Wargames Dialer?

[Mclaneinc]

Just saw the necro bump thread and it made me smile, I'm from Curt's days although the long range BBS thing wasn't really a huge thing here in the UK but it did flourish later under the C64 (later years iirc) and the Amiga where I saw it in action. I won't say names other than a cracking group called the Accumulators used AT&T cards to long distance BBS call, seemed so easy, get card number, read it out to operator, give number to connect to and off you went, obviously getting the cards was the hard bit and I have no clue of how and where as that sort of stuff was very much less than legal and not for me.

 

But yes, the old War games dialing BBS's to find stuff and getting LD codes was all part of the time period and seems after a watch of the film War games all cuddly and soft but a certain Mr R Branson may not agree as I seem to remember the lads chuckling over getting his personal AT&T card at the time..

[Keatah]

Another cool topic to follow!

[Mclaneinc]

Yup, I love all these ones, like you, being there at the time just makes you relive some of the most fun times you had (without a girl) and for me its something I'd love the newer generation to have seen, the birth place of home computers. Long before email, browsers (as we know them), Skype, Social media (yes, there WAS a time before Facebook, deal with it) and the most funky gadget you had was an LED watch and or calculator. All these wonderful little programs started appearing that were the first of their kind.

 

Great great times and such wonderful topics..

Edited May 24, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[AtariGeezer]

Side stepping the topic a bit -> War Game Dialing -> old school hacking.

 

Anyone care to share their old school hack?

 

Back when I was in High School, our Electronics Classroom had an old telephone switchboard with the hand crank generator used to ring the phones.

I hooked up the outside line as a customer, plugged the switchboard to that line, dialed "1" to get rid of the dial tone and gave the hand crank a few good turns.

By doing so, it tripped a relay on the towns' old mechanical switch which caused ALL of the phones on that prefix to ring

 

Back on topic: When I was on Guam, I did get a Banks modem number by war dialing

[Keatah]

I believe the LED watch was just slightly before the heyday of the videogame. A year or two. Casio was THE watch to have in the early 1980's. I still have mine and even pull it out when playing Apple II games.

 

Many times it's not nostalgia for X Y Z videogame, but for the good times surrounding the game.

[Mclaneinc]

Many times it's not nostalgia for X Y Z videogame, but for the good times surrounding the game.

 

Yes the LED's were just before, I wanted one when I was 14, my mate Simon had a cool looking one with a nice big round dark read face and you pressed the button to see the time.....Looked amazing at the time..

 

As for the Nostalgia vs good times, sometimes its a mix of both but yeah, good times always win out...

[Mclaneinc]

Side stepping the topic a bit -> War Game Dialing -> old school hacking.

 

Anyone care to share their old school hack?

 

Back when I was in High School, our Electronics Classroom had an old telephone switchboard with the hand crank generator used to ring the phones.

I hooked up the outside line as a customer, plugged the switchboard to that line, dialed "1" to get rid of the dial tone and gave the hand crank a few good turns.

By doing so, it tripped a relay on the towns' old mechanical switch which caused ALL of the phones on that prefix to ring

 

Back on topic: When I was on Guam, I did get a Banks modem number by war dialing

 

Bloody hell AG, you sound older than me, as for the banks etc, never really happened here in the UK as banks for the most part had land lines which were technically not answerable lines nor dial-able from the outside. The US however put everything on phone lines and wondered why they were constantly being hacked (or attempting to hack).

[doctor_x]

Someone asked if anything has been found.

 

YES.

 

I have several atari 8 code scanners/wardialers.. a BUTTLOAD of c64/128 phreaking apps, amiga, and even ST stuff.

 

I am off all next week and hope to have the "lists" up on my blog of what I have found thus far as well as a "want" list..

 

I appreciate any and all contributions - but the topic is most certainly hacking/phreaking apps and possibly text files directly related to using the atari for this purpose.. The only other things I am considering collecting are "trader" type apps... mini BBS's built by the cracking scene crowd to facilitate disk trading, etc.. Not mainstream BBS's..

