*** %Plover-NET BBS Pro-Phile% ***

Intro by Lodcom:

    Plover-NET (typically mis-denoted as Plovernet) was one of the
most popular and therefore busiest Phreak Boards of all time. The
system operator was Quasi Moto (whom was a member of the short lived
yet famed Fargo-4A phreak group) and the remote sysop was Lex Luthor
(whom later ran the LOD BBS and started the Legion of Doom hacking
group). The story behind the start of the Fargo-4A phreak group is a
message within the Message Base File.

Details by Quasi Moto, system operator:

  I met Lex in person while we lived in Florida during the Fall of
1983 after corresponding via email on local phreak boards. I was due
to move to Long Island, New York (516 Area Code) soon after and asked
him about starting up a phreak BBS. He agreed to help and flew up
during his Christmas break from school in late December 1983. We
worked feverishly for a couple of days to learn the GBBS ][ Bulletin
Board software which was to run on my Apple ][+ with a 300 baud Hayes
micoSLOWdom %micromodem% and make modifications as necessary. The
system accepted its first phone call from Lex in the first week of
January 1984 and it became chronically busy soon after.

   The name Plover-NET came from a conversation I had with GBBS ][
Author Greg Schaefer. I was talking to him about the name of my future
BBS and the topic of computer games came up. One of them, the
'Extended Adventure' game which was based on the 'Original Adventure'
fantasy computer game was mentioned. This game was available on
Compuserve and during game play the magic word PLOVER had to be used.
For some reason that name had a nice ring to it and after bouncing a
couple of alterations and additions to the word plover, the name
Plover-NET was what I agreed upon.

   The idea behind PNET was to keep the BBS as simple as possible. It
had a main phreak board only. Probably the most complicated thing
about the board was the login. To be different, Lex suggested we
simulate the TELENET packet switching network upon connecting to the
BBS. Although Telenet was popular with hackers, some users were
confused. As for sub-boards, there were none. There were no high
security secret sections of the BBS, just a main phreaking and hacking
discussion message base. It was interesting to recall how many users
would send me feedback %email to the system operator% asking for
access to the 'elite sections of the board'. The only part of the BBS
that required additional security was the Phreak Philes section.
Putting phreak philes online was an idea ripped off directly from the
legendary OSUNY Phreak BBS. Putting G-Philes on hacker systems became
universal afterwards but it was not a wide practice at the time. There
were three ways to get access to the philes section:

   1) Impress me in some way or be recommended by Lex.
   2) Write an ORIGINAL file to be put in the section.
   3) Send in $5.00 (which helped defer the cost of running the BBS)

   The Board initially ran on three apple disk drives. %143 K byte
capacity% After a few months of operation, New York hacker Paul
Muad'Dib appeared at a TAP meeting being held at "Eddies" in Greenwich
Village with a RANA Elite III disk drive in hand. The RANA Elite III
had a capacity of about 600 KB which put the total storage capacity of
the BBS to just over one Megabyte, fairly large for a phreak board in
those days. I gladly accepted the donation but did not ask how he
obtained the disk drive. The RANA was later passed on to Lex which he
used to house his extensive collection of phreak philes that were
available to Legion of Doom BBS users. The location of the overworked
RANA is currently unknown although Lex believes he sent it back to PMD
in NY around 1986.

   It wasn't long before Plover-NET's phone number became so busy that
users would ask me why I always took the phone of the hook! Some users
were forced either have their modems dial for hours on end to get in,
or try to log on at 4AM. After a few short months, the userlist grew
to over 600. It became THE place to call, and typically the users
called using LDX, a long distance phone company that was among the
many that resulted from the divestiture of AT&T in 1984. The users
abused this poor company so much to call PNET that LDX actually
blocked all calls to the BBS phone number! This became rather standard
practice in later years for all LD companies but was a surprise in
mid-1984. The users of course had a myriad of other methods to call
PNET though. The BBS software had a built in command that allowed me
to 'Boot' users off the system. Should someone important whom had my
VOICE phone number call me, I would type this control-key command and
the unsuspecting user would receive an error message and be hung up
upon. I would then wait for the 'important' user to call in and then
send them a modem carrier so they could get online.

   A number of the more knowledgeable PNET users were invited by Lex
onto his Board. Phreaks like Agrajag the Prolonged, Mark Tabas, Erik
Bloodaxe, Bioc Agent 003, Karl Marx, and others were 'stolen' from my
BBS ;) I guess after LOD went up they saved all their 'good stuff' for
his board. Hmphh

   Another thing to mention is that Lex met 2600 Magazine editor,
Emmanuel Goldstein on the Pirates Cove, another 516 pirate/phreak BBS.
He invited EG onto Plover and it wasn't long before we became an
'official' 2600 bbs of sorts. When a user logged off the system, a
plug for 2600 was displayed with their subscription prices and
addresses. I still like to think that I/Plover-NET was instrumental in
helping the fledgling underground newsletter become the fancy magazine
it is today. How much influence we really did have is not known
though.

   I took Plover-NET down near the end of the summer because my family
moved back to Florida. I put the BBS back up for a couple of months
but it seems a lot of old users either found other places to call
and/or did not know the new number. Due to the lack of interest I took
the board down once and for all which from what I recall was around
the beginning of 1985 or so.

Quasi Moto, Plover-NET Sysop
Written in March of 1993