Phone numbers in cracktros

[redblade]

Originally Posted by modrobert

I'd take 3:1 (dl:ul) byte ratio on a board anytime instead of "disabled" which meant favors ranging between cross continent uphauls of releases (because someone who didn't know how to bluebox were out of cards) or a duffle bag full of pills to be carried from Netherlands to Germany rave party.

Whoa that's some next level shit for bbs access. You must carry MDMA over the border to a rave. I never saw that on a cracktro, for the latest and greatest MDMA please contact.....

[kriz]

.You should come to Europe and check the raves here redblade When it`s open again that is ...

[Gerry]

Originally Posted by spudje

All these memories of that era, have they been written down in a book or some other publication?

They will be.


The Atari ST scene will be the heart of the story, but we also take the journey back to the 8-bit era on the C64 and deliver sidekicks to Apple II, Atari XL, Amstrad CPC and Sinclair Spectrum. Also Amiga insiders joined in.

[malachi]

Just want to add similar experience. I ran a USA BBS for a couple of years, advertised in cracktros for Defjam, Paranoimia, and M.A.D. All Piracy; was not on any LE radar as far as I knew. I screened applicants for 0 day warez to be sure they were active in the scene. Thats it. Never had so much as a phone call from LE about it.

I did get busted, but it was for outbound phreaking. Shortly after our neighborhood went digital (call forwarding, caller ID etc) they paid me a visit. The police saw my setup when they came to my house ... didn’t care one bit about pirated software. Only the “theft of services” they got me for.

Fun times, ha.

[malachi]

Btw. I started late 80s. Blueboxing was already dead, at least for me. I did my biz mainly with 950’s codes, 800# phone cards, and the occasional pbx or diverter for the good stuff like Alliance Teleconferencing. Social engineering on AT&T phone cards for friends in Europe.

[Crown]

@Malachi: Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. Do you, by any chance, have a backup of your BBS?

[malachi]

Originally Posted by Crown

@Malachi: Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. Do you, by any chance, have a backup of your BBS?

I saw my old boot disk in the basement, but that was years ago. I am going to look for it. Probably bad disk by now, but you never know. I might get lucky.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by malachi

Btw. I started late 80s. Blueboxing was already dead, at least for me. I did my biz mainly with 950’s codes, 800# phone cards, and the occasional pbx or diverter for the good stuff like Alliance Teleconferencing. Social engineering on AT&T phone cards for friends in Europe.

I regret to this day telling others how to use Alliance arbitrarily from a payphone. I gave them a workaround that let them avoid talking to an operator but they got lazy and just had the operator do it for them, so it got shut down. =(

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by malachi

I saw my old boot disk in the basement, but that was years ago. I am going to look for it. Probably bad disk by now, but you never know. I might get lucky.

What bbs software were you running?

[malachi]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

What bbs software were you running?

I don't actually remember. Was pretty basic, not a lot of extra features, as the board was exclusively about spreading cracks. I can probably figure it out if I play with the BBS software on TOSEC. Haven't had a chance to.

Shortly before I got busted, I had also switched over to running it on PC so I could free up my Amiga. No idea there either.

[Crown]

Originally Posted by malachi

I saw my old boot disk in the basement, but that was years ago. I am going to look for it. Probably bad disk by now, but you never know. I might get lucky.

That would be fab. Many thanks mate.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by malachi

I don't actually remember. Was pretty basic, not a lot of extra features, as the board was exclusively about spreading cracks. I can probably figure it out if I play with the BBS software on TOSEC. Haven't had a chance to.

Shortly before I got busted, I had also switched over to running it on PC so I could free up my Amiga. No idea there either.

thanks for the info. I am interested because I was part of the warez bbs scene in the later years when everyone ran Ami-Express and in the last couple of years I have been redeveloping Ami-express with permission from the original rights holder. Just wondered what people used before Ami-Express came along.

[Pfloyd]

In the early 90's, certain international toll-free 0130 numbers (later these were changed to 0800 prefix) were still usable from Germany for blueboxing, because the foreign telephone system still used in-band-signalling. Later, filters were applied to notch out the frequencies used for blueboxing.

[RichL]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

There are still a handful of scene bbs still up and running today. They generally have a large collection of old scene files online and a few new uploads here and there (generally demos trainers etc).

They are mostly run for the nostalgia factor because those days were an amazing time where we not only managed to trade the latest releases but made many friends in an online world that didn't exist yet for the majority of people.

If anyone has an interest in this stuff and never got to see what these systems were like then go find one that is still around, grab dctelnet and log on. Obviously you won't see the large numbers of callers, files and messages flying around like it was back in the day but you can still get a feel for it.

I would be genuinely interested to see how this looked back in the day.