 

I look forward to updating you all soon.. In the meantime if you haven't checked out the blog - please do so.

 

doc

[Shawn Jefferson]

I believe I sent you the wardialers I had, which, IIRC, were Tuff'hacker and Lightning Hacker (could be getting that mixed up with the PC stuff we used... although I know that Fu*king Hacker was the best at that time for the PC.)

 

I have tons of text files on phreaking and hacking, and some local phreaking/hacking BBS message logs somewhere amongst all my disks. Fun times! We did tons of war dialing here, and the calling card thing, as well as just all around getting into trouble. Unfortunately, our local telephone company was one of the more advanced ones. ESS was pretty much everywhere, and no one ever blew 2600 down the line on our telephone system, as it was urban legend that was begging to be arrested. Loopbacks? Nope, we didn't have them here, and we looked, a lot, since they seemed really cool.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Shawn Jefferson

[Mclaneinc]

What struck me with the calling card situation was that i never knew any one who got arrested, all that happened was the calling card either got cancelled or it was maxed and useless. In the UK in the 90's I think System X was introduced by BT and it was able to access and reconfigure the line instantly obviously including storing details of use yet no one I know got pulled. it always struck me as odd but I myself (hand on heart) never used a calling card, the illegality of it was far too high for me to want to get involved, copying disks was one thing, stealing from credit cards was just not one I wanted to be in on (please spare me irony of stealing via copying software, I'm trying to show the instant severity difference).

 

I must admit the film War Games must have created a new school of wannabe hackers, the expected buzz of hoping to find new software hidden on a phone line (effectively) must have been a huge pull but from what I saw it was as boring as watching paint dry and mostly came to zero.

 

Another film that sort of glorifies / soft focuses that era was Tron, I was in Canada when Tron was released and went to see it in Toronto, the next day I remember being in a mall with my wife and family in laws and me being a computer head meant I went in every computer / electronics store I could see and I remember seeing Vic 20's with "Access Project Tron" or "Access project Clu" typed in on them with the expected syntax error afterwards, it made me smile form ear to ear seeing it encourage the next line of wannabe computer wizards,

 

Paul.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[AtariGeezer]

 

Bloody hell AG, you sound older than me, as for the banks etc, never really happened here in the UK as banks for the most part had land lines which were technically not answerable lines nor dial-able from the outside. The US however put everything on phone lines and wondered why they were constantly being hacked (or attempting to hack).

Just creeping up on 57

[Mclaneinc]

Man, that's old

 

Seriously, I hit 55 in June, we are still sprightly Atarian warriors although I have to take the stairs slowly

[doctor_x]

45 in a week..

[Mclaneinc]

Damn, a mere boy

[+mytek]

Got you all beat. Hit 60 in February

 

- Michael

[Mclaneinc]

Good lord, at that age I'm stunned you remember when your birthday is

 

Take care...

 

Paul.

[Defender II]

NVRM

Edited May 29, 2016 by Defender II

[Kyle22]

I found a modem number back in the day. It turned out that it belonged to the local phone company. It had no login or password query. Many options were available, but I couldn't seem to make anything happen, no matter what setting I changed.

 

A young 48, BTW.

[Mclaneinc]

Its a shame the UK had mostly land lined companies so hacking via modem was very limited here, would have loved to have had a go.Mind you, if I had enabled my SP0256 speech card and heard "Want to play a game" over the line I think I might have soiled myself

[Kyle22]

It has been said that it is possible with a 14x0 machine. I made a couple of (lame) attempts, but couldn't get it right. They should have had the input to the SC-01-A tied to a PoKey channel so it could sing. So, did they really attach the audio out to the phone line?

 

Schematics (good ones: WHERE?) will tell.

 

And now for something completely different.

 

Do any of you guys remember buying or (I think) trading me for my 1400XL? One of the chips was purple ceramic, Freddie, IIRC.

 

I could never imagine having enough cash to get it back, All I want is to know it's still OK and functioning.

