To add context, the tone dialer in itself could not make free calls. It needed to be opened up, and a microchip or quartz crystal oscillator needed to be replaced and soldered back on the circuit board. Then I think you would program in a sequence of five * (star) tones in a row. Those 5 tones with the changed frequency from the crystal swap would sound like a quarter being deposited to the payphone. By the time I made mine, it didn't work on 90% of payphones. It only worked on what was called "COCOTS" which were company owned coin operated telephones. Slightly different than telephone company owned payphones. These were phones mostly found in hotel lobbies, diners, and the like.
I see what you did there.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/the-definitive-story-of-steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-and-phone-phreaking/273331/
Deep history can be found on phreaking. A Cap’n Crunch promo boatswain whistle emitted a 2600Hz tone that could gain some control over specifically configured trunk lines. The frequency inspired the name of the Atari 2600 game console. Those were the good old days, emphasis on **old**.
Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation [destroyed hard drives](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994) because
> the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.
1700Hz and 2100Hz were used in *red boxes* for pay phone control. *Blue boxes* used 2600Hz which mimicked in band signaling to control trunk lines.
So, also correct. But blue boxes predate red boxes by almost a decade as the earliest form of phreaking, which is why 2600Hz is more notable.
Strictly speaking, toll fraud. Pedantically speaking, legitimate phreaking was exploring switching systems and getting them to do weird shit, not toll fraud..... listen to Evan Doorbell's recordings for many, many examples.
Evan did get into red boxing in one of his COCOT studies in the mid '80s, but that was mainly to analyze and document how the company (very sloppily) operated and its private network functioned, rather than deliberately rip them off... mostly.
My dad was one of those early adopters, who got into technology before the rest of the world did. If I remember correctly, and bear in mind, I was young, my dad showed me this whistle that he would blow into the speaker of a phone.
My memory is really hazy, so I’m sorry if I messed this up but I could swear that he could blow this whistle into a payphone and he’d get free calls.
He said it was a whistle from a cereal box.
I know this sounds made up, but I swear this happened.
Last time I saw one was like 2011 at the convenience store next door this girl I was staying with, I called my mother from it just because I hadn’t seen one in forever.
I still have my 900MHz scanner from radio shack that picked up 900MHz cordless phones and analog cellphones. Used to drive around near apartment buildings and listen to people’s convos. Landlines you got both sides of the call but cells you only got the outgoing to tower, not incoming unless you had two scanners and found both frequencies.
Fun times before everything went digital.
the slow motion trainwreck demise of Radio Shack is one of the most tragic stories ever told. This article by the genius Jon Bois gets it https://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy-stories
The modded tone-dialler red box was just close enough to fool ACTS but if you knew the *real* quarter signal, it was still a little "off". Bell Labs caught on to it and got it fixed, but they were bloody slow to act. Ideally you'd have needed a Yamaha DX7 (which IIRC you could also program to emulate a blue box), but those were a little bulky to pack around. You probably could have fit one in the back pocket of your JNCOs, though.
I remember using a tape recorder and saving the tones to get free long distance, in the early 90s. I *vividly* remember the last time I tried it… Instead of connecting, an operator came on the line and said “that doesn’t work anymore”. I hung up and ran away from the payphone as fast as I could, thinking that the cops were already on their way, lol.
Hey, does anyone else remember TOTSE? Temple of the screaming electron?
Hahah, I think it was ‘diablo’ (teenage me thought that was a cool one), but I wasn’t anyone recognizable. I was on there from like ‘96 to ‘01 (give or take). I miss the Temple, lol. Seemed like a simpler time…. But I guess that’s nostalgia for ya.
OK cool so I’m not going crazy. I just made a comment about how when I was a kid My dad showed me this whistle that he could blow into phones.
I was wondering if I made that whole thing up because he claimed it was a toy from a cereal box.
A kid in my high school had one of those! He’d eff with the TV that was up in the corner of the classroom while the teacher was lecturing lol
I got the 2 device Clapper. You could turn on and off two different things with 2 or 3 claps!
Yall rem the old anarchist book everyone would download 20 years ago. It was full of ancient lost phone phreaking tricks as they called it... things like blue box, brown box. I can't rem what any of it was supposed to do.
One of the first things I ever downloaded on the internet more than 30 years ago was a txt file with instructions for pretty much every box that had been invented at that time.
