] 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.