Hello, everybody. This is Shane. arm and row. You’re in the passenger seat with me. passenger seat radio.
It is June 20.. It’s Wednesday. You’re on my 13 mile commute home. Welcome to the show.
Hey, now. Hey, now. Hey, now. Time to go home. It’s mid week. hump week. hump day is over. And we’re on the countdown to the weekend coming at you. And number four is lost in love by air supply.
Yes, this long distance dedication goes down to Tommy anyway. Um, so yeah, I’m
going to try to get back to the I’m going to try to get over to the eyeglass place my palm interest I had I wore my contacts too long
and I wanted to claw my eyes out. I ended up taking them out and
I took them out overnights and then
what’s the hell is that? license plates? Say
late man Mandel Mandalay lado, manda lado I get the feeling we’re supposed to be seeing Manilow here but it says ma n i l eight w man maybe that’s supposed to be an Oh man. Hello?
Huh? I guess he is ready to take a chance again. Dog. Mom. That’s the sticker that’s on the back. I my phone is being used right now. I take a picture because I could snap it off on my my dash cam oh hey.. What happened on the channel here. vallas here Michael Hummers here will be is here channels filling up
me who so
I’m always like going? I don’t think it was going anywhere I was droning on. And
yeah, so
yeah, weekends coming. My wife is out of town. She’s Oh my. I know what I was doing. And I was complaining about my eyes. So hey, Travis. So I took the contacts out overnight, which usually does the trick. And I put him in the next day and went to work. And all day long, I was clawing at my eyes. I mean, it was just terrible. So
I’ve got my contacts out now. So I’ve got my old glasses on for like seven years ago. And
the nose
piece has like a little chip in the plastic. So it literally like choose into the side of my nose just sucks. So I’m going to try to swing by the optometrist and get him to replace my nose pieces. So that I can actually wear these for a day or two about having this piece of plastic chewing into the side of my nose.
But anyway, so I was in touch with an old friend
in Wenatchee actually my friend, john Barta. He was the guy that I told you,
when I was when I was a kid, when I was like, 1415, somewhere in that age group,
we had a have to go back a little bit here, we had a user’s group meeting, there’s something now they still have these, I found out, but back in the old days,
enthusiasts
of electronics like Commodore 64, trs 80, or cocoa or whatever, we have these dedicated user groups, there were a lot of fun,
I mean, the internet and Skype and all that sort of killed this. But it was really cool. Like, once a month, in the, in the, in the conference room of the local library, a bunch of like minded people would get together and we would have a user’s group meeting, we have some keynote speakers. So you know,
sort of talking about the latest cracking software, the latest game,
and so we’d have some sort sort of a formal kind of thing at the beginning. And it was sort of open, you know, kind of an open forum type scenario where the traffic’s really bad. And I don’t know why
everyone’s just come to a halt here. It’s terrible.
But anyway, then it would turn usually turn into this big coffee party, right? You’d be copying Commodore 64 all all rest of the night. But anyway, so I met a lot of
a lot of people, adults, you know, I was like, 1415, I ran this, this commoners users group. And, you know, I was like, 1415, maybe I was older. Maybe I was a year or two older than that. But I was young. And we have these bulletin board system, pizza parties, we had all this stuff going on. Well as a kid in the early 80s, you know, being a computer nerd and liking video games and. Like that was obviously not, I’m not chick material. So, you know, if that’s what you were into, you know, you’re kind of friendless. The good news is, is that adult males were the right demographic for that. And so. JOHN BARDA and a handful of other guys
were sort of my sort of my Commodore dad’s, you know, so BARDA, like I was telling you before, you know, Bardot had like four Commodore 64 setup. He had one connected to his house doing x 10
, he had one that ran a sprinkler system, he had, you know,
a dedicated one for he and his wife. They both had their own dedicated Commodore 64 this was the guy that had like the first single spin CD ROM drive that I ever saw you know he was he moved on to you know, to 86 or something when I went to a mega or it’s
going to go to a mega anyway, so I met a lot of great guys now if you think about it today, right? 14 1516
year old kid hanging around with a bunch of grown men alone it you know, I went over to my house over barges house, like every weekend, you know, how creepy does that sound? If it were today, you know, anyway, once it was like, 16 is your so when I had a car and I could get around it made me a little more mobile.
