How To Take Apart A Payphone With Little Trouble by The Monk Note: I absolutly LOVE Western Electric (WE), AT&T, C&P, Nynex, Bellsouth and all of those WONDERFUL organizations that are associated with the marvel of this century, the Payphone. I would never dream of actually doing anything in this text file, and imagine NO ONE else would. I hate phreakers, and would turn all of them in the instant I thought I saw one. I would turn in my own father if he were a phreaker. God bless America, God bless AT&T, God bless WE, God bless C&P. But, if someone does do anything contained in this file, and gets caught, don't blame me. Blame yourself. Blame yourself for being such a fucking idiot to pull the payphone, and to think that you would escape our wonderful Police force. I love my police force. Snort... snort. Three years of Journalism, and looks what happens to your brain. You have a payphone. You want the money, a DTMF pad, and a red box. How do you do it? The BARE requirements of what you need: (This is asuming you are poor, and can't quite squeeze the expensive tools.) 2 GOOD quality flathead screwdrivers. One small, and one large. A pair of scissors. The greater leverage, the better. a Hex Key tool set. One key is needed, but the screws sometimes vary in size. a large pair of pliers. a hammer Now, if you have the money: A crowbar A wedge/chisel Large headed, small handle hammer And if you are the one of the lucky few: A air hammer (if you had this, you wouldn't be reading this though) Ok, down to business. First, you can do any of this while the phone is still attached to the wall, but I imagine that most first time people will not have the balls to do something like that. That is understandable. After you become familiar with how to do this though, you will probably want to do it while the phone is still attached to the wall, or booth. Ok, now put the phone on its back. Look right at it. You should be staring at the front of the phone. Now, look at the silver facade of sorts on it. Notice how cheap it. Notice how the push button amplifier seems to be barely attached on there? Also notice how the two little "instruction" plastics are not held in by any screw, nor tape (you can wiggle the plastic). Good, you just made a major obsercation. The places where the silver disappears and is holding the plastic in place I will now call a "window" there are only two windows on a phone, the top and bottom window. Good, that is accomplished. Now, take out your large screwdriver (at this point, I want to bring up a point that I take great pride in, quality of tools. Get the best your money can buy. I purchase Craftsman tools ONLY. They will refund your money if your tool breaks for ANY reason whatsoever, no questions asked. If you use a cheap Taiwan screwdriver for this part, you might end up with a broken screwdriver. I make NO promises about what your tools will look like after taking apart a payphone) and place the flat edge under the top area of the bottom window. OK, now jam it in there as far possible, to avoid breaking the tip of you screwdriver already, and then pry up. Keep repeating this motion until the bottom half of the silver plate is really starting to move up. Then work on the side of the silver plate. The top. Don't worry about the amplifier button, it's just a button with a spring on it, the REAL amplifier is inside the payphone, nice and snug. Also, you will have trouble with the armor for the wires to the handset, just finaggle with it until you get slack in the silver metal that you need to pry the silver farther (if you run into any trouble with the handset, you'll know what I'm talking about.). Good, after the silver plate has come off, you should be staring at a totally black phone with a hole for the DTMF, and a DTMF pad in there. Circutry is exposed. Good going, that was the second most difficult thing you were going to do tonight. Now, take out the DTMF pad, whether by ripping it out, or with your small screwdriver, taking out the screws on the brackets that hold it in. Warning, if you decide to take out the DTMF by just unscrewing it, you may not notice the bracket screws, as the heads are facing a 90 degree angle from you. The screw are on both sides of the DMTF, left and right. Both are in the middle of the DTMF on the left and right sides of it. Cut the wires to the DMTF. I tried to keep the wires once, but it is way too much of a hassle. Screw it, trust me on this, just take it out. Rip it out, or just cut the wires. Now, in the hole you should have two brackets and notice this thick plastic that keeps you from digging around INSIDE of the payphone itself. No problem. That's where you heavy duty scissors come in handy. But first, you will have to take your large screwdriver, and try to pry some of the plastic off of first, you'll need a place to begin your cutting the scissors. You will want to cut out basically the whole bottom right hand side of the plastic. No problem really. Should take you half an hour the first time, fifteen minutes after you get good with it. Cutting the plastic is a very difficult step, and accomplishing it means that you are really committed to this. So, now, take your pointer finger, and feel inside of the hole... near the right hand side of the armor on the payphone. Yes, you want to feel the BACK of the lock. Now, you can shine a light in there also if you feel inclined to see what you are after. It is a 1 and half inch box by about one and half inches. It has four hex screws at each corner. The lock is made of a very durable metal, and the screws can not be shredded off. Only one thing you can do, unscrew the screws. They are all hex screws. This is truly the hardest and most tedious part of the job. You might have to bend some of the metal around the hole where the DTMF used to be. Go ahead, it's your phone, do what you want. There is nothing fragile attached to the armor at all. Just don't sledgehammer the side of the armor, as the locking mechanism uses the side of the phone. And if you lock/jam the mechanism, you're screwed. OK, you now have all four screws out. Wiggle the lock a bit, and take out the lock. Take it all the way out of the phone, the lock gets in the way for the next step. Now, with a small flathead, move the screw on the left hand side of the phone. Yes, it just looks like a hole, but stick the flathead in sideways and turn one quarter. You should hear a definite "thunk" from the phone. You just diabled the lock. Congrats. If you can not move the screw, try moving the metal around where the lock used to be. Slide it up or down. It should move an inch, and make that "thunk" that we all love to hear. I will now refer to the half of the phone with the plunger/handset/DTMF on it as the "top" half. The "bottom" half is the other half of the phone. Good, now take the front armor off of the phone. Disconnect all wires that keep the front half attached to the second half of the phone. At the top of bottom half you should see a piece of metal about the size of your thumb. Move this. It usually is a metal wire loop. Move it up. Did anythn the eye. Take this guy out. It only takes quarter to one half turn. Now, remove the hardware contents of the phone. The long skinny mechanism is the change sorter. The circuit board attached to it's bottom is the coin detector, to tell the phone what coin had just dropped through. The thing at the bottom of the phone with copper wire wound around it is the servo mechanism. Have you ever cute end of the change sort er, you have a pre-1980's payphone. The device in clear plastic is the red box. Now, enough with that, time for the money. While taking out the hardware, you should notice that there's a larg pice of metal at the bottom of the phone that just would not move at all. This is the entrance to the money bin. Take a chisel and hammer and bang it off. Now flip the y quickly disconnected the phone. I would not recommend, for this reason, attaching the phone to your line, but I am not your mother either. I have let this file evolve, and some questions have been brought up on COCOTS. COCOTS are very easy to take apart, even easier than the WE phones. They are less armored, and what armor they do have on them is very easy to take off. What you w, and nothing should be able to stop you from banging it out. VERY CHEAP! Then, just follow the rest of the directions, move the sliding bolt inside the phone, and then take the top half off. Simple as pie. In the COCOTS are two things, a master CPU board, that is run off of a Z80, and a 300 baud modem, also controlled by it's own Z80. It is quite interesting, EPROM's and the such. Little Miss Lucy. If, God forbid, you need to contact me, write me at Solsbury Hill.