i thought i’d start out with this hack while we’re in beta, since it was one of the first ones that really got me interested in the way phones worked and how many consumer electronics can be used for new and educational things. a “red box” was a device that would simulate coins being dropped in to a pay-phone, hence free phone calls for many people until the phone systems changed. the most popular device to modify was a radioshack tone dialer, a simple solder of a 6.5536 mhz crystal was all it took and you could “drop” 5, 10 and 25 cents at a time to make calls.
In reply to the person above, the blue box was a tone generator. It was used to spit out a 2,600 hz tone which was the switch for long distance calls. One could blow this tone during a call, and be left in a limbo of sorts. The next step would be to use the frequencies for dialing numbers, and ‘dial’ the number you wanted.
The most common use was to dial zero, then blow the blue box, and then dial the number you wanted.
my 2 cents.
how can i make my ipod into a redbox? and can i download the tones off the internet?
Could you use DTFM chips for this? As the PCD3312C by Phillips Semiconducters seems quite suitable and cheap… $3
ok i just downloaded the redbox nickel dime and quarter tones and stuck them on my ipod. i went to my local pay phone and tried all of them and i got nothing. i havent triend the blue box method of dialing something then a 2600 tone then dial though. does this need to be done on older phones, or do i need to get the volume right?
Heyaz!
Where do I downlad the actual Red Box Tones?
I may have found somewhere by the time you respond..maybe not…you’d be helping
ANy help info/input would really be kool!
Activist in Kalifornia
PS read Player Piano by Vonnegut :D
Hey, speaking of boxes, does anyone know if the mauve box is real? It sounds too good to be true.
Mauve Phone tap without cutting into a line
That is the definition you are thinking of right?
Well ill just copy paste these bbs files and see if it comes through ok…
/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | How to Build Your Own |
| |
| | /| _ __ |
| | / | |_| | | | | |__ |
| | | | | |_| / |__ |
| __ |
| | _ |
| |__/ / _/ |
| | _/ / |
| |__/ / |
| _________/ |
| |
_________________________/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
____________________________
| Created by Captian Generic |
| With Help from The Genetic |
| Mishap. This File Created |
| November 24th, 1986, 19:08 |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please bear with me, as the construction of this box will seem rather
silly. This box was found in a construction site. Or rather, it found
us at a construction site. We were using a $5 Radio Shack phone out of
a semi-completed office building. One afternoon during a holiday, and
immediately following a storm, we found our bus in shambles. To our
suprise, we also found that one of the phone connections we were tapping
had been draped through a murky puddle. The fact that suprised us even
more was that this line still worked and now posessed some great
capibilities.
Materials:
2 tupperware or similar 8oz contianers
1 small bag earth (dirt) (12oz)
1 pint water
2 lantern batteries
1 nine volt battery
1 battery clip
2 SPST switches
4 ounces of iron shavings
2 polar magnets
5 feet wire
1 set soldering equipment
This is the part you won’t believe. Take the tupperware containers, and
fill them with a mixture of the earth and the iron shavings. Make sure
that the mixture is well done. (*NOTE* for best results, use the sand in
fine ash trays.) Cut the cut the red and green wires and splice the
switches into them. From the switches, solder wire to the magnets.
Connect the red to the + (positive) side of one magnet, and the green to
the – (negative) side of the second magnet. From the other poles of the
magnet, solder wires the battery & clip. Make sure the + (positive) and
– (negative) are correct. Set the nine-volt battery between the two
tupperware containers and place the battery end of the two magnets into
the tupperware. Now connect wire to the two poles of the lantern
battery, and place them in the same containers as the poles of the
magnets/9-volt battery. You are almost done. Finally, add just enough
water to the two pots, and let them sit in the sun and bake like bricks.
at this point, you have a MAUVE BOX.
