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Beyond Hope was my first time going to NYC. I didn't know what to expect.
I departed Chesapeake, Virginia with my friend Misfit. We picked up bl0ke from DC, and Jaeger who tripped to DC from somewhere else, and then headed on to NYC. People who were supposed to read the maps weren't doing a good job, and I didn't realize the hotel was on the other size of some park. But we finally made our way there. I remember looking up and we were driving through times square, something I won't forget.
So we couldn't make it to the Holiday Inn because it was booked, but ended up at the Off Soho suites. The Off Soho turned out to be killer. I think 13 people ended up crashing in our room.
The hotel PBX was a Toshiba, and signaling was done on the black and yellow wires. Red and Green were normal loop. We found out that accounting was done via the digital signaling from the set on black and yellow, so our dialout calls to the dialup ISP (local) weren't billed. We didn't abuse it and call long distance, but every local call was 50 cents or more.
I remember Professor brought a friend over who had made the Toll Fraud Elmo doll. I was showing them this killer basic program that drove a magstripe reader via LPT port... and it turned out Toll Fraud Elmo guy wrote it! I gave him props.
The puck building was cool, the con was fun. I remember meeting Theo DeRaddt (spelling) of OpenBSD, which was cool. There was the clusters of painted Decstation 3100 machines.
Etrigan and crew from NYC was there, and VaxBuster and crew from Pitsburgh area. I think this was when I first met him, but am not 100% sure.
Overall it was a fun con. I don't remember the talks. No wait, yes I do.
NYC was fun as well.
I'm not sure if this was the year... but we went to this club called the Octagon. Captain Crunch was there, totally on something raving around. It was quite the sight.
Oh yea, I remember meeting a group from the NC area named RonPost and pals (doc, etc). Very cool group of people and I continue to run into them to this day. They end up going to other cons, and we just run into each other. They were neighbors in the suite next door and I think we ended up running an ethernet cable to share internet, but I could be wrong. Back then it might have been 10base2, and it was only one night since we were out and about most of the time.
It wasn't my first con. Summercon 95 put on by Phrack Magazine was. But it was definitely a good time.
The cons of the 90s were totally different than the cons of 2000 and beyond. Both have ups and downs.
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OH YES! I think I did know vaxbuster from before this con. It used to be a con tradition to use modified HAM radios or commercial 2 way business radios and drop on the con "hack tac" of 155.900mhz. Well in NYC some cab company was on that frequency, so it was a bit difficult. Also our hotel was quite a bit of distance from the Holday Inn, which wasn't exactly next door to the Puck building... so communications were a bit difficult.
Now people mostly use cell phones.
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Most of the old-school phreaks owned a Yaesu FT-50 or similar radio, whether or not they had a ham ticket for it was a different story.
I remember the con radios were on some 800 MHz. business band frequency that I "think" The Undertaker was licensed for, and we had to rig-up a cross-band link so all the volunteers with their modded-out ham rigs could talk to those of us with the 800 MHz. radios. That worked up until the point some kid with his FT-50 kept repeatedly playing some sample from an Atari 2600 game over the frequency again and again and again ad nausium.
There were about a dozen of so "Hack Tac" frequencies on different bands that could become active at a con.
Summercon '95 was hilarious. Who could forget "Officer Brown"?
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