8 Bit Underground

So here we are the month of the Turkey and on the cusp of the month of the tree. As usual I’ve been kinda bummed out and since reading “Exploding the Phone” I’ve really wanted more Phreaking related stuff to read. 

So I stumble upon this… 

First of all its a book about Draper. Secondly it mentions “The Charlie Board” which sort of seems like the super early predecessor to the much lauded (and rightly so) Apple Cat.. This is good. Its very good as I am extremely interested in “The Charlie Board” and possibly seeing some of that early code written for it.

The writing is not unbearable by either Draper or Fraser. Its actually very passable.

Some of the content though… The whole “someone found the plug and wrote code for the Charlie Board while I was walking in the woods with kids and it scanned 10,000 exchanges” or whatever.. No.  I guess with the drugs that were going on back then it might make sense that memories would not be clear and I have had a bout or two of that as well myself… There were just a few “Lets get this over with” moments.

The other thing that bothers me a little bit is that it seems like that about the same time this book came out we started seeing the Cap’n Crunch whistles on ebay for $33333,30… It would really make me feel ashamed if I found out that there was some kind of money making scheme put in play by Draper… 

Other than those few quirks, its phreak candy and just really interesting going back in time sort of like Exploding the Phone did. 

I think if I were to vote between the two books I would probably call it a tie. Exploding the phone went way more technical – but BTLBB was more entertaining. Reading the two right in a row would be a wonder weekend in phreak land.

Regardless of any comments thank you John Draper and C Wilson Fraser for the book.