I was just sitting here feeling all nostalgic for the 80s and looking up such stuff as The Atom's "1984 L0ZERLIST", which friends and I used to snicker over back in high school... and then I came across a once-current update of the whole Sundevil bust and Ripco International.
Oh maaan, the memories...
You see, once upon a time, modeming was different. Completely different. And people of today, including many middle-aged/old folks I've met who have this superiority attitude towards me of, "Oh, you'll just never understand how the Internet works" as though I know nothing about telecommunications who themselves show all the r0dent trademarks we all loathed back then, will never understand.
Let me see if I can explain this for the uninitiated...
Once upon a time, pretty much everybody connected to Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSs. Sure, there were some pay-for-play once like Compuserve existing during the time, but the BBSs which were the most popular were independantly run; some were on school computers, but many were actually set up in people's homes, some by kids on their own computers, others maybe on the family computer at certain hours of the day because Mom and Dad used it for business during worktime. That was back when The Big Computer Boom was going on, when you didn't just have PCs and MACs to choose from: systems like the Commodore 64, Atari 800, 800XL and ST series, Amiga, and of course the Apple II series were all abundant, and even some like the Texas Instruments TI99-4A and the TRS-80 (affectionately nicknamed the "Trash 80" by their owners for convenience's sake, not usually for putdown purposes) which have long since faded into the night.
And above all, it was SAFE. You didn't have stalkers and stalker-related paranoia occuring on them. It was once described on one text file back in the day as "a world where trust is what makes things work". And in my area we got together weekly for gatherings/parties at the local Mountain Mikes Pizza in Dublin. Everybody knew everybody else, it was seen as a way we could get to know each other on the inside first before seeing the outside so we could tell what sort of people we really were. Some of us even fantastized about how much better the world would be if we all communicated and got to know each other like this, as it would have helped people get along together in a better world.
I had heard about such things via a kid-family oriented computer magazine I had around 1983, but didn't actually get on board until mid-1984. It was at the house of a friend who I really didn't enjoy hanging out with all that much, but I was in my teens, and my mother had felt sorry for this kid and wanted me to specifically spend lots of time with him in order to be a good influence (you know how some parents/situations are). But one of the things that had truly changed my life was when he decided to get a modem for his Texas Instruments "home computer" and start calling a few BBSs.
I was genuinely wowed. After a while, I picked out a handle (actually, the handle was elaborated on when we then experienced our first live sysop (SYStem OPerator) chat with one such BBS owner who added to my then-handle in such a way that it stuck, lol). And I actually earned the sort of large social live I could only dream of having before, a large group of friends who genuinely loved my work as an artist and were all hugely supportive of me. I could only program in Basic just a bit, but I ended up learning just about anything and everything else about computers and how to use them during this wonderful period, easily the best of my life. A few months later I got my first modem for my own Atari 800XL (300 baud) and when in 1987 I upgraded to the Atari 1040 ST, which was like my dream machine and the equivalent of a Corvette to me, I then switched to 1200 baud (never could afford 2400 at the time).
That's the first time in my life when I actually knew what it was like to have a large audience for my work, and I was so thrilled.
Speaking of large audiences: about that Ripco thing. That was something I ended up hearing about almost semi-automatically. It was a board that was run somewhere in Chicago by someone calling himself Dr. Ripco. It was known throughout the country (and beyond, I guess) for it's massive, and I truly mean MASSIVE, text file section. There were literally hundreds of them, and more were being created and added on all the time: they were created by other members of the modem community, and they ranged from stuff copied out of Radio Shack manuals (which some found very informative), hacking/phreaking tips for fellow modemers (which were usually out of date as far as I know), an area called the "Anarchy" files featuring such stuff as the notorious Anarchist's Cookbook retyped in its entirety (which lots of high schoolers usually downloaded just to have, just to say that they had it, as opposed to actually attempting to use the stuff), and -- my personal favourite -- the areas for comedy stuff, which varied from "L0zerlists" such as the above, which could be quite funny to read back in the day, fictional short stories of all types, movie and music reviews, and all sorts of ridiculous nonsense, such as the "Is WarGames Possible? B*******!!!" file written by The Jabberwock which we all got a kick out of. All sorts of online entertainment, and that's not even counting all the various files, pictures and programs you could collect.
And as for Dr. Ripco himself, when I asked said friend at the time about him, he stated, "He's like The Phantom Of The Opera; nobody knows who he is." I used to wonder about that, as it sort of semi-fascinated me whenever the subject was brought up. And then I read a file written around 1985 or so entitled "Know Your Sysops: a guide to local BBSs" by an author simply identifying himself as "A User"; it was a file basically ripping up "the decay of the boards in general" in the Chicago area, and it actually had an entry entitled "MYSTERY ALL-TIME SYSOP: DR. RIPCO of RIPCO". It went like this:
That's either Ripco, Ripco International, or R.I.P.C.O. depending on which BBS list you look at. At any rate, Ripco seems to have the notability of "least known about BBS" that's not private.
What little is known about the Doctor himself is about what he apears to know about his own system. Although it is not up anymore, his saying of "a sysop who doesn't give a s***" holds true. If he would sign on once a day, it would surprise me. It almost seems Dr. Ripco goes out of his way to avoid looking at the board. This might be his end.
Funny thing about him is his use and calling of other systems. From what his few messages say, he defends his board to the limit and claims that there is no illegal content at all.
Come on, wake up and smell the coffee. The only reason every long distance company hasn't shut you down is because they can't find you. It's no secret that Ripco's number can be CNAed. The trouble is, the address does not exist. This either means that you are some kind of elite freak who knows how to run the IBT billing computer, or you lucked out and managed to falsify the phone installment request.
I think it is the latter. Many people who claim to be in the know are convinced Dr. Ripco is a fed. When you think about it, he damn well could be. Consider a non-existant address, contents of the board good enough to make any thirteen-year-old geek drool (which most of them are), and almost total access after the first call. Something isn't right.
I really have no complaints about him or the system he claims to run. He doesn't appear to be associated with any of those "ELITE user groups", nor does he appear to associate with anybody at all. The BBS itself is slightly overmodified in some areas and undermodified in others for a hard drive BBS.
All in all, it's worth a call, but I would recommend not using real names and numbers in case he really does turn out to be some kind of setup. Too bad there is a "voluntary 12 dollar access fee" now, but what access he gives you for freeloading isn't that bad.
What the 12 dollars is for, I don't really know. But if I did, Dr. Ripco wouldn't have gotten "Mystery All-Time Sysop" mention here.
Be careful with this one.
Fascinating reason for a young online artist. And it wasn't until around 1990 or so that I would discover that Dr. Ripco had become the target of something called Operation Sundevil, in which his personal equipment was seized. At least now we knew exactly who he was, if nothing else, although it had been fun to speculate in a way. He had said right from the very beginning that the material on his site, with the exception of the various comedy files written by its users, could easily be found in any library across the country and that he page should therefore not be singled out as doing anything wrong. And technically speaking, I believe he was absolutely correct. But then, the public paranoia that began with that ridiculous movie WarGames was pretty much running full throttle by that point, so it was only a matter of time I guess.
Anyway, there was a lot going on way back then, and a ton of memories I have to share sometime... ah, the memories... and meanwhile, thanks to modern webpages such as this one, we can still get a kick out of stuff like this little gem. ;)