[Mclaneinc]

I'd really have loved to have head a dialer like the fake one in the film and yeah a phonetic based speech would have been great, the Maplin kit I referred to was so generic and basic it was just for a play around, the support software in BASIC was slow and clumsy. Personally I don't remember selling many of them for any of the computers it supported. not even the Speccy version. I seem to remember it (the Atari one) being withdrawn quite early on leaving just the light pen project kit and the digitiser kit for the old Atari.

 

And Kyle, as a parent you sometimes have to let go

 

Seriously, its nice to see devotion and care to a loved machine, sorry you had to let it go, I've always wanted a 1200 and 1400 and of course the mysterious 1450XLD.

 

I can't remember if the 1450XLD ever made it past prototype but I bet Curt has one

Edited June 4, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[AtariGeezer]

It has been said that it is possible with a 14x0 machine. I made a couple of (lame) attempts, but couldn't get it right. They should have had the input to the SC-01-A tied to a PoKey channel so it could sing. So, did they really attach the audio out to the phone line?

 

Schematics (good ones: WHERE?) will tell.

 

And now for something completely different.

 

Do any of you guys remember buying or (I think) trading me for my 1400XL? One of the chips was purple ceramic, Freddie, IIRC.

 

I could never imagine having enough cash to get it back, All I want is to know it's still OK and functioning.

I have yet to make some Basic demos that test the Speech and Modem options, but the tech docs do say it's possible to tie the speech and modem together.

Will have to dig out the power brick for my 1450XL (and keep it close at hand) to test that out.

 

Aww Man, sorry to hear you had to sell yours, that's a royal bummer. I wonder how many guys/gals on the forum still have a working one???

[doctor_x]

I just got in the mail a commodore 1660 modem which only does pulse dial but has this awesome little cable that lets SID make the DTMF sounds so you can indeed dial with it... Thing is, you can also send anything else from SID down the line as well.. :)

[tuf]

What struck me with the calling card situation was that i never knew any one who got arrested, all that happened was the calling card either got cancelled or it was maxed and useless. In the UK in the 90's I think System X was introduced by BT and it was able to access and reconfigure the line instantly obviously including storing details of use yet no one I know got pulled. it always struck me as odd but I myself (hand on heart) never used a calling card, the illegality of it was far too high for me to want to get involved, copying disks was one thing, stealing from credit cards was just not one I wanted to be in on (please spare me irony of stealing via copying software, I'm trying to show the instant severity difference).

 

If you'd have known me, you'd know someone who was arrested Busted for hacking Sprint cards via wardialers, and I think the charge was "Theft of Services."

[Mclaneinc]

 

If you'd have known me, you'd know someone who was arrested Busted for hacking Sprint cards via wardialers, and I think the charge was "Theft of Services."

 

Seriously, you are the first guy I've heard that got busted for it, ok I lost track of some of the guys but that was way after the Amiga days when CC's were all the rage. I presume it never went further than an arrest?

 

Is this UK or US?

 

In the UK it was less chased after than in the US which was its home..

 

That's two 1sts I know now, first bloke busted for CC's and first UK bloke ever busted for software piracy..

 

What a dubious set of folk I've met

 

Seriously, it was fun in the day, now its a seriously organised business, mods, writer code modified, full on digital key decryption, I thought it had hit the heights with PSX mod chips

 

I prefer the days of swapping a few disks, having a laugh and a bash at games amongst friends, no money changed hands (although that isn't to water down the legal aspect of it) and you had a meet at a show between groups and individuals. Just like the days when it was a few people in their own house coding games to now where its lost some of that love and dedication, churning out countless samey titles that are the trend at the moment with little or no 'risk' taken, its all safe software to fill sales brackets with the rare off the wall title which often tends to be treated like a freak because its not in line with a trend.

 

Back then it was new, arcade stuff was fresh, you enjoyed (mostly) the attempts to recreate it on your home computer, people had no concepts of trends yet, it was bold and daring.....Come on, Bionic Granny....That's as rad as it gets (and a poo C64 game as well)

Edited August 22, 2016 by Mclaneinc