Modified RadioShack Personal Data Directory With Phone Dialer
Basic Information
| 39550 |
Battery Installation |
| 39552 |
Care and Maintenance |
$100 Each, Free Shipping To the U.S.
I accept personal checks, money orders and credit cards through paypal.com
Contact me at: writemeforfun@hotmail.com if you have any questions |
 |
| This Phone Dialer has a switch built into the side that switches between the tone dialer and red box. |
Red Box Modifications
How To Use A Red Box Table of Contents |
| What In The Hell Is A Red Box? |
|
If you've ever made a call from a pay phone and put in real quarters (heaven
forbid) sometimes you may have heard a series of chirping noises in the back-
ground, really faint. Those are the tones that a pay phone hears when you
deposit money and there's a lot of ways that you can immitate these tones to
get free calls. This file will hopefully cover every known way to accomplish
this. If I've left anything out, get in touch!
|
|
First you'll have to program your box's memory to make the right tones.
- (1) Press the power button.
- (2) Press TEL to enter the telephone directory. You see NAME? and the
number of stored records.
- (3) Press Down Arrow to move the cursor to the second row. Enter *, *, *, *, *, EXE. That programs your quarter.
- (4) Press TEL to enter the telephone directory. You see NAME? and the
number of stored records. Press Down Arrow to move the cursor to the second row. Enter *, *, EXE. That programs your dime.
- (5) Press TEL to enter the telephone directory. You see NAME? and the
number of stored records. Press Down Arrow to move the cursor to the second row. Enter *, EXE. That programs your Nickel.
- (6) You're ready to start phreakin'!
Try pushing the memory buttons now. Each one will emit a different high-
pitched chirping noise. This is what the phone hears when you deposit money
into a pay phone. If you've ever red boxed with a taperecorder or heard the
actual pay phone tones before, you'll notice that these tones are slightly
slower than the real ones. Don't worry, the pay phone can't ever tell the
difference and you rarely find an operator that can.
If you want to program in $1.00, it's best to use this programming string:
*, *, *, *, *, 0, *, *, *, *, *, 0, *, *, *, *, *, 0, *, *, *, *, *,
EXE.
This will make $1.00 go in a lot faster than if you'd used the PAUSE feature
because "0" is being used as a substitute for PAUSE. (The phone just ignores
the 0.) Don't use this string on a live operator, though! Thanks to Even in
California for giving me that idea.
|
| Finding A Phone That Will Work |
|
Usually any GTE or Bell phone will work, Bell including Southwestern Bell,
U.S.West, Ameritech, Pacific Bell, etc. You'll know it's a Bell or GTE phone
because their logo will be on the phone. I've noticed in some areas like
Pacific Bell and Ameritech the phones are rigged so that no sound can enter
the mouthpiece of the phone until the call is connected, rendering your redbox
useless. A way around this is to dial "0" and have the operator dial the call
for you.
Privately Owned pay phones are those ugly phones with some kind of generic
logo on them that means some old fat local guy owns it and convinces innocent
store owners to install his phone instead of a Bell phone, promising him
bigger profits. Not a hard promise to keep, considering a local call sometimes
costs 75 cents, they sometimes won't let you dial toll free numbers and long
distance rates are twice as high (or more) than AT&T which is pretty bad. The
best thing to do when you find a Private pay phone is to squirt a lot of
ketchup or mustard into the coin slot and find a Bell/GTE phone somewhere.
|
| Making A Long Distance Call |
|
Okay, here's the fun part- Calling anywhere in the entire world and not paying
a cent for it. Pick up the phone and dial the number you want to call in the
fashion 1-AREA CODE-NUMBER. For example, if you want to call the White House
in Washington D.C., dial 1-202-456-1414.
You'll hear a click, then a computer voice will say, "Please deposit $2.85."
(The exact amount differs with the location and time of day.) Mutter, "Fuck
you, AT&T..." to yourself, switch on your red box, hold the speaker of the red
box flush with the mouthpiece of the pay phone and press P1 for your quarters.
Pause for a split second in between each quarter because if you go too fast,
you'll get a live operator wanting to know what the problem is. You are able
to go 20 cents over the amount requested and that will be credited to your
call.