And one of the guys that used to come to the users group meeting was a friend of John’s
and he was sort of like, maybe, Mike My memory is probably slightly tainted, but I seem to think of him as sort of like a lady sky like a quagmire, you know, oh, yeah,
because he’d been divorced. You know,
he had he, he’d been divorced before I got to him. And I think it was because he was into, you know, what he was really into the musical aspects of technology. So, you know, he had like, the big Roland keyboard, he had a MIDI, you know, maybe interface for his computer the whole bit. So, he was really into music, but I always got the feeling, you know, we kind of had the bachelor pad and, and, you know, he always he always dress nice, and he was a, you know, he’s a good dude. But he was also sort of a techie.
There was a whole bunch of these guys that kind of floated in these circles. Ryan Weiss was one of them. He worked at the Liberty video now, Liberty video, Liberty was at Liberty. He worked on some TV and VCR repair shop, which I always wondered how the that ended up turning out because nobody has their VCR don’t have users anymore,
but they don’t have their TVs fix a throwaway and get new ones that can be really for that business. But
anyway, he was one of the he was the guy that sold me my first 1541 district. I digress. So this other guy, this this guy that was more musically inclined his name, he had a cool name, his name was Milo Mira belly.
And I always thought that sounded like a player named Milo, you know, but anyway, so he came to the users group maybe once or twice, probably three or four times a year. It wasn’t in every every month sort of thing.
But anyway, so he was one of the very first people
to get into Commodore Amiga. Now, you know, if you weren’t an adult with money. You weren’t gonna afford an Amiga back then. But
BARDA had moved out of Commodore. Hey, sketch, craft. What’s up, man? So.
So john, and moved out of Commodore. So we had a lot less to talk about. He was busy running, you know, das 3.22. And,
and I was looking to, I mean, I stayed with Commodore. I was still on the 128. And, you know,
I was looking to go to a meeting, but I couldn’t afford it. And Milo had reached out to one of the users group meetings he’d come to, and he said that he had,
he had moved from the Commodore 64 up to the Amiga, and I’m like, dude, I am so jealous. There’s one place in town, one place in town that actually sold amigos and it was up I was in East Wenatchee it was up like on the hill, it was out of this little sort of an outlet strip mall. And the guy was kind of cool is sort of had a Doc Brown look going on, but
they had like an Amiga on display. And you could go see defender of the crown and micro illusions fairy tale. And it was like, amazing. And I and I kept telling my mom, you know, my mom kept asking me why computer graphics had to look so, basically, you know, why can’t they look real? And it’s
like, Mom, they’ve got a computer that does that. I just can’t afford it. You know, my wife. My, my mom was poor, and my family was poor, so we wasn’t getting any Amiga anytime soon. So when Milo said, Hey, why don’t you come over this weekend? And we’ll play on the Amiga. I’m like, yeah.
So I would go over to his place. I went over to his place, I don’t know, two or three different times. It was it was a trip. I mean, I lived
on the south end when he he lived in sunny, Sunny slope, which was, you know, it was like, four miles away. But that’s like, all the way through town.
So it was a decent trip, Matt like Detroit. Sounds Mind you, but going out to my list house was was a track,
but I remember going out there. And this was like, the first time
I saw an Amiga that wasn’t sitting on a demo. Yeah, something that you could literally like, put your hands on and mess with it. And like I said, he was really big into music. And so. So he, you know,
he has me over and it’s weird. You know, they must have been, I think it was about Bart his age. So it must have been, he must be about 35 ish, right. Early 30s. Anyway, so we went in, and he had
his, so of course, he had his Amiga hooked into a stereo, right. And, of
course, he had a nice stereo because he was into music
and he’s like,, you’re not gonna he. It’s like, he was a kid, you know, like he’d gotten a piece of candy or a walk a chocolate bar you know, he was always when you see that this is a unbelievable, you’re gonna lose your mind or your lose your mind. And, you know, and he wasn’t usually one of those sort of, you know, rigorous sorta, guys, but he was a, this is, this is all you’re gonna lose your mind, you’re gonna lose your mind. And so, he had an Amiga 1000, right. This was back when the media first came out, and how much was the Amiga and how, let’s see him. I see. How much was the Megan? How much for games. Alright, so you got understand. This was the Amiga 1000. And it was like, you know, it had like, 256 K of RAM. It was like one of the very early models, one floppy drive detachable keyboard, and I think it was somewhere around I want to say it was, it was over 2000, $2,000
for that thing. It might have been a little cheaper. I don’t, I don’t recall. But it was, it was out of the price range of mortals. You know what I’m saying?