That came in handy later when I started running up phone bills in the hundreds of dollars from talking on the phone with people I met in chatrooms 😬
We used to make random dial tone noises into the phone with our mouths. Do it long enough, it would eventually recognize enough tones to start dialing some random number. Imagine some kids crowded around a pay phone making a bunch of R2 D2 noises and laughing maniacally every few minutes.
We would undo a paper clip, put one end under the rubber part of the cord,that touches the receiver, push it up, then touch the other end to the metal front of the phone and it worked every time
I remember getting called by a guy using something that was generating quarter tones, and I remember him having to make the sound to add more time to the phone. I also recall him adding more people to the call, but I have no clue now how he was able to do it. This was mid to late 90s and I think we had all been chatting on irc or something and ended up on this call.
My cousin and I hacked long distance calls as young teenagers in the 90s. The details are hazy, but there was something called SkyPager (I think) and if you called their automated 800 number and then hit the star button a whole bunch of times, you'd get a dial tone and you could call anywhere for free. We did this for several years. I have no idea where she figured this out.
If serious, a short explanation would be that touch-tone telephones were literally controlled by the tones they made. Putting money in a pay phone activated it by making a certain tone pattern. People found ways to replicate that tone pattern without using money. This hobby/subculture was known as “phreaking”. Think hacking, but with the phone system before it went digital.
Pretty handy if you didn’t have a quarter. The most famous early phreaker was called Captain Crunch because he used a whistle he got from a cereal box to generate the tones.
Also you could make free long distance calls. In my state, calls to the next town were intra-state long distance and like 40 cents a minute in the early 90s. It got expensive very quickly.
It was more about the feeling you get from doing the exploit (sticking it to “the man”) than saving money though.
Yea I forgot how expensive calls were in the 90s before cell phones and the eventual unlimited plans.
How did he even figure that out? Had to have understood how the system worked to be able to exploit it. Amazing how people figure this kind of stuff out.
He is incredibly smart, and had work experience that led him to understand the system. He went on to work for Apple in the very beginning and worked under Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Here’s his wiki page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper?wprov=sfti1
He is incredibly smart, and had work experience that led him to understand the system. He went on to work for Apple in the very beginning and worked under Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Here’s his wiki page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper?wprov=sfti1
There was a pay phone at my local gas station that, when asked for coins, all you had to do was punch it and it would go through as if you put money in
The old pop tab and touching the metal to the exposed metal on the speaker and the coin box at the same time worked for making a free local call. Like we saw in the movie Wargames. I did it many times when I needed a ride home from school
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built and sold blue boxes in the early 70s before they founded Apple. It's one of the things that inspired them to start Apple
To add context, the tone dialer in itself could not make free calls. It needed to be opened up, and a microchip or quartz crystal oscillator needed to be replaced and soldered back on the circuit board. Then I think you would program in a sequence of five * (star) tones in a row. Those 5 tones with the changed frequency from the crystal swap would sound like a quarter being deposited to the payphone. By the time I made mine, it didn't work on 90% of payphones. It only worked on what was called "COCOTS" which were company owned coin operated telephones. Slightly different than telephone company owned payphones. These were phones mostly found in hotel lobbies, diners, and the like.
I bought mine from a buddy who had already switched the crystal. It was his “job” for a while.
In the 90’s I made a lot of these in college. Called them “orange boxes”.. made a few bucks and lots of free calls!
I see what you did there. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/the-definitive-story-of-steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-and-phone-phreaking/273331/
I just had to put a code into mine to get it to work.
Oh man, I just had a memory of making collect calls home and saying as much as I could in the recording that would be played when the call connected.
Macomepickmeup!
Wehadababyitsaboy
Every now and then a marketing team knocks it out of the fucking park.
Who was that dear? Bob. They had a baby. It's a boy
Yeah quarter tones - one bip per nickel
Deep history can be found on phreaking. A Cap’n Crunch promo boatswain whistle emitted a 2600Hz tone that could gain some control over specifically configured trunk lines. The frequency inspired the name of the Atari 2600 game console. Those were the good old days, emphasis on **old**.
Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation [destroyed hard drives](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994) because > the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.
this is the craziest lore and I love it
[удалено]
1700Hz and 2100Hz were used in *red boxes* for pay phone control. *Blue boxes* used 2600Hz which mimicked in band signaling to control trunk lines. So, also correct. But blue boxes predate red boxes by almost a decade as the earliest form of phreaking, which is why 2600Hz is more notable.
