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I 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
by twothamendment 6y ago
I 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!