On the topic of the 90s scene. Fun little story. When I was about 16-17 I worked for a small telephone company as an intern. I was fascinated with phones and phreaking (hence my handle wirepair). This company had a Nortel DMS-100 switch. Every few months they’d come to do tape updates and give us new manuals. I asked the company if I could have the old manuals (boxes upon boxes of them!), and would read through them finding all of their protections for blue boxing and what not.

@wirepair A major difference between old/new-school hacking is "how to get the boxes" vs. "which boxes to open" :)