> >
> >Weren't they called blue boxes? Or was that something else?
>
> Ah, boxen. I have a beige box (aka lineman's handset) here at home that I
> built myself. I read a bunch about the other colours of boxen but never
> really did much with them. The Whacked Mac archives used to have a load
of
> .txts about boxen, how to build each one, and what they all did.
Jobs and Wozinak were actually busted for making and selling blue boxes.
These little numbers generated a vartiey of tones (most notouriously 2600Hz)
which would control the interoffice trunks used by the phone company for
long distance calling. True "geek" types would use them to play all sorts of
neat tricks on the phone system, though most were owned by malicious idiot
types who used them merely for the free calls. When electronic switching was
introduced, Bell changed the signalling scheme and blue boxing no longer
worked with in the States. In the 90's you could still blue box some
international truck lines (accessable through 1800 "country direct" numbers)
and this may still work today, though I never tried.
I too have a homemade beige box sitting on the top shelf of my wardrobe,
along with my violet box, though neither really gets out that much anymore.
Cheers,
Adam.
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