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...and "beige box" off a COCOT... I think you mean red box. Red boxing was when you generated, or just recorded/played back the tones for different coins. The

...and "beige box" off a COCOT... I think you mean red box. Red boxing was when you generated, or just recorded/played back the tones for different coins. The idea was to trick the phone into thinking you put in money. We only had one customer owned payphone we knew about that it worked on, but it was glorious.(even though we had noone to call) A beige box is a telephone cable with alligator clips on the one end. You could ofcourse use it on a COCOT, but you could also use it on any telephone line.

mindcrime 3y ago
I definitely mean "beige box." Red boxes were (mainly?) for telephone company phones that would recognize the coin tones. Those phones had a different line "class of service" at the switch end and the critical point is that red-boxing was the only way (post blue-box era anyway) to get free calls off of them. Well, at least that I knew of. But a COCOT had all the "pay phone magic" embedded in the phone itself - the line was a normal line, so if you clipped in at the demarc box, "upstream" of the actual phone, you were on a plain old phone line (with long-distance service) that you could use to your heart's content. And by the time frame I'm talking about, there weren't a lot of the red-box'able telephone company payphones around in our area. If some COCOT's were also susceptible to red-boxing, that's something we never discovered. To be fair though, it never even occurred to me to check. I just had it burned into my brain at some point that red-boxing was for telco phones and not COCOT's.[1] In hindsight, that was quite possibly folklore that was wrong. You could ofcourse use it on a COCOT, but you could also use it on any telephone line. Yep. It just worked out that a convenience store in the middle of nowhere with a COCOT out in the parking lot was a good scenario for doing this kind of thing without getting caught. Or so I'm told... :-) [1]: https://www.tech-faq.com/red-box.html https://www.tech-faq.com/red-box.html
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > But a COCOT had all the "pay phone magic" embedded in the phone itself - the line was a normal line There is one still operating in the parking lot of a general store in a tiny, tiny town near me. I keep wanting to put an old-school modem on my laptop, paying it a visit, and dial up a BBS (a few of those still exist, too), just for old time's sake and maybe a nostalgia overdose.
- dec0dedab0de 3y ago
  by the time I learned about them, red boxes didnt work on telco payphones. we had one customer owned one in a pizza shop, it looked like an old fashioned beige desk phone, but had equipment tacked on to take money. That was the only one we could get it to work with.

mindcrime 3y ago

I definitely mean "beige box." Red boxes were (mainly?) for telephone company phones that would recognize the coin tones. Those phones had a different line "class of service" at the switch end and the critical point is that red-boxing was the only way (post blue-box era anyway) to get free calls off of them. Well, at least that I knew of. But a COCOT had all the "pay phone magic" embedded in the phone itself - the line was a normal line, so if you clipped in at the demarc box, "upstream" of the actual phone, you were on a plain old phone line (with long-distance service) that you could use to your heart's content. And by the time frame I'm talking about, there weren't a lot of the red-box'able telephone company payphones around in our area. If some COCOT's were also susceptible to red-boxing, that's something we never discovered. To be fair though, it never even occurred to me to check. I just had it burned into my brain at some point that red-boxing was for telco phones and not COCOT's.[1] In hindsight, that was quite possibly folklore that was wrong. You could ofcourse use it on a COCOT, but you could also use it on any telephone line. Yep. It just worked out that a convenience store in the middle of nowhere with a COCOT out in the parking lot was a good scenario for doing this kind of thing without getting caught. Or so I'm told... :-) [1]: https://www.tech-faq.com/red-box.html https://www.tech-faq.com/red-box.html

JohnFen 3y ago
> But a COCOT had all the "pay phone magic" embedded in the phone itself - the line was a normal line There is one still operating in the parking lot of a general store in a tiny, tiny town near me. I keep wanting to put an old-school modem on my laptop, paying it a visit, and dial up a BBS (a few of those still exist, too), just for old time's sake and maybe a nostalgia overdose.
dec0dedab0de 3y ago
by the time I learned about them, red boxes didnt work on telco payphones. we had one customer owned one in a pizza shop, it looked like an old fashioned beige desk phone, but had equipment tacked on to take money. That was the only one we could get it to work with.