Pacific Island was hardly fancy by today's standards of Unix Internet machines, but in 1987 it was an impressive computer. PI, pronounced `pie' by the local users, had a 20 megabyte hard drive—gargantuan for a personal computer at the time. Bowen spent about $5000 setting up PI alone. He loved both systems and spent many hours each week nurturing them.
There was no charge for computer accounts on PI or ZEN, like most BBSes. This gentle-faced youth, a half-boy, half-man who would eventually play host on his humble BBS to many of Australia's cleverest computer and telephone hackers, could afford to pay for his computers for two reasons: he lived at home with his mum and dad, and he had a full-time job at Telecom—then the only domestic telephone carrier in Australia.
PI had about 800 computer users, up to 200 of whom were `core' users accessing the system regularly. PI had its own dedicated phone line, separate from the house phone so Bowen's parents wouldn't get upset the line was always tied up. Later, he put in four additional phone lines for Zen, which had about 2000 users. Using his Telecom training, he installed a number of non-standard, but legal, features to his house. Junction boxes, master switches. Bowen's house was a telecommunications hot-rod.
Bowen had decided early on that if he wanted to keep his job, he had better not do anything illegal when it came to Telecom. However, the Australian national telecommunications carrier was a handy source of technical information. For example, he had an account on a Telecom computer system—for work—from which he could learn about Telecom's exchanges. But he never used that account for hacking. Most respectable hackers followed a similar philosophy. Some had legitimate university computer accounts for their courses, but they kept those accounts clean. A basic rule of the underground, in the words of one hacker, was `Don't foul your own nest'.
PI contained a public section and a private one. The public area was like an old-time pub. Anyone could wander in, plop down at the bar and start up a conversation with a group of locals. Just ring up the system with your modem and type in your details—real name, your chosen handle, phone number and other basic information.
Many BBS users gave false information in order to hide their true identities, and many operators didn't really care. Bowen, however, did. Running a hacker's board carried some risk, even before the federal computer crime laws came into force. Pirated software was illegal. Storing data copied from hacking adventures in foreign computers might also be considered illegal. In an effort to exclude police and media spies, Bowen tried to verify the personal details of every user on PI by ringing them at home or work. Often he was successful. Sometimes he wasn't.
The public section of PI housed discussion groups on the major PC brands—IBM, Commodore, Amiga, Apple and Atari—next to the popular Lonely Hearts group. Lonely Hearts had about twenty regulars, most of whom agonised under the weight of pubescent hormonal changes. A boy pining for the affections of the girl who dumped him or, worse, didn't even know he existed. Teenagers who contemplated suicide. The messages were completely anonymous, readers didn't even know the authors' handles, and that anonymous setting allowed heart-felt messages and genuine responses.
Zen was PI's sophisticated younger sister. Within two years of PI making its debut, Bowen opened up Zen, one of the first Australian BBSes with more than one telephone line. The main reason he set up Zen was to stop his computer users from bothering him all the time. When someone logged into PI, one of the first things he or she did was request an on-line chat with the system operator. PI's Apple IIe was such a basic machine by today's standards, Bowen couldn't multi-task on it. He could not do anything with the machine, such as check his own mail, while a visitor was logged into PI.
Zen was a watershed in the Australian BBS community. Zen multi-tasked. Up to four people could ring up and login to the machine at any one time, and Bowen could do his own thing while his users were on-line. Better still, his users could talk request each other instead of hassling him all the time. Having users on a multi-tasking machine with multiple phone lines was like having a gaggle of children. For the most part, they amused each other.
Mainstream and respectful of authority on the surface, Bowen possessed the same streak of anti-establishment views harboured by many in the underground. His choice of name for Zen underlined this. Zen came from the futuristic British TV science fiction series `Blake 7', in which a bunch of underfunded rebels attempted to overthrow an evil totalitarian government. Zen was the computer on the rebels' ship. The rebels banded together after meeting on a prison ship; they were all being transported to a penal settlement on another planet. It was a story people in the Australian underground could relate to. One of the lead characters, a sort of heroic anti-hero, had been sentenced to prison for computer hacking. His big mistake, he told fellow rebels, was that he had relied on other people. He trusted them. He should have worked alone.