Explaning and Using What You Have:
The red and green wires have been places into a magnetic field which is
being charged continually be a lantern battery. (It is necessary to
change this battery every one to one and a half months.) This will
literaly pull in the nearest phone conversatiion. (Don’t try this in a
big apartment or dorm.) When the 9-volt battery is connected, this will
now create enough current for the poles of the magnets to reverse
themselves (perhaps you’re seen Mr. Wizard do this. It’s just like with
the soap). At this point, you have a phone transmitting to one (if not
more) of the nearest phones. (Again, if you’re in a dorm, don’t try
this.) I suppose this just accomplishes what a tap would do, but with a
MAUVE BOX, your fingerprints never will show on a terminal or on
someones telephone lines.
Notes and Addendum:
This will only work with a touch-tone phone connected to a phone line.
When the switches are pulled, it’s off your line and into the air. This
is named a MAUVE BOX, becuase this is the most disgusting box, and I find
mauve to be the single most disgusting colour I know of. Also, this file
is for information purposes only. This is not to be used in an illegal
mannar. Perhaps one of these by the pool, sending to your sethe co-author,
accept no
responsibility for your actions with the MAUVE BOX. Thank you…
Its an old file :-)
Its a goofy box, not sure if it works.
Heres a list of most of the boxes and what they do
09. What do all the colored boxes do?
Acrylic Steal Three-Way-Calling, Call Waiting and programmable
Call Forwarding on old 4-wire phone systems
Aqua Drain the voltage of the FBI lock-in-trace/trap-trace
Beige Lineman’s hand set
Black Allows the calling party to not be billed for the call
placed
Blast Phone microphone amplifier
Blotto Supposedly shorts every fone out in the immediate area
Blue Emulate a true operator by seizing a trunk with a 2600hz
tone
Brown Create a party line from 2 phone lines
Bud Tap into your neighbors phone line
Chartreuse Use the electricity from your phone line
Cheese Connect two phones to create a diverter
Chrome Manipulate Traffic Signals by Remote Control
Clear A telephone pickup coil and a small amp used to make free
calls on Fortress Phones
Color Line activated telephone recorder
Copper Cause crosstalk interference on an extender
Crimson Hold button
Dark Re-route outgoing or incoming calls to another phone
Dayglo Connect to your neighbors phone line
Divertor Re-route outgoing or incoming calls to another phone
DLOC Create a party line from 2 phone lines
Gold Dialout router
Green Emulate the Coin Collect, Coin Return, and Ringback tones
Infinity Remotely activated phone tap
Jack Touch-Tone key pad
Light In-use light
Lunch AM transmitter
Magenta Connect a remote phone line to another remote phone line
Mauve Phone tap without cutting into a line
Neon External microphone
Noise Create line noise
Olive External ringer
Party Create a party line from 2 phone lines
Pearl Tone generator
Pink Create a party line from 2 phone lines
Purple Telephone hold button
Rainbow Kill a trace by putting 120v into the phone line (joke)
Razz Tap into your neighbors phone
Red Make free phone calls from pay phones by generating
quarter tones
Rock Add music to your phone line
Scarlet Cause a neighbors phone line to have poor reception
Silver Create the DTMF tones for A, B, C and D
Static Keep the voltage on a phone line high
Switch Add hold, indicator lights, conferencing, etc..
Tan Line activated telephone recorder
Tron Reverse the phase of power to your house, causing your
electric meter to run slower
TV Cable “See” sound waves on your TV
Urine Create a capacitative disturbance between the ring and
tip wires in another’s telephone headset
Violet Keep a payphone from hanging up
White Portable DTMF keypad
Yellow Add an extension phone
That blotto box needs 20 hz put into the line if you are planning on making it.
mirror | http://web.archive.org/web/20040614212052/http://www.phonelosers.org/redboxtonedial.html
Hie my name is greg ive some computer knowledge
and I have always been interested in the world of Hacking, Ive seen Hackers and a few other movies. I am only 17 and I want to know if there is a place where I can buy books on Hacking.
Does anyone know how to make a box that will make all the phones ring in someones (my) house ?
I read that all you need is about 90v ac and some HZ…somewhere between 20 and 40 hz
Cant find anything on “HOW TO DO IT,” only “how its done.”
