One thing the author missed was the early BBS warez scene. Some people would use war dialers not to find open modems, but to systematically hack long distance calling card codes from the phone company and private companies. It would call the main number, then sequentially or randomly enter codes, then enter a target phone number like a BBS. If a modem picked up, the code worked and it would save it. If not, after x seconds it would hang up and start over. You'd leave it running overnight and maybe get a code or two, or none. They might last a few hours or a few weeks. There were also plenty of sites where people would post the codes, but those would usually get shut down pretty quick so best to hack your own. This would allow you basically free (to you) long distance access which you'd then use to connect to long distance bbs's to download games. This was mid 80's and started with Vic20/C64/Amiga as well as 286's when IBM's/Clones started hitting the streets. Then the internet became a thing and everyone moved to ftp's and hacking permissions to make hidden directories.
Reminds me that some of the best engineers of the last two decades started out as bored teenagers.
It wasn't so much the making free phone calls, but it was exploring the universe that was on the other side of the twisted copper pair coming into the house.
That’s something that bother me a lot. Nowadays systems are closed and their base security is totally teenager-proof.
A lot of « us » learnt to (love to) program or to hack on their crappy limited but « open » hardware.
This is not reproductible with an iPad or a smartphone and I’m really afraid that the current generation is going to let the machines control their lives because they’ll have no incentive to learn how to control the machines.
For this particular reason, I’m really happy that projects like Raspberry Pi just exists. And I’m pretty confident that my son’s first computer will be a Raspberry Pi 400 (or the equivalent, because he is too young atm).
Today you can get free internet connection with ease in the First world with public hotspots. A cheap chinese Android 4.0 WM8850 netbook is $30 minus shippings and Termux and Fdroid make a great workstation.
I really wanted to play my Sega Dreamcast online (I think the game was Phantasy Star Online), but my house had no internet at the time.
I was probably 12 or 13 and had all the time in the world, but no credit card or parental permission.
I figured out how to reverse engineer those spam AOL and NetZero signup CDs you would get in the mail to extract their dial-in credentials for new user signups. I managed to use that to get free internet access for the Dreamcast!
I think I got caught when my mom needed to make a phone call... online gaming was tough in the days of 56k dialup.
Evan Doorbell's phone phreaking recordings include interesting sounds from the phone network of the 70s and 80s, and some good technical descriptions of how various analog switching technologies and the telephone network worked "back in the day": https://www.evan-doorbell.com/
I've spent hours listening to these and they're a great mix of nostalgia and technical detail. I barely remember what the analog phone network sounded like, being born around the time when digital switching was being rolled-out heavily. It's neat to learn what some of the sounds on the network actually were.
