You will need:

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.

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.

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.

Ever since the original Rat Shack Red Box mod was printed in 2600 Magazine, there has been an explosion in red box use. Red boxing is still one of the primary topics of discussion on alt.2600 years later. The Radio Shack Tone Dialer mod was one of the first boxes I ever built and has proven to be the most useful of all the boxes I've experimented with.

For years, though, I've played with the original design in order to improve it. My favorate variation of the original plans is what I call the Stealth- Combo box. It is based on the original design, but makes use of mercury switches to allow the use of both DTMF's and ACTS tones. In other words it combines the functions of the red and white boxes.

The reason its called 'stealth' is the fact that when the dialer is held in its normal position, it will produce touchtones as if it were un-modded. When held 'upside-down' it is capable of producing tones similar to the Bell ACTS tones that emulate a quarter being dropped into a payphone. This design not only gives you both features, but leaves the box looking and seemingly acting 'normal'.

Following are the complete steps to building the Stealth-Combo box that I demonstrated at the Denver 2600 meetings. These instructions assume that you have some experience working with electronics. If you don't, pracitice a bit before you go cutting up your $30 tone dialer.

• 1. Disconnect your PC, monitor, sound blaster, speakers, modem (if you're red boxing to a data line), and red boxing program and carry it all over to the nearest 7-Eleven.

• 2. At most of the 7-Eleven's I've been at, there's an AC outlet somewhere out- side of the store. Plug all of your equipment in and turn it on. If there's no outside outlet, then ask the cashier if you can borrow their orange extension cord for a little while, explaining the you're from the Pay Phone Repair Department. To make it more believable, wear a shirt that says, "Pay Phone Repair Department."

• 3. After you have all of your equipment set up and Blue Beep running, pick up the phone and dial 1+AREA CODE+NUMBER. When it asks you to deposit your money, hit the 25 cents key on your program and hold the speakers up to the pay phone's mouthpiece. Continue this until you've put in enough money.

• 4. If it's a data transmission, quickly attach your accoustic coupler and run your Q-Modem program and try and connect before it hangs up. Note that you will have to call back this system every 1 minute as the pay phone mutes your sound while the "money" you put in registers.

Privately Owned pay phones are those ugly phones with some kind of generic logo on them that means some old fat local guy owns it and convinces innocent store owners to install his phone instead of a Bell phone, promising him bigger profits. Not a hard promise to keep, considering a local call sometimes costs 75 cents, they sometimes won't let you dial toll free numbers and long distance rates are twice as high (or more) than AT&T which is pretty bad. The best thing to do when you find a Private pay phone is to squirt a lot of ketchup or mustard into the coin slot and find a Bell/GTE phone somewhere.

You'll hear a click, then a computer voice will say, "Please deposit $2.85." (The exact amount differs with the location and time of day.) Mutter, "Fuck you, AT&T..." to yourself, switch on your red box, hold the speaker of the red box flush with the mouthpiece of the pay phone and press P1 for your quarters. Pause for a split second in between each quarter because if you go too fast, you'll get a live operator wanting to know what the problem is. You are able to go 20 cents over the amount requested and that will be credited to your call.

After you've put in enough "money", the computerized voice will say in a cheerful, unsuspecting voice, "Thank you for using AT&T!" and your call is put through. Every few minutes the voice will come back and ask for more money.

Dial 011-COUNTRY CODE-CITY CODE-PHONE NUMBER. An operator will ask you how you want to bill your call. Tell her you'll be using the spare change you make as a waiter and MoogooGuawkcaMeemay's Chineese restaurant to pay for your call. For best results, don't do this:

OPERATOR: "Okay, sir, please deposit your money now..."

YOU: "Okay, ma'am, I'm going to use nickels...(beep)...That was one nickel. Did you get that alright? Okay, here's my second nickel...(beep)...okay, there's two nickels, that makes 10 cents. How much more to go? $9.10? Okay...(beep)...I'm up to 15 cents now, right? Okay, good...(beep)... alright, there's another one...Hey, here's a penny on the ground! Can I use a penny? No? Okay, here goes lucky nickel number five...(beep)...did you get that? Okay....etc, etc, etc."

The call will be completed like this: The operator will tell you that the call will cost (for example) $7.35. She'll tell you to deposit $3.00, you red box three dollars to her and she connects the call. When the overseas person answers the phone she'll say, "This is the United States AT&T operator, I have an international call for you, could you please hold while billing is completed?" Then the operator will ask you for another $3.00 and then the remaining $1.35. After all that you'll be connected only to be inturrupted every three minutes by an operator asking for more money.

If you don't want the person you are calling to know you're calling with coins, you can ask the operator if you can deposit all your money right now and then be connected overseas. They don't like to do this (because you could lose all your "money" if they're not home) but they will do it if you ask.

Make sure after your call connects that you hear the operator click off. Some operators are nosey and will just sit there listening to your conversation. Once I was explaining to a friend how I placed my call and suddenly the operator starts lecturing me and telling me she's going to call security on me. (And this was about three minutes into the conversation!)

In some cities I've noticed you can trick pay phones into thinking that a local call is actually a long distance call by dialing 10288 before you dial the local number. So try dialing 10288 or 102881 before you make your local call and maybe you won't have to deal with that pesky operator. The only downside of doing this is that the call will "cost" more and you'll be inturrupted every five minutes to deposit more money.

The "tone" is 1700 hz and 2200 hz mixed together.

If you're really desperate for money, you can sell phone calls to people. Hang around a phone and tell someone who's about to make a call that you'll give them a free call if they'll give you a quarter. This usually impresses the hell out of any ordinary person. If you live in a big city, you can go to the tourist section of town and sell long distance discount calls to out of state tourists. Consider yourselves warned, though, I've read a LOT of articles on people getting busted for doing this. One article even had a picture of a guy in an airport selling calls to people comming off the plane.

If an operator confronts you and says, "Hey, you're not really putting in coins, that's a recording!" don't get all nervous and run from the pay phone. She'll lie and tell you that security is on the way to the pay phone to put you in jail but she's full of it. Instead, piss her off by explaining to her in detail exactly what you're doing and how you're doing it. If she gets an attitude with you, ask to speak with her supervisor or Service Asisstant. This pisses her off to no end. When connected with the supervisor, tell her exactly what you think of her and the company she works for. The worse thing they can really do is shut off the pay phone.

1."Well, son, your toy doesn't seem to be working today. Why don't you try paying for your call instead?" -Hollywood, CA

2."What'd you do, record those tones on the train tracks?" - my friend got this response when trying to use a very poor quality cassette of red box tones in Wood River, IL

3."(sigh) Well, I'll put your call through, but next time I want you to pay real money for your call, okay?" -Galveston, TX

4."That's it! I'm sick of you kids, I'm calling security right now!" -Cincinnati, OH

5."You know you'll go to hell for stealing..." -Portland, OR

6."I wish I could go over there right now and strangle that kid." -I overheard an operator in Seattle say this to her supervisor after they thought I had hung up the phone.

7."Okay, hold on while I turn you in to security." - Indianapolis, Indiana (What are they going to do, arrest me over the phone??)

If you have any questions about your wonderful, new hobby, you're having any kind of troubles or you have an operator quote to add to the above list, feel free to contact me, RedBoxChiliPepper.