[rescue] ... payphones

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 03:21:48PM -0400, Ethan O'Toole wrote:
>>I've never seen one in the wild either. I just lucked into it on a
>>phone collectors' list a few years back.  It will receive calls but
>>can only dial 800 numbers :(  There's a standard modular jack inside
>>to hook a phone line up to so you don't have to hack up the wiring.
>
>Interesting. That hurts about the 800 part. Maybe you could fake the 
>authentication of the calling card?

Start with: http://come.to/dualbox/   (look down the page for nickle, dime 
and quarter tones).

And then go to: http://www.payphone-directory.org/sounds.html

For various status messages. 

With an ATA and and an asterisk system, you could set up something decent.

As for calling cards, I think the orginal ones did not have you dial directly.
At least the ones I had with a little slot for a dime so you would always have
one if you needed it (for ground start line pay phones).

You would dial 0 ( or if you were out of AT&T coverage an 800 number) and
read the operator your card number. I can't remember that well, it was the 
mid to late 1970's, but at some point it switched over to 
0-area-code-phone-number and then you read you said "credit card" or 
"calling card" and read the operator your number. 

You could also say collect call or person to person call. 

It would be simple to set up an asterisk system to accept 1-800 numbers
and forward them. 0 followed 10 digits could get you a recording asking you
to enter a calling card number which would be ignored before forwarding the
call. 

You could do some validation on a calling number which was area code,
exchange and number, but the exchange was not a valid one, such as 1xx.

So the program would have to look for (pre-expansion area code) 1xx (not
0, 8 or 9, and 4 digits.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
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i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.