But, you know, this guy was single, he had a decent gig. I think he was an architect or something. I have to ask john. Next time I talk to what Milo did, but like I say, it was really good, dude.
And so he’s like, you’re not gonna believe this. This is unbelievable. And for him to get all excited. This had to be something big. So I thought he was gonna, you know, show me some games that have already seen like, defender of the crown. These games were like, regular price, they were like 60 bucks or something, you know, defender the crown might have been cheaper might have been 4999 for games back then. I don’t recall. But anyway, so uh, so I’m thinking he’s going to show me this game or something. And of course, in these days, he had, he had a single floppy drive, which is a huge pain in the and Eb days and so, uh, so when you first turned on the Amiga 1000, I’m going to share some some old school tech with you.
The Amiga 1000 did not have a bias or they called it a kickstart, but it was really a BIOS. So when you turn on your computer like your PC, right now, there’s a BIOS, they actually sort of kick starts the computer right before it loads windows before it does anything to the hard disk. it boots up a little bit. It gives you access to some configuration, the BIOS
so the Amiga didn’t have that yet,
so the BIOS was actually its own floppy. So with a second you turned on the Amiga 1000 a little hand was there with a graphic that showed a kickstart disk so you’d put the kickstart Diskin and it would bootstrap like you know booting up from the BIOS and as soon as the BIOS boot it would immediately show you another hand telling you to put the operating system Diskin or workbench was the name of the operating system she put the workbench Diskin right and then it would boot to its UI and you know the end mega was amazing it was so ahead of its time in so many different ways you’ve heard me talk a million times about it but it was a preemptive multitasking operating system back when you know PCs weren’t doing
but I don’t want to digress too far. So
the problem is is like if anybody actually ever used old dos based flop ease right there was a whole bunch of floppy swapping out nonsense that had to go on right so you stick your workbench Diskin
and it would boot to the UI
then you would take the disc out and put in your program disk and then you would open that floppy up run a program from that floppy and it would immediately say and certainly workbench determine what the so you take the discount you put the workbench disk and and access is some library file then in the meantime he says okay put back in this other disk that you just had it in there so you take out the workbench desk you put the other disc in click click click click you would chew on for a second and we need some other library Please insert your workbench this candy jack pull it out but the workbench this back in Click, click click but the other dispatching it. But of course, you know, one of the floppy drive was like 200 bucks. You know, you could barely afford the Amiga let alone another floppy drive to floppy drives was you know, like being let out of jail.
So he puts this disc in and something shows up, you know, when you put the disc in and automatically reads it and it pops up this little icon that shows what’s on the disk.
And so the disc he put in it, said the word Sonics on I had no clue what the hell Sonics was. So he opens up the desk and he runs the main program. Of course, you know, 50 million years later, 10 dis swaps, this interface comes up, which looks like a sheet of music like Oh, cool. It’s a music program. Sweet. Let’s see what this what’s going on. So I remember him going up and, you know, hits file open and and
I start seeing all these songs that I know. You know, usually with computer music as. You don’t know what some original composition blah blah blah yak, yak yak, who gives a.
But in this case, I was seeing songs that I knew. Axel? f Ghostbusters. You know,
something else. It was like a whole bunch of titles. I knew. And I’m like, dude, no way. He’s like, Yeah, why do you hear that.
And so the first thing he loads up is Ghostbusters, right? And so he clicks it. And, you know, there’s, you know, some more disk swapping going on more nonsense. And after loads, all the sudden the page fills with, you know, musical notes and collapse all those and, and I’m like, whoa.
