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Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

Back in the 1980s when I was a l33t hax0r, I used to bounce around the world on X.25 networks, many of which I suspect were operated by Minitel. There was a chat system/early BBS/something called QSD in France, where a lot of hackers would congregate to chat and trade credentials for systems. I can't find much on the net about QSD now, except a few old Phrack articles. Does anyone know what the relationship between Minitel and QSD was?

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Minitel is the terminal system, with the CPU, keyboard & screen, but by extension, it includes the protocol to display & download the data. Actually, i was used to connect to "minitel" servers, RTC or BBS-like that were dedicated to the developement of HP48 calculator applications. It was a very rich scene in France, with RTC servers named Pulsar, RTC-one, etc. Basic BBS boards with discussion boards (like HN!) and where you could download HP 48 programs. Some history (in french) about one of these boards http://wiz0u.free.fr/pulsar/historique.php

It was back in 1997 with a pre-internet scene, the first IRL parties, internet friends, etc Basicly it was some smart guy hosting an atari st in the garage, with a dedicated telecom line (so 1 people connected at the same time!).

A local BBSer introduced me to x.25 hacking probably around 1989 or 90 or so. I remember QSD and another system... Lutzifer, I think?

Yeah, lutzifer was another X.25 hacker chatroom. I think it was based in Germany. I used to reach it via Telenet [sic]. In retrospect, I think it may have been run by a US government intelligence agency. Someone on there doxxed me despite hopping through a lot of relays that should have been nearly impossible to trace through.

Interesting. Yes, I reached those systems through both Telenet / SprintNet and TymNet. Those were fun times!

Lutz, althh, tchh, Lina, Pegasus, ... many people thought some of these were sting operations.

My hand still remembers some NUA by heart even if I didn’t connect to these for 30 years.

you must be as old a me. i was regular on QSD via X25. Great Days. Big big phone bills.

QSD was a 3rd party chat service, accessed Via minitel but with a per minute surchage. I met a lot of good friends their, swapped some postcards with some french girls. Great days.

I dont know how it came to be accessible via x.25 though.

Yes, QSD was hosted on a Minitel serving node/system but was mainly used for international chats. So we can say that QSD “abused” the x25 interconnection of a Minitel server in order to provide chats mainly to hackers.

Common people there: BayernPower, Gandalf, ... long time ago.

It was 0208057... something iirc.

I remember some dude abusing a VAX that had x.25 access to connect out to all that stuff. "SET HOST /X25", anyone? Word spread like wildfire. At one point every elite dude and his mother was on the system. I think it took a little over a month to figure out something was awry. Probably the Sprint / Telenet bill was a clue...

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