Hackers' Equipment

You can hack with almost any microcomputer capable of talking to
the outside world via a serial port and a modem. In fact, you don't
even need a micro; my first hack was with a perfectly ordinary
viewdata terminal.
What follows in this chapter, therefore, is a description of the
elements of a system I like to think of as optimum for
straight-forward asynchronous ASCII and Baudot communications. What
is at issue is convenience as much as anything. With kit like this,
you will be able to get through most dial-up ports and into
packet-switching through a PAD -- a packet assembler/ disassembler
port. (It will not get you into IBM networks, because these use
different and incompatible protocols; we will return to the matter of
the IBM world in chapter 10.) In other words, given a bit of money, a
bit of knowledge, a bit of help from friends and a bit of luck, what
is described here is the sort of equipment most hackers have at their
command.
You will find few products on the market labelled 'for hackers';
you must select those items that appear to have 'legitimate' but
interesting functions and see if they can be bent to the hacker's
purposes. The various sections within this chapter highlight the sort
of facilities you need; before lashing out on some new software or
hardware, try to get hold of as much publicity and documentation
material as possible to see how adaptable the products are. In a few
cases, it is worth looking at the second-hand market, particularly

Although it is by no means essential, an ability to solder a few
connections and scrabble among the circuit diagrams of 'official'
products often yield unexpectedly rewarding results.


The computer 'Hack'


Almost any popular microcomputer will do; hacking does not call
upon enormous reserves of computer power. Nearly everything you hack
will come to you in alphanumeric form, not graphics. The computer
you already have will almost certainly have the essential qualities.
However the very cheapest micros, like the ZX81, whilst usable,
require much more work on the part of the operator/hacker, and give
him far less in the way of instant facilities.(In fact, as the ZX81 doesn't
 use ASCII internally, but a
Sinclair-developed variant; you will need a software or firmware fix
for that, before you even think of hooking it up to a modem.)
Most professional data services assume the user is viewing on an
80-column screen; ideally the hacker's computer should be capable of
doing that as well, otherwise the display will be full of awkward
line breaks. Terminal emulator software (see below) can some- times
provide a 'fix'.
One or two disc drives are pretty helpful, because you will want
to be able to save the results of your network adventures as quickly
and efficiently as possible. Most terminal emulators use the
computer's free memory (i.e. all that is not required to support the
operating system and the emulator software itself) as store for the
received data, but once the buffer is full, you will begin to lose
the earliest items. You can, of course, try to save to cassette, but
normally that is a slow and tedious process.
An alternative storage method is to save to a printer, printing
the received data stream not only to the computer screen, but also on
a dot matrix printer. However, most of the more popular (and cheaper)
printers do not work sufficiently fast. You may find you lose
characters at the beginning of each line. Moreover, if you print
everything in real-time, you'll include all your mistakes, false
starts etc., and in the process use masses of paper. So, if you can
save to disc regularly, you can review each hack afterwards at your
leisure and, using a screen editor or word