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] The adventures of Evil Exidy and his Apple // computer.

] Introduction:

] In 1982 my father would reserve a one hour slot every friday
night at the Boulder library so we could play on the Apple ][
computer, this was a day both my brother and I would look forward
to every week. Aside from playing video games at the Arcade and
Pong at home, the Apple Computer was the only system at that time,
(that we knew of), where we could copy games and play for free! I
was in 7th grade at the time and my friend copied several games for
me.. Games that would change my life forever.. Titles: Castle
Wolfenstein, Hard Hat Mack and Swashbuckler. We would play these
games every week and would never grow tired or bored of the
gameplay.

] Late 1982 my father decided to purchase an Apple //e Computer for
us because we were so dedicated and fanatical about the Computer
system. What he failed to understand was our addiction to the
system. We had already copied hundreds of games and we were already
influenced by hacking (password stealing), phreaking (making
illegal phone calls) and cracking (the breaking copy protection on
retail software). Back in the early 80's instead of the internet,
we had an underground circle of bulletin boards where all the
pirates (people who copy retail software) would trade games and
share hacking and phreaking information. The numbers were very easy
to find, because whenever someone would crack a game, they would
leave their 'logo' or signature on the game with phone numbers to
their favorite pirate bulletin boards. Some of the board names
included: The Pirates Cove, South Pole, Miami Vice, The Pirates
Den, etc.. Aside from the cool bulletin boards, there were pirate
circles and everyone had an alias.. I was known as The Crazy
Cracker and my brother was Dr. Klepto.. The more famous people had
names like Two Knives Tan, The Warezird, Crocket and Tubbs, The Hot
Rod, Apple Rebel, The Intern, The Time Lord, The Pengiun and they
belonged to groups like The Midwest Pirates Guild, Coast to Coast,
Black Bag, Rackateers and many others. This was a huge underground
scene, a scene that almost no one was aware of.

] My system included:

] Apple //e computer system + 80 column card.
] Apple //e dual 5 1/4" disk drives.
] Star dot matrix printer.
] Hayes Micromodem 300 bps.
] Apple //e joystick.

] Now that I had my computer system, I was ready for business. We
got our own phone line and started calling bulletin boards like
crazy.. Running our phone bill up to $200 a month with no slowing
down... Our phone bills were going up... and up... and up... We had
to do something about this, so we started experimenting with
calling card companies.. Our local long distance company at the
time was called LDS (Long Distance Service) and we got them good..
I saw a post on a bulletin board which said "I found a calling card
# 56xxxx and it works on Skyline". This same number worked on LDS,
but what we soon found out was that LDS had only 1000 calling card
numbers issued and they were all issued between 56xxxx and 57xxxx..
So we ran a hacking program over a 2 day period and managed to take
all their calling cards with one big SWOOOOOP. Now were set. We
could make all the phone calls - anytime - anywhere in the world
without having to worry about any more phone bills or parents
breathing down my neck about making expensive phone calls. The most
exciting thing about this was that we lived in an area where
tracing was impossible, our phone system was so primitive that even
the operator didnt know where I was calling from!

] It didnt stop here! We talked our parents into buying us a 10 meg
external hard drive (by a company called RANA ELITE). At the time
it was the biggest hard drive made and it cost my parents $1200...
Believe me.. We were now considered ELITE! We also managed to get
the hacker's choice modem called the APPLE CAT ][ modem. This modem
was able to do 300 bps + 1200 bps in half duplex.. We were also
able to clone operator tones and do speed dialing. This cut our
hacking time in half (hahahahaha). We had everything we needed to
set-up our own bulletin board sysyem + everything possible for our
hacking/phreaking needs.

] After thinking of some cool names, we decided to go with
(k)uality (k)onnections aka The Silent World. At the time (k) meant
COOL or better yet - Kool. So the more K's that were used, the
kooler your bbs (bulletin board system). I also joined the pirates
guild known as COAST TO COAST.. So all the software that was
cracked by them had our phone number listed on it. I was only 12
years old and my brother was 11, but we were doing stuff that most
people could only imagine.

] By this time we already had thousands of games and access to
everything we ever wanted. We even had a underground carbon copy
ring (credit card carbons).. This is where kids would jump in
dumbsters and steal the credit card carbon copies and use them to
order merchandise (including computer parts, games, anything!!).
You can imagine what happened here, I just leave it at that :)

] ...This period of chaos/adventure in my life ended in 1985/1986
when several of my friends were arrested for phreaking. I was
tipped-off almost 1 month before the FBI came to my house. The tip
was given by a friend of mine (king Lear).. He told me that the FBI
was asking him questions and they told him that our phone number
was a common number among all the people/kids arrested. So I
managed to dump all my hardcore hacking/phreaking equipment plus
all our illigal software weeks before the FBI showed up at our
doorstep.

] The FBI. This was a scary time for my family.. But not for my
brother and I. When the FBI came over, my parents were scared
stiff. Both my brother and I were cool and calm as we could be.
They asked us questions... and more questions, and even more
questions.. They were determined to break us.. Nothing happened..
We denied everything.. They even asked to see our computer (which
was taken back to its earliest most primitive form). They took our
computer away from us, ending our rampage... They took away our
favorite pass time and many years of fun.. However, they were not
able to take away our memories of all the fun and crazy things we
did with our Apple Computer System

] The End.