made for those two competitions so they are unique, they don't exist anywhere else. So that's kind of a story. But as you probably know the BBSs, they were not meant to last.

not related to that old TV series but it's called Friends anyway. Nice tune, isn't it? Alright, well, the BBSs were not meant to be in 1995. Something new came out called the Internet. I don't know if you heard about it. Kind of cool thing, really. And well, everything started going backwards for us old sysops. And in 1997, I decided that the BBS must be shut down. At that time, Internet was everywhere.But I had collected a number of modules, which was kinda the most common files I had in the file areas. And in 1998 I decided, let's try this BBS thing one more time. So on April, March I think, March, no, April of 1998, we gave it another try and the results were dismal.

yeah, the doctor is in the house and he is per usual very awesome. The tune is called Father Nature. I thought that was a mother's role really, but what do I know? Well, the year was now finally 2000 and the BBS era, it was long gone. And on, I think it was the 18th of March that year, I simply pulled the plug and let the BBS sleep. And it looked like it would be forever.Only it wasn't. This is the Arikade Radio Network. Want to experience a bit of the past like a Swedish BBS? Point your browser to radio.arikade.net forward slash BBS to see how.

Cloud computing is the latest thing and trend, but also cloud music. This tune is called Cloud. And I have a very awful thing to admit, something bad that I almost did. Didn't do it, but I was very close. The Amiga 1200 that ran the BBS for the last years, I was about to throw it away, but something in the back of my head said, no, don't. So I instead ended up selling it to a friend and he kept it in running order and program.stuff in assembly language, so it got to good home, not like your old dog that your father said, we send him to a farm, and you know exactly what that was. No, the Amiga was alive, it was not euthanized or anything. But I didn't have a 1200, it took until 2017 before I actually got myself another one. And during that age, the naughties, the 2000s, the Amiga had no value. But as you know, that came to change.

The Ericade Radio Network, coming to you live from a bunker in northern Stockholm.

You feel the apocalypse vibes? Yeah, this is called Silver Rain and the song's text says something about being a tune that should give you that feeling of after the bombs or something. It really feels that way and so fitting I'm in a bunker, isn't it? Yeah, it is. At any rate, 2005, everything I ever dreamt on with Amiga was gone, but I had not forgotten.the rather large repository of tunes I had from the file areas with modules, s3m's and all those nice stuff. I decided to create a radio station. So I took a Windows Server I had running. I installed Winamp, some kind of transcoder and the Shoutcast server on the same machine. And I hooked it up to actually decode and play all the modules in real time and make a randomized list for it. It ran pretty well.it ran for 10 years. And at one time a listener sent an email telling me that the counters, the listener counters didn't work because they showed we only had one or two listeners. I told him, well, they do work. That is the problem.The Eracade Radio Network. Want to learn more? Point your web browser to radio.eracade.net to find out about our schedules and more information.

All good things must come to an end and 2015 the Arikade radio network went down. It was turned off on the 2nd of September 2015. I turned off the whole server because all the mail services I had had was moved into Microsoft Office 365 and when the server wasn't needed anymore I didn't have any place to run the radio station and it's pretty dismal listenership.That's a sad thing, but I believe a lot of people eventually listened. We never had a lot of them at the same time, but I think we made a little bit of an impact there. So I'm not going to feel sad about it. But the thing was, the RRK radio network, they were gone. They would never come back. And yeah, then Corona happened.

year was 2020 and China was coming into the headlines as the United States and China had a trade war which almost turned into a real one. After that we felt, nothing bad is gonna top this one. But you know, then came another thing from China, a little thing called Corona, and we're not talking about the beer really, that would have been an improvement if I say so.Everybody was forced to sit at home and you get bored that way pretty soon because nothing is happening You're working then you're sleeping then you're I don't know doing nothing. You're maybe eating something or yeah. Yeah So in August I felt I need to make a little bit more creative stuff I somehow got the idea to create a new Amiga podcast and I tried the waters with a number of YouTube podcasts and Facebook podcastswith video and stuff and it was fun. And then of course the old dream of a radio station came back. So I decided I need a new cool real radio station.

Well, I wasn't totally stationary in September of the 2020, 2020, whatever you want to call it. I was actually working in Ian shopping for a large little thing with guys trying to shoot each other. Okay, it's called the military. Anyway, there was my last days there because my consultant see mission there to say that's a cool thing to call it really. It had ended and I was sitting in Ian shopping train station and building the radio.homepage with WordPress. And as I was sitting there a lot of people wondered why I had sat myself there for two hours. But you know the trains were running late and it was perfect because I sat there working. So it's a cool thing with the internet. When I came home the homepage was up but the rest of it was still a problem.

Indeed Lee or something. I seem to have the same voice patterns patterns as Donald Trump. Is that a good thing? I don't know. Anyway, I now have the homepage, but I didn't really have any idea on how to fix the rest. So I was looking around and I found a broadcast automation software tool called Play it Lime. I tested a number of tools. I even ran one of the test hours from VLC andthat was kinda awful, it's not very fun to use that to make your broadcasts happen. So that's a thing. And eventually I got stuff to work. But it was really hard to find hardware. I found an old computer I had used previously, I hooked stuff up, I blew the fuses a number of times because I overloaded the systems. When you have like five orsix servers running eventually the network the power network doesn't work with that but eventually i got it to work and the date was set for the 13th of september 2020

Donuts, think that's the name because donuts that would be bad. I don't know. I'm not making the titles up. That's the name of the song. Well before that it was jobba and before that it was beast a play tune and Well, whatever. I don't think you care that much, but let's tell you about the history again Yeah, okay 13th of September went and we went on air. I hadI would talk every single hour with voice tracking. would start on Sunday recording a whole week in advance and next Sunday I would repeat the process. Well on the first Monday when I started doing it it took a whole lot more time than I expected and when I came to the wee hours well then I was pretty tired because the recording well 24 hours of broadcast took about I don't know one to two hours actually.and you kept repeating the same thing, yeah you heard this and this song and I saw that people actually turned off when they heard me speak too long. So I kinda gave up on it and instead the message format that you know now with some banter wisdom or very doubtful wisdom came out.

And that is the end of the story, for now at least. We'll see where this goes. But if you thought that was interesting, remember I have a YouTube channel for the Erikade Radio Network and I record a video log every week where I tell you what's going on, what's happening, what did happen and all those banter about the last time I ended up killing the whole service because I do that on a regular basis. Thank you for listening and we can hear you back tomorrow at this time.for the last time this week and yes this will soon become a podcast. More details in the future. Thanks for listening. Demon signing off. The Eracade Radio Network. Best enjoyed in the glow of your modem's lights.