"Quasi
Moto," Plovernet attracted five hundred eager users in 1983. "Emmanuel
Goldstein" was one-time co-sysop of Plovernet, along with "Lex Luthor,"
founder of the "Legion of Doom" group. Plovernet bore the signal
honor of being the original home of the "Legion of Doom," about which
the reader will be hearing a great deal, soon.

"Pirate-80," or "P-80," run by a sysop known as "Scan-Man," got into
the game very early in Charleston, and continued steadily for years.
P-80 flourished so flagrantly that even its most hardened users became
nervous, and some slanderously speculated that "Scan Man" must have
ties to corporate security, a charge he vigorously denied.

"414 Private" was the home board for the first GROUP to attract
conspicuous trouble, the teenage "414 Gang," whose intrusions into
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Los Alamos military computers were to
be a nine-days-wonder in 1982.

At about this time, the first software piracy boards began to open up,
trading cracked games for the Atari 800 and the Commodore C64.
Naturally these boards were heavily frequented by teenagers. And with
the 1983 release of the hacker-thriller movie War Games, the scene
exploded. It seemed that every kid in America had demanded and gotten
a modem for Christmas. Most of these dabbler wannabes put their modems
in the attic after a few weeks, and most of the remainder minded their
P's and Q's and stayed well out of hot water. But some stubborn and
talented diehards had this hacker kid in War Games figured for a
happening dude. They simply could not rest until they had contacted
the underground--or, failing that, created their own.

In the mid-80s, underground boards sprang up like digital fungi.
ShadowSpawn Elite. Sherwood Forest I, II, and III. Digital Logic Data
Service in Florida, sysoped by no less a man than "Digital Logic"
himself; Lex Luthor of the Legion of Doom was prominent on this board,
since it was in his area code. Lex's own board, "Legion of Doom,"
started in 1984. The Neon Knights ran a network of Apple-hacker
boards: Neon Knights North, South, East and West. Free World II was
run by "Major Havoc." Lunatic Labs is still in operation as of this
writing. Dr. Ripco in Chicago, an anything-goes anarchist board with
an extensive and raucous history, was seized by Secret Service agents
in 1990 on Sundevil day, but up again almost immediately, with new
machines and scarcely diminished vigor.

The St. Louis