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Installing a payphone in my house

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Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#101

Post by mattlondon »

I remember doing something similar to get ISP access in the early 90s. Like AOL various ISPs would be bundled into CDs/floppies and offer a free trial.

One of them did not validate the card number, so you could just type in 000000000000 or whatever and your free trial was enabled for a month or whatever and then be auto cancelled when they tried to bill for your first month after the trial. In the UK though local calls were not free and charged by the minute.

I think that ISP also bundled a Good times.

Edit: I think the version of netscape/Mozilla was this one - I distinctly remember the "M" logo that would rotate as pages loaded slowly on a 14.4 modem: https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/web-br....

Curious that it was called "mosaic netscape" - I don't remember that.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#102

Post by myrryr »

marzetti wrote: post #83

Thanks for this article and the comments. Reminds me of a trick we kids did in the early 60s (yeah, sorry) with the British 'phone box' pay phones. We called it 'tapping the phone', but it wasn't spy style listening. Passed from kid to kid the amazing trick was you could dial the number by tapping the handset (10 taps for zero, 9 taps for 9, ..) and the phone would ring the number but you didn't then have to 'press b…

This is because the NZ answer was to use a regular land line, and dial extra numbers on the end, the exchange would work, but their billing system would throw out the call, giving it to you for free.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#103

Post by Gordonjcp »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #16
meep0l wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the "fabled alarm?"

Yeah a red light would flash over the booth and the door would shut closed, hence having to put your foot in there. Alot of people buying and using these cards were like 'bullshit!' but this guy who told me about this figured to err on the side of caution anyways and ended up having to comically escape the situation with all these people looking at him. This was like 5 years before my own time in Japan but pretty hil…

I'm not saying you're wrong but a) this sounds like a massive safety issue and b) this sounds like exactly the sort of thing I'd say to anyone trying to get a dodgy phone card from me, "yeah you need to wedge your foot in the door in case it detects the card is hooky, and tries to lock you in" just so I could stand there and laugh at their contortions trying to keep one foot outside while they use the phone.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#105

Post by Gordonjcp »

bschne wrote: post #77

My grandfather once built a phone line simulator you could connect up to 8 or 10 phones to and actually dial them by a one-digit number. I think he got the schematics from some old electronics magazine. Definitely one of the coolest „toys“ I ever got as a kid.

In the olden days (up to about the mid-1990s!) the island of Canna off the west coast of Scotland that had a ten-subscriber phone exchange where you could dial any number on the island with a single digit. You could only make one call at a time off the island, via a VHF link on around 80MHz to the telephone exchange in Mallaig about 25 miles away.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#107

Post by Gordonjcp »

dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #31
hayleox wrote: post #8

I did really enjoy this post, but is it just a tiny bit weird how casual he is about repeatedly committing fraud? Not asking for some grand apology (lord knows the crap I did as a kid), but the post is written like defrauding an ISP is just a normal and fine thing to do. Am I off base here?

You must be Gen-Z or younger. Small-time "fraud" antics like this were part of the hacker ethos throughout the 80s and 90s, some highlights being the Anarchist Cookbook, Matthew Broderick changing school records in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Kevin Mitnick as one of the notable poster children of the new era of cyber enforcement crackdowns. Even the word "hacker" meant something a lot different than today where kid…

Suzie changing Dustin's grades in a direct lift from Wargames, right there in the current series of Stranger Things.

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#108

Post by lstamour »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #69
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the beginning, it was a real bell! One bell for 5¢, rung twice for 10¢, and a separate gong sound for 25¢.

There’s a ( very old, by now) Henry Morgan sketch I remember about an expensive long distance call: after an interminable series of dings and bongs, the operator admits that she lost count and has to return the coins so he can try again. (Once they straighten out the funds, there’s a series of about six different operators needed to get the call across the country; all talking to, over, and past each other. “Hello, H…

Track 11 at https://archive.org/details/lp_the-best-of-henry-morgan-exce...

Quite funny! :)

Re: Installing a payphone in my house

#109

Post by 2rsf »

doctor_eval wrote: post #49

I’m not usually nostalgic, but I love everything about that phone line simulator. The case, the dip switches, the font, the model number DLE-200B. Brings back memories of a time long past.

Well, it is an old timer. I spent many days with one in the mid 90's and it wasn't new even then
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