3 ms·

Probably says something about me that my immediate reaction to the number 65536 wasn’t 2^16, but rather the frequency of the timer crystal you had to swap into

by samch 4y ago

Probably says something about me that my immediate reaction to the number 65536 wasn’t 2^16, but rather the frequency of the timer crystal you had to swap into a Radio Shack tone dialer to make a “red box”[1] that would let you make free phone calls on US pay phones by simulating the analog coin code sound of a quarter being deposited. Fun fact that the “red box” was the first hackaday article[2] posted way back in 2004. I learned about this back in the days of 2600 magazine. Fun stuff! [1] http://www.techfreakz.org/2600faq.html#redbox http://www.techfreakz.org/2600faq.html#redbox [2] https://hackaday.com/2004/09/05/radioshack-phone-dialer-red-box/ https://hackaday.com/2004/09/05/radioshack-phone-dialer-red-...

scrame 4y ago
I just coded it in basic and the recorded it to a mini-casette lecture-recorder. Unfortunately, by that point the tones just triggered an operator call.
reaperducer 4y ago
The DTMF chips that generated regular Touch Tones™ were capable of generating all kinds of fun sounds simply by extending the key matrix. You could build a red box, pink box, blue box, and others by modifying a standard tone dialer. The easiest thing to do was to add a fourth column of keys, which supposedly gave you the ability to use the ABCD digits required for military networks. I never tried that, though. For those of you who missed out on that era, a tone dialer was a little palm-sized box that had a small Touch Tone keypad on one side, and a speaker on the other. If you had a rotary phone, after dialing, you could hold it up to the mouthpiece and use many of the fancy features that came with the invention of Touch Tone, like using FŌN cards, or listening to your messages on your answering machine.
skykooler 4y ago
Interesting, most timer crystals I'm familiar with are 32768 hz.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
I guess it says you're more into hardware than you're into math, when I saw the title I thought 'this must be some really weird Dungeons and Dragons article'

by samch 4y ago

scrame 4y ago

I just coded it in basic and the recorded it to a mini-casette lecture-recorder. Unfortunately, by that point the tones just triggered an operator call.

reaperducer 4y ago

The DTMF chips that generated regular Touch Tones™ were capable of generating all kinds of fun sounds simply by extending the key matrix. You could build a red box, pink box, blue box, and others by modifying a standard tone dialer. The easiest thing to do was to add a fourth column of keys, which supposedly gave you the ability to use the ABCD digits required for military networks. I never tried that, though. For those of you who missed out on that era, a tone dialer was a little palm-sized box that had a small Touch Tone keypad on one side, and a speaker on the other. If you had a rotary phone, after dialing, you could hold it up to the mouthpiece and use many of the fancy features that came with the invention of Touch Tone, like using FŌN cards, or listening to your messages on your answering machine.

skykooler 4y ago

Interesting, most timer crystals I'm familiar with are 32768 hz.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

I guess it says you're more into hardware than you're into math, when I saw the title I thought 'this must be some really weird Dungeons and Dragons article'