Ú002ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ002¿ ³ The Phone Losers Of America ³ ³ Presents ³ ³ A Zillion Different Ways To Make Your Very Own Red Box - RedBoxChiliPepper ³ ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´ ³ Written In November Of 1992 Last Revision on July 12, 1995 ³ ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´ ³ For Informational Purposes Only. We're Not Responsible For Your Stupidity. ³ Ã002ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ002´ ³ TABLE OF CONTENTS ³ ³ ³ ³ o What In The Hell Is A Red Box? ³ ³ o Converting A Tone Dialer ³ ³ o Programming Your Tone Dialer ³ ³ o Trouble-Shooting Your Tone Dialer ³ ³ o Combination Red Box & Tone Dialer ³ ³ o Using A Tape Recorder or Walkman ³ ³ o Hallmark Cards ³ ³ o The Stealth-Combo Box ³ ³ o Voice Memo-Minders ³ ³ o PC Sound Blaster Red Box ³ ³ o A Few Schematics ³ ³ o Finding A Phone That Will Work ³ ³ o Making A Long Distance Domestic Call ³ ³ o Making An International Call ³ ³ o Making A Local Call ³ ³ o Red Box Frequencies ³ ³ o Miscellaneous Notes ³ ³ o Famous Operator Quotes ³ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ 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! Converting A Tone Dialer Into A Red Box: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ I believe all the credit for this section of the phile should go to Noah Clayton who originally wrote this for 2600 magazine. You will need: o Radio Shack pocket tone dialer model #43-141 ($24.95 each) o Three AAA batteries o Soldering Iron o Small regular and phillips screwdriver o Wire clippers o A 6.5536 MHz crystal Be sure to get Radio Shack's NEWEST type of tone dialer. The old ones were gold and brown and looked pretty ugly. The new ones are black and the corners are rounded off a little more. They also seem to be more water-resistant and it seems to be easier to fit the new crystal into these models. You can either order the crystal through Radio Shack or buy it from an electronic's store. Buying it through Radio Shack is a real bitch because you have to wait two weeks for them to order it and most employees don't know what you're talking about when you ask for it. I've had them INSIST that they can't order that crystal for me because they don't carry it. If you live in the St. Louis area as I do, I suggest GateWay Electronics on Page Av in Missouri. They have a knowledgable staff and their crystals are only about three bucks a piece. (Compared to Radio Shack's $4.99 each!) Place the dialer on the table keypad side down and speaker side up. Remove the battery cover and all batteries. Use the phillips screwdriver to remove all four screws on the back of the dialer. Now slide the flathead screw- driver along the side to separate the two halves of the dialer. Slide the speaker half underneath the keypad so you don't break off the wires. On the left hand side down near the battery compartment, you'll see a silver cylinder looking component. This is the crystal you want to remove. Pull it up with your fingers and break away all the glue that's holding it down. Use your soldering iron and un-solder it from the circuit board. You can throw this crystal away as it has no real use in life. Now the hard part. The new crystal you're putting in is twice as big as the old one so it's kinda hard to get it in there. There's a few capacitors that you can bend over to make some more room. You'll also have to bend the leads to your new crystal inward a little. Solder the new crystal in place of the old one and you're all set. Snap the two casing halves back together being careful not to pinch any wires. Put the screws back in and insert your three AAA batteries. A good idea is to wrap the crystal with scotch tape or electrical tape. This will prevent contact with other components since the crystal is so big. You could also simply put a piece of paper under the crystal. One additional thing you can do it totally remove the LED light. The only thing this light is good for is running down your batteries really quick. If you use the unit without the light connected, you NEVER have to turn the unit's power off and the batteries will last for a few years before you need to replace them. Programming Your Red Box: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ First you'll have to program your box's memory to make the right tones. You'll be using the three priority buttons on the top of your unit. P1 will be your quarter, P2 your dime and P3 will be the nickel. So here's how to do it: (1) Switch the unit on. The red light in the corner should come on unless you've disconnected it. (2) Slide the DIAL/STORE switch to the STORE mode. (3) Press MEMORY, *, *, *, *, *, MEMORY, P1. That programs your quarter. (4) Press MEMORY, *, *, MEMORY, P2. That programs your dime. (5) Press MEMORY, *, MEMORY, P3. And that's the nickel. (6) Slide the DIAL/STORE switch back into the DIAL mode and you're ready to start phreakin'! Try pushing the priority 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: MEMORY, *, *, *, *, *, 0, *, *, *, *, *, 0, *, *, *, *, *, 0, *, *, *, *, *, MEMORY, P1. 