@Charlieandrews and @James Atkinson … yeah live in Chesterfield also, a bit near Hopkins but closer toward Newbys Bridge.
When i was like 18/19, i hacked into an unused intranet server of my local ISP. The stuff was all my local ip addresses started with 202.123.X.X so all i had to do was to run a hostname scanner and scan all active ip addresses withing that range. I got many pings back. Most of them i run vulnerability scanners and one of them was running IIS 4 or 5 and was vulnerable to Directory traversal. So I was just lurking around on the server and found out that it was an intranet server, way back from 1998. They stored all kind of stuffs and on another subdomain, they were running a full server serving mobile customers. I spent days lurking around, dowloading logs, phone numbers, software manuals, and cleaning my logs after i logout. It was the good old days 
Cyborg. Ha : )
el33t hax0r
I hope you got home in time to watch the Chicago Cubs first night game at Wrigley Field! 8/8/88
I used a Heathkit dumb terminal and some even-then-obsolete 300 baud acoustic coupler modem to dial up the local grocery store. Dad was always terrible with passwords, both then and now. I got into their VMS system, and now I was in, I had the run of the place, I ruled the world.
I changed the price of ground beef.
The police never knocked on my door.
It’s amazing how far all of this has come since the BBS days. Today’s kids just have NO idea what it used to be like, with their broadband and their interwebs and their tweeter and their googol.
Now get off my lawn.
@s in htx
I could see Falling Creek Elem. from my back yard.
Carafe Dr to be exact.
Great stuff, Jeff!
One of my buddies came up with a solution to this problem that was MUCH less elegant than this. He followed his phone line outside to his backyard to the “box” where all the lines where coming from, attached a few lines that weren’t being used, and ran them across his yard, up the side of his house, and into his bedroom window. It was an epic couple of days before the knock on the door came.
And ironically, this all took place in Chesterfield County! Had no idea you lived here growing up, that’s hilarious.
I was lucky during that era, Baltimore had a pretty booming BBS scene with plenty of ‘interesting’ boards that had pretty much whatever you wanted to download with a high post/call ratio. This kept the conversations pretty lively and geek belly full of scrumptious goodies.
We were pretty well connected too, we had I think three WWiV and FIDO GCs in our area code, so losing one almost never meant having to call LD just to keep the network message boards pumping. I ran my own for quite a long time, even profitably for a few years until AOL ruined everything.
I think phreaking of some kind is something every nerd from that era tried at least once, the only difference being the ‘color’ of the box you built, or in your case programmed.
Thanks for sharing this Jeff. I have a copy of Synchronet on my Debian VM in Los Angeles, I’ve been looking for some time to set it up properly and start building it out. BTW, if you want to run an old style BBS and love programming things in Javascript, Synchronet has a built in JS engine, it’s what you use to make your menus, mods, etc (ANSI graphics still prevail for the actual menu display, though). It works via telnet / SSH or HTTP.
Anyway, that was the push I needed to spend a few hours in nostalgic awesomeness.
I was born on 8/8/1988
I was a long time bbser back in the 1980’s, ran several different bbses, and I two bugged out about calling long distance bbses. I even called this famous bbs called 2001, run by bootlegger of the “Bill Landreth” fame.
I was part of the bbs culture back in teh 1980’s, 612 area code 4 life.
I loved my Apple ][+, AppleCat Modem, green 40 char monitors.
Crazy game paddles.
Even my last bbs, S.T.O.R.M. BBS is listed on textfiles.com for historical sake. For me it was the culture, the people, the experiences, the learning…
And here i am 30 years later, and into programming php/coldfusion, sql server, linux, mysql…
I just love geeking…
Jeff, ¡Old time Rock & Roll!
Memories …
Good Post.
Now I know why I have to dial that unwieldy 12 digit code each time I use my calling card…
Thank you
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Great story, mine is similar too. I wrote what I believe was the most popular code-hacking (same deal, AT&T/MCI/etc LD codes) software for the Amiga back in the day (whoo AmigaBASIC!). I never got busted using it, but my buddy who went to high school with us (this was 1987) did, his house was raided while it was running on his Amiga and they unplugged everything before they even looked at the screen, fortunately for him. He ended up getting a suspended sentence because he was already signed up to enter the Army upon graduation in a few months. I was a lot more careful after that, but at one point I tried to calculate how much free LD I had used and it was pretty scary.
Thanks for the story. We are the same age and it was definitely a unique time to grow up and be obsessed with computers. Kids today (get off my lawn!), like the recent college grads I run across at work really have such different experiences, and in some ways, I wish more of them could have been around in the BBS days, especially the really talented ones.
Anyhow, great post, really enjoyed it.
–‘The Burglar’ (from C= scene, there was apparently an Apple scene Burglar as well), sysop of The Corporation and Tog-Dog BBSes in Detroit
Ha, I really enjoyed reading this article. I too was a BBS nerd although I don’t have any stories about the cops showing up. I did rack up a pretty hefty bill for Q-link(Commodore 64 site) one month that my parents kinda freaked over (I was talking to a girl on there so minus geek-points for me)
I do remember one awkward moment with the neighbours though. I ran a BBS and eventually reached a point where I decided that a single (dedicated) was not enough. However, since our house was only wired for two lines, and the other was our voice line, the local utility had to dig through the neighbours yards to install it. I don’t think my parents or neighbours (or even the phone company) understood what was going on but gave it the nod anyway.
But my friends who stole batteries, modems and computer equipment from traffic and train-crossing control boxes? Yeah those guys got in trouble.
My answer to the LD charges was FIDO net and then later a local board began carrying Usenet. That was cool because then I could send bang pathed e-mail to my friends around the world. But as I recall that was all in the mid 80s.
As for addiction I remember the feeling certainly is was something stronger and more wonderful.
Thanks for sharing the experience of those heady days of a geek teenage. They remind me of my own memories, certainly one of the fondest ones I have, trying to find cracks and trying to make sense of binaries with nothing but the ever-useless windows notepad…
Also, it’s quite funny to see where your uploaded Apple II ROM image has ended up, starting on a (probably) US-based BBS… The good thing is, it is still up. 
I never had a “bad” day like that, which is pretty fortunate, since I got into BBSing shortly after turning 18 (in 92-93)… Also, there were a lot of local boards in the Phoenix (602) area by then, and message nets were pretty common. I was only on a handful of more elite boards, mainly because I was an okay(hack) ANSI artist. I still run a BBS today (roughneckbbs.com) which is pretty active, for a BBS in 2012. It’s funny how the landscape has changed and stayed the same… Instead of warez boards, we have private torrent trackers, and instead of call back verifiers, we have IP block lists. It’s still pretty cool all around, but much happier having the world at my fingertips than not… Though I really miss the regular local BBS gatherings, you don’t get that so much online today.
I love the Dune reference. Great read.
I use to love this. I dont know how many people our familiar with shadow run? Its an old pen and paper role playing game I use to always love playing a hacker. Oh the great days.
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Great flashback! You can be proud of that piece of paper in hindsight, I never reached the heights of being notorious myself.
I wonder if you have any information at all about that screen shot of Psi 5 Trading Company you posted? I’m a fan of that game, and the Apple II version is as elusive as a winged unicorn. Never saw a ROM, a screenshot or a disk until this. Did/Do you own it? Is there any copy in real life or emulators?