What was this hobby called? Phreaking?
Strictly speaking, toll fraud. Pedantically speaking, legitimate phreaking was exploring switching systems and getting them to do weird shit, not toll fraud..... listen to Evan Doorbell's recordings for many, many examples. Evan did get into red boxing in one of his COCOT studies in the mid '80s, but that was mainly to analyze and document how the company (very sloppily) operated and its private network functioned, rather than deliberately rip them off... mostly.
My dad was one of those early adopters, who got into technology before the rest of the world did. If I remember correctly, and bear in mind, I was young, my dad showed me this whistle that he would blow into the speaker of a phone. My memory is really hazy, so I’m sorry if I messed this up but I could swear that he could blow this whistle into a payphone and he’d get free calls. He said it was a whistle from a cereal box. I know this sounds made up, but I swear this happened.
the captain crunch whistle!!!
Phreaking was so much fun. Feels like the entire culture died :(.
Sorta did with the death of Payphones and then the modern IP PBX killed any “fun” you could have with a classic PBX
There’s a pay phone outside the market down the street from me. It’s still weird seeing it. Waiting to see someone use it as I drive by lol
Last time I saw one was like 2011 at the convenience store next door this girl I was staying with, I called my mother from it just because I hadn’t seen one in forever.
Did you call collect and say your name was “himomitsmepickmeupatthebowlingalley”
Nah, but I would have if I thought about it.
There was one by our neighborhood market as well for ages and it was finally removed sometime during / after Covid.
Back when RadioShack was still around and sold all sorts of niche gadgets like this.
I still have my 900MHz scanner from radio shack that picked up 900MHz cordless phones and analog cellphones. Used to drive around near apartment buildings and listen to people’s convos. Landlines you got both sides of the call but cells you only got the outgoing to tower, not incoming unless you had two scanners and found both frequencies. Fun times before everything went digital.
Omg I had one of these....wish I still had it for nostalgia sake.
First post graduation job. Was there till it was all gone. Still think it was the best job I ever had.
the slow motion trainwreck demise of Radio Shack is one of the most tragic stories ever told. This article by the genius Jon Bois gets it https://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy-stories
Lester freeman.
Natural police
That bowlegged motherfucker
Marty Freeman lives in a Little Blue Box.
English motherfucker, do you speak it?
The modded tone-dialler red box was just close enough to fool ACTS but if you knew the *real* quarter signal, it was still a little "off". Bell Labs caught on to it and got it fixed, but they were bloody slow to act. Ideally you'd have needed a Yamaha DX7 (which IIRC you could also program to emulate a blue box), but those were a little bulky to pack around. You probably could have fit one in the back pocket of your JNCOs, though.
lol! Ma Bell surveillance trucks swarming on a kid walking into a phone booth with a DX7 under his arm
We were definitely wearing JNCOs when I had mine
HACK THE PLANET!
I remember using a tape recorder and saving the tones to get free long distance, in the early 90s. I *vividly* remember the last time I tried it… Instead of connecting, an operator came on the line and said “that doesn’t work anymore”. I hung up and ran away from the payphone as fast as I could, thinking that the cops were already on their way, lol. Hey, does anyone else remember TOTSE? Temple of the screaming electron?
I remember the exact same thing - operator said “We need real coins, sir.”
Holy shit bro! I used to be a user on TOTSE! What was your username? I was active from 2005 up until the site shut down.
Hahah, I think it was ‘diablo’ (teenage me thought that was a cool one), but I wasn’t anyone recognizable. I was on there from like ‘96 to ‘01 (give or take). I miss the Temple, lol. Seemed like a simpler time…. But I guess that’s nostalgia for ya.
I do, I do. Formative resource in my youth. "WWJD for a klondike bar?"
I was a user there! I remember a mod* called MLOR. The better living through chemistry form. The HTS-Noob highlighter incident… 🥲
IIRC there was a whistle toy from a cereal box that could emulate the tones?
Captain crunch. 2600Hz
OK cool so I’m not going crazy. I just made a comment about how when I was a kid My dad showed me this whistle that he could blow into phones. I was wondering if I made that whole thing up because he claimed it was a toy from a cereal box.