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 explaining to me how to do this. Troubleshooting: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ One of the most common problems I've had with my red boxes over the years, is that the tones will stop working in the middle of trying to put in your money or they'll break up, giving you a live operator. This could be because you did a bad job soldering the new crystal in. More commonly, the contacts on the power (or the DIAL/STORE switch) have bent the wrong way, causing them not to touch the circuit board anymore. To fix that, open the unit and bend the contact in the switches out a little. Not too much or they'll break when you use the switch. If you've removed the light in your unit, there's really no reason to ever turn it off so you could glue the power switch into the "ON" position. Try Our New Combo Platter!: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ If you're the type of person who just HAS to have a tone dialer AND a red box (like me) then you can have both without having to carry around two seperate units. 1. Buy a small two-position switch like Radio Shack's model #275-407. 2. On one end solder the old crystal, on the other end solder your 6.5536 crystal and in the middle solder two small wires, each about 4" long. 3. Solder the other ends of the two wires to where the old crystal used to be. Pretty easy, aye? You can put the two wires through one of the vent holes in the back of the unit. On my red box, I took the plastic piece off the back of the battery cover (You know, where you're supposed to write the memory numbers?) and electrical taped the switch down. It actually doesn't stick out hardly at all and looks fairly professional. Now you can switch between red box and tone dialer. You can store your stolen calling card numbers in the other memory locations or use the touch tones to get free calls on those damn privately owned pay phones. You know, a disturbing bit of information I heard from Zak recently is that Radio Shack won't be selling these tone dialers anymore. I don't know if this is true or not but I plan on stocking up on tone dialers here in the near future. The reason, supposedly is that the only people that buy these things are phreaks. The Low-Income Red Box (A Walkman): ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ If you can't afford a real red box or you don't have any soldering experience, you can use a tape recorder as a red box. There are several ways to record the tones. One way is to go to a pay phone and call your answering machine or voice mail. After the beep on your machine, deposit about three dollars in quarters and hang up. Your three bucks should come back. Go home and on your answering machine will be a tape with the red box tones. Another way is to find two pay phones that are next to each other. You'll need a portable tape recorder and a suction cup telephone pick-up. (The phone pick- ups can be purchased at Radio Shack for about $3.00.) Pick up the first pay phone (Phone A) and call the other one (Phone B). Put the suction recorder on Phone A and deposit about three dollars in Phone B. Hang up both phones and hopefully your money will come back. A third way is to record the tones directly from someone else who owns a red box. Pretty easy to figure out. To play the tones back into the phone when you need them, use either a portable tape recorder or a walkman with some headphones. Hold the speaker from the recorder (or the headphones) to the mouthpiece of the phone and press "play" when asked for money. Make sure not to have the volume up too loud or the distortion will make a real operator come on the line. You can also use a big bulky tape recorder or a boom box but you'll look a little silly when you try to play your tones into the pay phone. Hallmark Cards: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Hallmark has these new cards that actually let you record a message for your loved ones so when grandma opens the card she hears your voice saying, "Merry Christmas, Grandma Edna!" Then Grandma Edna will drop the card in horror, thinking that she's gone completely nuts and probably die of a heart attack. After you've shoplifted a few of these cards and taken one apart, you'll see that that electronics inside are pretty small. You can record your red box tones on this chip and then conceal the whole mess anywhere you want and you'll have a tiny red box to use. The Stealth-Combo Box: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ The following article was written by DeadKat of CoTNo and is, in my opinion, the best ever variation of the original tone dialer design. You can pick up this article and other CoTNo Zinez on the FTP.FC.NET site. Highly recommended. (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)\ (*) (*)\| (*) |>ead|