| ==Phrack Inc.== |
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| Volume Two, Issue 14, Phile #2 of 9 |
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| ==Phrack Pro-Phile X== |
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| Written and Created by Taran King |
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| 5/24/87 |
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| Welcome to Phrack Pro-Phile X. Phrack Pro-Phile is created to bring |
| info to you, the users, about old or highly important/controversial people. |
| This month, we bring to you a sysop and user of past days... |
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| Terminus |
| ~~~~~~~~ |
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| Terminus is the sysop of NetSys Unix and, in the past, ran Metronet. |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Personal |
| ~~~~~~~~ |
| Handle: Terminus |
| Call him: Len |
| Past handles: Terminal Technician |
| Handle origin: Terminal Technician originated because of Len's view of |
| himself as a hacker. Terminus was an offshoot of that |
| and, although it is an egotistical view, it means he has |
| reached the final point of being a proficient hacker. |
| Date of Birth: 1/10/59 |
| Age at current date: 29 years old |
| Height: 5'9" |
| Weight: About 190 lbs. |
| Eye color: Hazel |
| Hair Color: Brown |
| Computers: 6800 home brew system, Apple ][, Altair S100, 2 Apple |
| ][+es, IBM PC, IBM XT, IBM 3270, IBM AT, and 2 Altos |
| 986es. |
| Sysop/Co-Sysop of: MetroNet, MegaNet, and NetSys Unix. |
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| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Terminus began with the 6800 home brew system which he built himself. |
| It was built on a STD44 bus and it had 8K of memory. He then got the Apple ][ |
| (plain old ][) which was impressive with its cassette drive and RF modulator. |
| He then got an Altair S100 which he liked because it looked like a mainframe |
| and he also enjoyed building it. The 2 ][+es came along and he got himself a |
| few floppies and a hard drive. He then sold 2 of the Apples and gave away all |
| his software (and kept 1 Apple with a 15 meg hard drive) and got the IBM PC. |
| He was impressed at the time and ditched the Apple. Due to frustration from |
| switching from an Apple Cat to a Hayes, he sat down and wrote a hacker which |
| eventually turned into CodeBuster, which was, for a long time, the only good |
| hacker available on IBM. He then expanded and got an XT and slowly increased |
| his amount of storage. When the AT came out, he got rid of the PC and got the |
| AT and at the same time, bought the IBM 3270. After playing around with the |
| AT for a long time, he sold it because he needed some money so he was left |
| with the XT and 3270. The XT was sold to make money to buy the Altos 986 and |
| he sold the 3270 about 4 months ago, now leaving him with the 2 Altos 986es. |
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| Terminus started running a bulletin board with an unmentionable board |
| to start with in 914 (where he met Paul Muad'Dib), and eventually got MetroNet |
| going. MetroNet's original purpose was to be a phreak/hack board. It was run |
| on an Apple ][ with 4 8" drives and 2 floppies plus a 5 meg hard drive, which |
| made for an impressive system. It was going really well for a while, but then |
| the hard drive crashed, leaving the board down for about a month and things |
| slowed down after that. At that time, he got a 15 meg drive, and a 1200 |
| modem soon followed and it stayed up for about a year and a half total, at |
| which time Lord Digital was co-sysop. It finally went down because he moved. |
| MegaNet was his next system, which ran under Concurrent PC-DOS. It looked |
| like a public domain system, but that was camouflage. It was multi-user (2 |
| phone lines) and it ran on the XT. That went down because he moved again |
| after being up for over a year. He is currently running NetSys Unix on his 2 |
| Altos 986es which are networked. The system consists of 2 Altos 986es, an |
| Ethernet link, 240 megs, and 4 phone lines on a hunt, 3 of which are 1200 baud |
| and the final line is 2400 baud. To get on NetSys, it is just $5 a month and |
| it can be reached at 301-540-3659 (2400 baud), and 3658-3656 (300/1200 baud). |
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| Terminus has never really met anyone in person from the phreak/hack |
| community, although he had many chances to in New York when he lived there. |
| He did go to a couple of Tap meetings, but doesn't remember anyone in specific |
| from when he went. |
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| Len started phreaking and hacking through a friend who worked in the |
| phone company that told him about various things that could be done with |
| electronics to play with the network. He was very paranoid about boxing so he |
| never did anything like that (from his house anyway). He started hacking |
| naturally after he got a computer. His favorite system was the University of |
| Illinois because of its huge size and capabilities. |
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| Some of the memorable phreak boards he was on included Plovernet, |
| L.O.D., Pirate 80, OSUNY, Sherwood Forest I, and Shadowland. |
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| Terminus is an electrical engineer and he designs boards for |
| different minicomputers like PDP-11s, Data Generals, VAXes, and Perkin-Elmer. |
| He also writes some software to interface the boards that he makes. He's |
| pretty decent at machine language, but recently (maybe because of the Unix? |
| Maybe?) he's gotten into C. |
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| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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| Interests: Telecommunications (modeming, phreaking, hacking), music, |
| and smoking (ahem). |
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| Terminus's Favorite Things |
| -------------------------- |
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| Smoking: Let's leave it at that. |
| Music: Hard rock and progressive jazz (he used to be a drummer). |
| Programming: Writing software for fun. |
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| Most Memorable Experiences |
| -------------------------- |
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| Getting interviewed by the FBI in 1983 due to someone in Iowa getting busted. |
| The first time he discovered Alliance Teleconferencing and ran a conference. |
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| Some People to Mention |
| ---------------------- |
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| Krackowicz (Just a big "Thanks.") |
| The (414) Gizard (Sysop of Cryton Elite, thanks for giving him the phone |
| numbers and names to everyone on your system.) |
| Lord Digital (For being a good friend [Where the hell are you?].) |
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| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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| Terminus shares Tuc's views on carding and feels it's a big gap |
| between committing fraud and learning the network. As he got older, he got |
| more paranoid about things like that. He also feels that the phreak/hack |
| "community" has already crumbled. He also feels that the old days were |
| better. |
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| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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| I hope you enjoyed this file, ...And now for the regularly taken poll from all |
| interviewees. |
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| Of the general population of phreaks you have met, would you consider most |
| phreaks, if any, to be computer geeks? No, none of the people that he hung |
| out with. Thank you for your time, Len. |
|
|
| Taran King |
| Sysop of Metal Shop Private |
| ______________________________________________________________________________ |
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|
