NAME:
David Spink

COMPUNET ID:
TOP CAT (formally DNS1), ZIGZAK (shared with Steve Parkinson)

WHAT HE DID:
Where do I start......... along, again, with Steve Parkinson, I made many "utility" programs to run with Compunet. One of the most popular was the "CHAT" add-in which navigated the "CHAT", "CHAT1", "CHAT2", etc. dirs for you, and made chatting much easier. Erm, and, since it was a long time ago I suppose I could admit, that as a bit of an experiment, we actually made the Chat program hide the Login ID & Password of anyone who used it as hidden text at the top of any chat frames you sent using it; we could then recover it using another program. Jason (and I think Peter, and John Marchant) basically knew about this mainly due to my constant hints in PartyLine that we had done it. Sorry everyone!! Steve Parkinson and I were also in the middle of developing a completely new C64 Terminal program which unfortunately never actually got finished because Cnet went down the pan. We demoed it once at Cnet (in Nick's basement) and also discussed it at length with Dave Parkinson from Ariadne. Dave was a hero of mine in those days - and was always very supportive of our project.

CLAIM TO COMPUNET FAME:
Hehe... well, see above. And also after we got our free accounts set up (by the way a "free" account - which was not the same as an internal account was just a normal account with a massive credit limit which never got billed. Jason set my limit to £1000 initially - but I soon used that up and it had to go to £2000. I think this was mostly charges from Partyline and Fed. I also remember trying to BUY those expensive empty text pages that poped up here and there) my claim to fame would be being online almost all the time, using Fed, using Partyline and having a right good carry-on all night online (frequently until 4 or 5am). I also won an ICC award in 1991 for runner-up programmer... I forget who won - Eddy Caroll I would think. Now here's a guy who shares the same outlook on life as me!

WHAT'S HE UP TO NOW:
The ZigZak name lives on and is now the name of my company. We build and sell PC systems (see http://surf.to/zigzak), and also sell games systems like Playstation and Nintendo 64, etc... I am also developing a Point of Sale program which I hope to be selling later this year - we'll see.

OTHER STUFF:
I had a really good laugh on Cnet. Although it did take up most of my "child-hood". I must have started on Cnet when I was about 12 or 13.... it all must have ended when I was about 17 I think. I really did enjoy meeting all the faces at the shows in London. Many of my first experiences with alcohol were at these meetings!!!

TOP THREE FAVOURITE PROGRAMS/HARDWARE:
Wizball, and Boulderdash for games. Absolute classics. 3rd place would be the Cnet terminal software (yawn), it was a fantastically open, well documented, and interesting piece of software which I had many, many, happy nights messing around with!!

BETWEEN WHICH DATES WERE YOU A MEMBER OF COMPUNET:
From the start to the bitter end.

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