This series is dedicated to my friend ‘The Pieman’ who hosted ‘THE P.I.T.S’ BBS in New York City and sadly passed away in 2016. I know his son ‘Blake’ will be reading this sequence of stories with anticipation.
We will never forget you man, you were one of a kind.
Also I would like to say a big thank you to Fabulous Furlough, ex-leader of ‘The Humble Guys’ who helps me fill in the gaps of what happened almost 30 years ago, The Slavelord who has given me a plethora of memories from the early days and to Suicidal Tendencies (@trolleydave) who remembers more about the UK scene than me.
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) is a continuation of my previous series, The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops.
I was once known as 'Bryn Rogers', a member of THG (The Humble Guys).
Other articles in this series:
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Two
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Three
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Four
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Five
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Six
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Seven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eight
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Nine
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Ten
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eleven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twelve
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Thirteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fourteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fifteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Sixteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Seventeen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eighteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Nineteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twenty
The inevitable had to happen. One miserable morning in January I switched on the amplifier, fired up my copy of ‘The Little Operator’ and tried to call The PITS.
But what the fuck was going on, the line was failing to break. Had something changed or had I suffered an overnight memory relapse?
In a panic, I called Hi.T.Moonweed who was just about to go to bed. He was an anarchic vampire who slept during the daytime hours, and 9.30 am was about the last time you could catch him until 8 pm or so.
At times he would be non-contactable for 17 hours or so due to this self-proclaimed ‘sleeping disease’ that had entered his body. I would call it being a lazy bastard personally.
On this occasion he did pick up, people didn’t ignore ringing landlines so much in those days.
‘Alright’…, it was the typical response I got.
‘Alright mate, what’s going on with Brazil, it’s not working anymore’, I said with a note of panic in my voice.
‘Ah, it died last night’, he replied with that almost insufferable tone of his. 'We are gonna have to use Taiwan for a bit’, he continued.
Source
...'Taiwanese phone operators are easily amused, it must have been a frustrating job being cut off most of the time when about to answer the phone'...
Taiwan? For fuck sake…, Taiwan was an alternative blue box with a different set of break tones which would have been fine except for a couple of reasons.
It only operated during UK work hours (including weekends). Maybe the people of Taiwan worked 7 days a week in 1993?
The CPS sucked; if you got 450 CPS then you were doing very well. A far cry from the usual 1650 or so attained by using a Courier (US Robotics) Modem connected at 32BIS.
Hydro, Hi.T.Moonweed and yours truly never took Taiwan seriously due to these reasons and if unduly bored a conference was started. We called the Taiwan box but didn’t break off the operator.
When they answered, generally not in English we would announce to the (always female operator) we were, in fact, international celebrities and would like to sing Jake the Peg to them.
…’Rolf has fallen on bad times and has been accused of being a Paedophile like many of the stars of the '60s and '70s, but as he was the singer of this terrible song I have no choice but to link him in’…
Without waiting for an answer, the three of us would burst into a dreadful grating rendition of this goddam awful tune.
The Taiwanese operator somehow thinking we were genuine put us on speakerphone and in no time at all a chorus of laughter and giggles were coming down the phone at us.
For a while, Taiwan was the only way to call out. It only worked to the US and Canada so calling the UK for voice to voice calls we needed to use a loop.
Loops were a two-way connection, there were two numbers (both US ones), one person called one, and the other the second number.
You then ended up with a direct connection and could chat for all eternity. It wasn’t ideal and the loss of Brazil was a huge disappointment.
Source
...'my Cavalier SRI during those times was driven at speeds of over 130MPH. I still maintain it could ripoff The Pieman's huge 5 litre black Lincoln and told him so!'...
During this bleak period, I found myself racing down the motorway in order to get home quickly just to grab a Taiwan line for the evening.
A crappy connection was better than none at all, and getting zero-day warez was the priority.
With some skill and timing, I learned to break the connection and re-acquire another one to a second BBS. It didn’t always work but if lady luck was with me I could maintain the line all evening.
The phreaking world doesn't stand still and sure enough, another box was going to emerge sooner or later.
Hi.T.Moonweed being the annoying fucker he was didn't want to give it out for a while.
In the end, after some weeks, he folded and gave me the tone codes for Hawaii, the final and last box anyone would ever use in the UK.
To be continued...
All images have been cited and are under the category 'Labelled for Reuse' or are in the public domain.
Small Pirate Icon Source
.NFO files courtesy of the .NFO libraries at https://defacto2.net
The story twists and turns but is the end looming nigh!!
It all ends in March 1994 when I left this rain sodden island for the heat of Arizona, so just over one years left of yawns.. er yarns left :)
Hehe, yarns it is!!
The THG guys seem to like them, I send all of them over via a Facebook 'Old Pirate's' group.
Would be better if they were on the blockchain, but I know better than to dangle the carrot.
Sorry, I was on a plane!
I bet they do. I have contemplated running my band years through the grinder and posting them in a series. Although I'm not sure they would totally like it if I forwarded them all on, some are a bit sensitive!
Back in the frozen wastes? It's been mild and wet at least further south. The band days sound good, do it!
Hey brother, quick reply to say i appreciate your explorations and resteems of the new section. Take care, much love!
Posted using Partiko Android
Thanks for the appreciation, I don't know how many actually read the explores. I would love to showcase them sometime, adding filters to the old ones. Maybe communities will allow that.
The resteems.., well we need new blood here. If just a fraction of the new guys get started it's better than none. The retention rate has always been abysmal but the talented should be seen.
The scariest thing about you driving 130 mph in that car was the fact you hardly every squirted the windows clean. It was like driving down the road under a greasy bed sheet.
Well.. I can't remember that piece of detail.. I was never one for washing the car. Why bother when they rust away in the rain?
Some esoteric hackery. I read about blue-boxing, but never even saw the hardware required. You should write a book about this stuff. Nearest I came was picking up an issue of 2600 in the States.
My dad had a Cavalier SRi. I think his was silver. Not seen one in a long time.
There was none, 'The Little Operator' was software and ran on the PC. You needed to be 'trained' to use it. I fell short of paid lessons!
I looked mine up a few days ago on the DVLC site. I remember the plate number. It's currently not taxed, being a 'D' reg that's not surprising.
Amazingly I remembered the registration of my dad's. It's not been taxed since 96. You would think they would record if it was scrapped. I just sold my Hyundai for scrap as it was not worth fixing. Had a good 10 years out of it. Now got a Peugeot that's actually older, but has less miles and is actually quite nice.
Wow, that is pretty exciting. I can't imagine how stressful that must have been. Potentially losing your source for all of that great software! All the games were so new back then. Everything was exciting!
Losing Brazil was terrible, you become reliant on a source and then it's gone. There were 'other ways' of making calls, none of which I dare speak on a public forum but they were sporadic.
It didn't last long and we were back in biz quite soon.
Hey, this series is great! It's causing me to experience painful fits of nostalgia but please keep the episodes coming. :)
You're in luck, I'm writing the next one right now. I will post it tomorrow.
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