Does redboxing still work?

[MIB]

The thread title says it all.

If it still works can't you just upload the redbox tones to your mp3 player and use that as a redbox?
This can be an alternative to modifying a tone dialer.

MIB

[z09]

Yeah it works many people claims it doesn't though.  You just have to find a phone without a muted headset.  Thoes are usually Bell or GTE phones.  And yes I use my ipod for redboxing so an MP3 player would work.

[murd0c]

Yes, intralata calls are somewhat redboxable depending on the phone's firmware. Interlata calls are NOT redboxable anymore, sorry.

[rbcp]

It's too bad red boxing isn't as prominent as it used to be.  Then I could be like, "In MY DAY we had to have soldering skills to be able to make red box calls!"  And I could all wave my cane around menacingly.

It would be cool to be able to use your cell phone or ipod as a red box, though.  My cell phone has redbox ringtones.

[I-baLL]

It's all really weird. One guy I know is writing an-depth post about the current state of redboxing and payphones in general. But we're all finding out that there's a lot of weirdness out there now. I'll drop a hint and say that those muted handsets aren't exactly muted.

[z09]

No, I am prety sure they are muted.  What do you mean by that?

[badakku]

I have heard you can take the speaker equivolent of an inductive microphone style rig, and blast the tones into those muted mics anyways. Doesnt seem like that great of an idea although.

[Colonel Panic]

In this day & age, you're still trying to steal calls from payphones?

There was an article in 2600 a couple years ago about how to use your redbox along with a little bit of social engineering to fool the long-distance operator into thinking you'd deposited coins. That might be workable if you're charming or clever enough.

Nowadays though, I think you'd have to use a beigebox to connect to the payphone's red & green wires, then use your redbox on that.

I think there was some recent news about Ameritech (Northern IL telco) withdrawing from the payhone market altogether. Anyone know if that's true?

[DevilBoy]

There was actually an article in the recent issue of 2600 about redboxing.

[Colonel Panic]

wow. hadta open up the Magnifier for that one.

But thanks! Nice article, and there are some good links in there.

Espacially ElJefe's Payphone Project. I had no idea that site was still even being maintained!

[lemoncurry69]

This may have already been covered, but you can use sound editing applications like Cool Edit Pro to generate tones.  I just whipped up some tones using Audacity (freeware).  I haven't tried them yet.  I will burn them to a CD and try it soon.  I imagine they should work much better than tones recorded from a payphone or a modified pocket dialer as the quality is much better and they are exactly 33ms on, 33ms off.

[I-baLL]

It's all really weird. One guy I know is writing an-depth post about the current state of redboxing and payphones in general. But we're all finding out that there's a lot of weirdness out there now. I'll drop a hint and say that those muted handsets aren't exactly muted.

I'm an idiot. The "muted handsets aren't exactly muted" is wrong. 

[computerwiz_222]

Ya, the aren't exactly muted is way off. Why would the telco give us a chance to even try to blast them into the phone. There is probably a relay that completely disconnects the microhone.

[Saint]

I read somewhere in probaby 98 or 99, that the payphone simply didn't provide power to the handset mic, but that you could rig something up where you provided power from a 9v battery.  The power would be supplied via aligator clips placed on wires that could be accessed by cutting away the blue rubbery stuff. 



Don't know if that's still the case though.

[rbcp]

Here's a couple old articles from my red boxing page related to the supposed death of red boxing.

http://www.phonelosers.org/article_red_boxing_dead.html

http://www.att.com/news/2002/06/05-10539