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In the US around the late 80's we could buy a DTMF dialer from Radio Shack and change the oscillator crystal to a different value that would enable the device t
by leptons 6y ago
In the US around the late 80's we could buy a DTMF dialer from Radio Shack and change the oscillator crystal to a different value that would enable the device to produce the same tones as the $0.25 quarter sound that a payphone would make when you dropped a coin into it. That was a lot of phun.
"war dialing" was using a computer to repeatedly dial random passcodes on a PBX or similar system to try to make free calls. A commodore 64 was used quite a bit for this, dialing all night long you'd wake up to about 5 or 6 valid codes that you could then use for about a week to dial BBSs all over the planet for free.
There were plenty of other ways to get free phone calls. It was a really interesting part of the 'underground' of computing back in the day.
- twothamendment 6y agoI had one of those radio shack dialers. They were still selling them in 1998, but were suspicious when you asked for that crystal. The intent was to store phone numbers in it, slap it up to the microphone and let it dial for you. I may or may not have added a second crystal and a switch to pick which crystal to use. In the memory you could store the tones for a nickel, dime and quarter. Maybe this was a red box? It worked great provided you dropped at least one physical coin to trigger the switch in the phone. By leaving the original crystal in, it was also a white box, if I'm remembering right. I only ran into one phone that it was useful on. If the phone was setup so you had a dial tone, but the keypad was disabled until you paid, you could dial with the device - just like rat shack intended. I'm sure I lost more on parts than I gained in calls - that wasn't really the point. Good times!