-Thanks
OK, but…where can I download just the
TONES
for say..Nickel..Quarter…
( or are tones obsolete now ??)
tones arent obsolete. try phonelosers.org that is where i got my red box sound files.
now to see if i can make something like this for uk phone boxes… even though they are praticly non existant these days, with mobile phones and all that………
http://www.compuforums.org/
i’m lookin for a hack for infinity phone card can anyone please help?
Can you still break busy lines using a 2600 tone from a blue box. Powerdialers are F&^%ing worthless. I need to break into busy signals. If anyone on here can build me something to hack into a system and act like an operator to bypass busy signals I would pay a good sum of money. If anyone knows where I can get this email me. It will be worth your while.
I might be able to help you out. I know an old phreaker from way back ive bought 2 signal jammers from him and some incredible radar detector jammers that can send back a reduced speed signature. I know his passion phreak hacks and he specializes in building hardware shoot an email if you want me to put you in touch. Cheers..
-Rick-
How would someone tap into your phone line and make calls for free and when they do your personal phone number shows up? I was told my phone was tapped from the phone company’s line at the pole.
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
Damn, it’s hard to believe that this is the oldest post on this site.
Good article dude Thank you
First!
…wait…
First for September 5th 2004
Third!
…this year.
LAST POST!!!!
yes i know this isnt a relevant post to anything
but i just “went through” 1030 pages of hackaday content to reach the first post
as of august 3rd 2011, we have http://hackaday.com/page/1030/ 1030 pages!
Don’t wake up the dead!
Good grief! How things have changed! This thread reads like every ph / hack newsgroup / list ever! “How do I access The Matrix, can pay $$$$!”
the 10 year anniversary has passed on this one, i’m not sure what that means in relation to the amount of time i’ve browsed the articles and actually built very little but it gives me reason to change more than the time investment in reading had.
who’s reading this in 2016!
Checking out hackaday. Always want to see how organized, accessible, searchable, and archived a site is.
Me! I found this post on hackaday.soup.io , while googling for Adafruit’s Phil Torrone hahahahahaha
2017 now, on page 3517
I just want to post a comment here “to be part of ” the HackADay legacy…
I am not sure how I found out about HaD, or when I made my first comment…
Maybe HaD was mentioned on another site I frequently visited, like Evil Mad Scientist or somewhere.
5/24/2018
Been resing Hackaday off and on for years now. Finally decided to find the earliest post on the site. As of today the url for it is https://hackaday.com/blog/page/4216/. 4216 pages. Keep up the good work, guys!
I like reading hackaday and decided to track down the first post haha. As of today HAD is at page 4384. Nice going guys!
Page 4447, reporting in!
page 4526.
Why are we all looking for the oldest blogpost?
I wasn’t… I was looking at the latest post (February 8, 2019) and there was a link to this! I’m a sucker for links!!!
Page 5109 in 2020 ftw! Regular reader since 2006. Keep up the good work HaD!
5194 reporting in :)
it jumped so much its 5403 now!
5539 on the first day of 2021!
5594 2/10/2021
6281 in 2022
6889 on 2023-09-13
“greg says:
September 6, 2005 at 3:55 pm
Hie my name is greg ive some computer knowledge
and I have always been interested in the world of Hacking, Ive seen Hackers and a few other movies. I am only 17 and I want to know if there is a place where I can buy books on Hacking.”
Books! Christ!!! I suppose they were a thing back then. But I guess greg is now 33 years old, I wonder what happened, did he become a computer programmer when he grew up?
Page 5233 and counting….
Feel like I found a time capsule, fun link from the Red Box article see you again in 20 years.
Ah, the infamous Red Box! I remember when RadioShack used to carry it. For those who don’t know, the Red Box was a tone generator device used to manipulate phone systems, allowing people to make free long-distance calls by mimicking the tones used by payphones. It’s crazy to think about how much technology has evolved since then. At the time, it was pretty revolutionary for those who understood how it worked! Definitely a piece of tech history! Brightrs
Guess I’m the first to read this in 2025
The closest I came to -boxing back in the day was the payphone pick-up-the-receiver-during-first-ring collect call trick. Before ubiquitous mobile/cell, this was handy for chatting up my wife on the cheap when work repeatedly took me to the same city.