Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie by Rob O'Hara

Author:Rob O'Hara [O'Hara, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: robohara.com
Published: 2006-08-19T05:00:00+00:00

Username: JOJO

Password: POPO

I don’t remember where the idea for password came from, other than it rhymed with Jojo and would be easy to remember. It must’ve been; fifteen years later, I still remember it!

Once we had admin rights, we immediately went to work on the network. We had no intention of deleting any files or tearing anything up – we were far less destructive than kids these days. Our goal was simple: copy games to the network, where we (and maybe our friends) could play them later.

Copying the games up was a straightforward procedure. As I mentioned, Novell accepted all the DOS commands we were already familiar with. The Stranger and I would sneak our favorite games (stored on floppy disks) into the library. From there, we would create directories for our games and copy the files up into them. When finished, we would use the DOS ATTRIB command to hide the directories and files. Even we couldn’t see them – you just had to know where they were to be able to play the games.

Most PC games back then fit on a single 3 ½ disk, so bringing games to and from school was not a problem. Prince of Persia, Rogue, and Indy 500 were three of our favorites. We began getting so many games on the network that we began to lose track of what was where. Eventually, I wrote a simple menu batch file that would allow students to pick and play the game of their choice.

Yes, I said students. For a while, only The Stranger and I had access to the game directory, but slowly I began telling other people about our creation.

I’m not really sure how we got caught, but we did. The first thing to disappear was our JOJO account. One day it simply quit working. A few days later, my teacher and I had one of those “anonymous” conversations. She asked me if I had any idea who might have created an admin account. I told her that I didn’t know who had done it, but if I had known, I’m sure it was created as a learning tool and that nothing malicious was done with it. She then said she was glad, because if something bad were to happen the network she had a pretty good idea who to come to. She smiled, I smiled, and that was that. A few weeks later, I managed to get a second admin account set up. I was a little smarter that time, and named it to resemble a student’s name. Using that account, I moved the games to another location that only The Stranger and I knew about, and kept our mouths shut about it. The games (and the account) remained undetected on the network for the remainder of the school year.

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