After you've put in enough "money", the computerized voice will say in a
cheerful, unsuspecting voice, "Thank you for using AT&T!" and your call is put
through. Every few minutes the voice will come back and ask for more money.
|
|
Your red box can also be used to call your loved ones in other countries,
although, it's annoying to do because you HAVE to use a live operator and your
conversation will be inturrupted every three minutes by a voice asking for
another two bucks. But if you really need to call overseas...
Dial 011-COUNTRY CODE-CITY CODE-PHONE NUMBER. An operator will ask you how you
want to bill your call. Tell her you'll be using the spare change you make as
a waiter and MoogooGuawkcaMeemay's Chineese restaurant to pay for your call.
For best results, don't do this:
OPERATOR: "Okay, sir, please deposit your money now..."
YOU: "Okay, ma'am, I'm going to use nickels...(beep)...That was one nickel.
Did you get that alright? Okay, here's my second nickel...(beep)...okay,
there's two nickels, that makes 10 cents. How much more to go? $9.10?
Okay...(beep)...I'm up to 15 cents now, right? Okay, good...(beep)...
alright, there's another one...Hey, here's a penny on the ground! Can I
use a penny? No? Okay, here goes lucky nickel number five...(beep)...did
you get that? Okay....etc, etc, etc."
The call will be completed like this: The operator will tell you that the call
will cost (for example) $7.35. She'll tell you to deposit $3.00, you red box
three dollars to her and she connects the call. When the overseas person
answers the phone she'll say, "This is the United States AT&T operator, I have
an international call for you, could you please hold while billing is
completed?" Then the operator will ask you for another $3.00 and then the
remaining $1.35. After all that you'll be connected only to be inturrupted
every three minutes by an operator asking for more money.
If you don't want the person you are calling to know you're calling with
coins, you can ask the operator if you can deposit all your money right now
and then be connected overseas. They don't like to do this (because you could
lose all your "money" if they're not home) but they will do it if you ask.
|
|
To red box a local call it takes about a minute or two longer than if you
really paid for it, but those quarters add up so it's definately worth it.
Pick up the phone and dial zero. Tell the operator that you want to make a
local call. If she tells you just to put in a quarter and dial the number,
tell her, "Well, ma'am, there's shit all over the keypad here and all the
buttons are stickin' together and I CAN'T dial it myself. The only key that
works is the zero and that's got this sticky blue shit all over it. Then
there's a half-eatin' Twinkee shoved in the coin return and dirt all over the
four and seven keys..." Keep going on and on until she asks you what number
you want to dial. She'll ask you for a quarter and connect your call.
Make sure after your call connects that you hear the operator click off. Some
operators are nosey and will just sit there listening to your conversation.
Once I was explaining to a friend how I placed my call and suddenly the
operator starts lecturing me and telling me she's going to call security on
me. (And this was about three minutes into the conversation!)
In some cities I've noticed you can trick pay phones into thinking that a
local call is actually a long distance call by dialing 1010288 before you dial
the local number. So try dialing 1010288 before you make your local
call and maybe you won't have to deal with that pesky operator. The only
downside of doing this is that the call will "cost" more and you'll be
inturrupted every five minutes to deposit more money.
|
|
For you tech-heads out there, here are the actual frequencies that the red
box produces. Actually, this is what a pay phone produces. When you make a red
box out of a Radio Shack tone dialer, the timing is slowed slighty on the
quarter tone.
The "tone" is 1700 hz and 2200 hz mixed together.
- A nickel is 66 ms on (1 beep).
- A dime is 66ms on, 66ms off, 66ms on (2 beeps).
- A quarter is 33ms on, 33ms off repeated 5 times.
|
|
You can not call any of those 900 phone sex numbers with a red box, so
perverts of the world...Sorry, Roy, you're just out of luck. You CAN call 976
information lines, though!
If you're really desperate for money, you can sell phone calls to people. Hang
around a phone and tell someone who's about to make a call that you'll give
them a free call if they'll give you a quarter. This usually impresses the
hell out of any ordinary person. If you live in a big city, you can go to the
tourist section of town and sell long distance discount calls to out of state
tourists. Consider yourselves warned, though, I've read a LOT of articles on
people getting busted for doing this. One article even had a picture of a guy
in an airport selling calls to people comming off the plane.
|
|
|
