OSUNY

OSUNY (Ohio Scientific Users of New York) was a legendary dial-up bulletin board that was run by two different sysops, "SYSOP" while in Scarsdale, NY and Frank Roberts in White Plains, NY (914) throughout the 1980s. Named for the Ohio Scientific computer it originally ran on, it attracted a large group of hackers, telephone phreaks, engineers, computer programmers, and other technophiles. It remained a haven almost exclusively for the hacker/phreaker community until gaining notoriety through mention in a Newsweek article, Hacking Through NASA: A threat- or only an embarrassment, and mention in the book The Hacker Crackdown as a favored hangout of the notorious hacker group The Legion of Doom, after which it was shuttered, and another board was brought up as a "replacement" known as The Crystal Palace, which was short lived. OSUNY was restarted soon after, using an Altos 5-15D running MP/M and the continuously evolving Citadel software. Also in the mid-1980s it became the first BBS to be associated with 2600 Magazine (The Central Office, run by The DataMaster was second). It ran via dial-up until its closing around 1988. Some of the original technical files, including bluebox, blackbox, redbox, silver box, and rainbow box plans can still be found in remote corners of the internet today.