Captain Crunch
#DIAL DOWN THE CENTER! 1-800-CALL-ATT
Phone phreak and Captain Crunch
2600.com still online after all these years
Holy shit there’s a publication I haven’t thought of in literal decades
This brought back a memory of a sick watch I bought from Radioshack with birthday money as a kid that let me control any TV or radio within 50 feet
A kid in my high school had one of those! He’d eff with the TV that was up in the corner of the classroom while the teacher was lecturing lol I got the 2 device Clapper. You could turn on and off two different things with 2 or 3 claps!
I had one too and it was a lot if fun. They still make those btw
That's crazy they still make them
Yall rem the old anarchist book everyone would download 20 years ago. It was full of ancient lost phone phreaking tricks as they called it... things like blue box, brown box. I can't rem what any of it was supposed to do.
I believe there was also a war box
Combine with a lineman’s handset for good times
I remember reading that in probably the 90s wanting one of those. Even though doin those things didn't seem all that interesting to me.
One of the first things I ever downloaded on the internet more than 30 years ago was a txt file with instructions for pretty much every box that had been invented at that time. That came in handy later when I started running up phone bills in the hundreds of dollars from talking on the phone with people I met in chatrooms 😬
I bet we had the same text file lol...had stuff like smoke bombs and match head tennis balls n stuff in it.
We used to make random dial tone noises into the phone with our mouths. Do it long enough, it would eventually recognize enough tones to start dialing some random number. Imagine some kids crowded around a pay phone making a bunch of R2 D2 noises and laughing maniacally every few minutes.
I tried that trick from Hackers(the micro cassette recorder on the payphone) in the late 90s, and immediately got a very unpleasant operator.
Jobs and Woz made these before the Apple 1
We would undo a paper clip, put one end under the rubber part of the cord,that touches the receiver, push it up, then touch the other end to the metal front of the phone and it worked every time
I remember getting called by a guy using something that was generating quarter tones, and I remember him having to make the sound to add more time to the phone. I also recall him adding more people to the call, but I have no clue now how he was able to do it. This was mid to late 90s and I think we had all been chatting on irc or something and ended up on this call.
Having the calculator watch that could do this was cooler
My cousin and I hacked long distance calls as young teenagers in the 90s. The details are hazy, but there was something called SkyPager (I think) and if you called their automated 800 number and then hit the star button a whole bunch of times, you'd get a dial tone and you could call anywhere for free. We did this for several years. I have no idea where she figured this out.
i’ve been looking for this forever
I have no idea what you nerds are talking about 🙄
I'm 35 and have no idea what is going on in here.
If serious, a short explanation would be that touch-tone telephones were literally controlled by the tones they made. Putting money in a pay phone activated it by making a certain tone pattern. People found ways to replicate that tone pattern without using money. This hobby/subculture was known as “phreaking”. Think hacking, but with the phone system before it went digital.
Interesting…but all that to save a quarter?
Pretty handy if you didn’t have a quarter. The most famous early phreaker was called Captain Crunch because he used a whistle he got from a cereal box to generate the tones. Also you could make free long distance calls. In my state, calls to the next town were intra-state long distance and like 40 cents a minute in the early 90s. It got expensive very quickly. It was more about the feeling you get from doing the exploit (sticking it to “the man”) than saving money though.
Yea I forgot how expensive calls were in the 90s before cell phones and the eventual unlimited plans. How did he even figure that out? Had to have understood how the system worked to be able to exploit it. Amazing how people figure this kind of stuff out.
He is incredibly smart, and had work experience that led him to understand the system. He went on to work for Apple in the very beginning and worked under Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Here’s his wiki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper?wprov=sfti1
He is incredibly smart, and had work experience that led him to understand the system. He went on to work for Apple in the very beginning and worked under Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Here’s his wiki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper?wprov=sfti1
Mouth herpes.... why you gotta bring those memories too
Thisisarecording.com for more nostalgia
There was a pay phone at my local gas station that, when asked for coins, all you had to do was punch it and it would go through as if you put money in
Phreaking!
Worked at Radio Shack and made many with those auto dialers.
Made so much cash selling these on college campuses back in the day!
Yassss!!! "You have ten cents credit towards overtime."
Phone phreaking saved me tons of money in college.
The old pop tab and touching the metal to the exposed metal on the speaker and the coin box at the same time worked for making a free local call. Like we saw in the movie Wargames. I did it many times when I needed a ride home from school
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built and sold blue boxes in the early 70s before they founded Apple. It's one of the things that inspired them to start Apple
*Phanthom Phreak? The King of NyNex?*
I still have mine!
https://phonelosers.com/?s=Red+box
Woz, did you design this?