I mean, I’ve never I mean, come over 64 had music apps to but you had like, you know, very primitive yet. Sin player. You know what I’m saying? Hey, Alex. What’s up yet? Sid,
players you could do like three notes. And then some sort of a white noise generator. But nothing looked like this. This looked like a sheet of music. And I’m like, it’s gonna it’s gonna play that sheet music. This is insane. Now,
okay. So What year are we talking about
here? We’re talking about like, 1984 for you to put a good perspective on the date in technology in this thing. And so he loads You know, he gets this thing loaded up in the sheet. Music appears. I’m going Whoa, dude. He’s like, you’re ready for this. I’m like, yeah. And he’s like, Don’t say anything. lay back. Close your eyes. Of course, that could have gone way different. Just lay back, close your eyes. And listen, I’m like, Okay, I’m ready.
And so I could hear him, you know, turn the knob up on the stereo.
And then I hear you know, the mouse click, click, click, click. Next thing
I hear, you know, is this you know, you know, Dan, and it sounded like, it sounded like a real song. I mean, Commodore 64 stuff sounded good. But it sounded like a synthesized piece of music. This sounded like real instruments. So like
a real song. And you’re going, dude, what the hell you know.
And then as you know, after that, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. And all of a sudden these drums pick literally drums. I’m not talking about Snow White noise.. It was like,
and I’m like, What? I was blown
away. I mean, if that chair and we’ve been able to move, I would have been blown out of the chair. It was the coolest thing ever. And then the rest of the song was playing. And I’m like, holy. This is the future man
and I opened my eyes and I’m watching the Amiga. actually highlight the notes as it goes, you know,
and it’s playing that it’s playing the song and you can see each of the notes you can see the drums play
on believable and then you know, and then like, after Ghostbusters over, he’s like, Now check this out. And he puts on Axel F.
It’s, it sounds like x 11. You know, in Commodore 64 land.
We had the synthesizer stuff, which is great. Don’t get me wrong. But, you know, even in even in the late Commodore 64 days, digitized sound and music was practically unheard of. Right. I remember this little electronic device called the digital Dan was made for the Commodore 64 rumor on the street has it that there was only like, 100 of these things. The guy made it out of his basement or some. Right?
And this was a cartridge you plugged into your Commodore 64. Now listen, you got it. You got it. You got to go back. You got to go way back to early 80s and go way back to this Commodore 64 that had, you know, 32 kilobytes of free space right nowadays we sample entire songs we do mp3 you know we record full albums and it’s a I think the us you know 40 Meg’s have some mp3 file. No problem.
Yeah. Now Hey, JK, what’s up? Welcome to the live show.
But you know, this Commodore 64 Digital Dan cartridge, you could plug in like an RCA audio cable. And you would load the software actually got a copy of the software at some point. Eventually, I never got a piece of the hardware. But I got the software so I can see exactly what the interface look like. And it was nothing. It was like, you know, record playback exit. That was the whole interface.
But this digital sound files that you recorded with digital Dan can be played back on any Commodore 64, right? So
this digital, Dan would allow a Commodore 64 to sample about six seconds of digital audio in the worst possible quality you can imagine. So take an mp3 take away free, take an mp3, download it up into some sound editor re sampling down to like eight eight kilohertz,
right? Take it down to like eight K. That’s what the digital band audio file sounded like. And these audio files for six seconds took an entire floppy disk. You could put nothing else on the disk. But this digital band fine. Anyway, the digital after you had the recording, you can export it to a disk and it would set up a single executable, you would load and run the executable it would play for six seconds, then go to this digital landscape and you push the spacebar it plays the six seconds. Again, it goes back to the digital band screen. It was truly like the most amazing thing ever. Right.
Well, the Amiga, you know, for those of you who are into the lore, that thing didn’t just have, you know, the three voices and in the way the white noise and all that it could literally play recorded samples. And it was awesome. And they’ll what the, the music that these got out of this machine was insane. This was before you know, the mod format, you know, the the tracker mod format, this was way before that this was a this, like I said the product was called Sonics, and you could actually go and look it up on YouTube, Amiga Sonics, and Salonika eventually got bought by a company called ages. And I believe it got renamed to sonic, sonic ages or something like that. They got renamed to something else. So you might have trouble finding it in the original name of Sonics, but it just blew me away. And it’s like, I can’t believe they’re out there buying black and white machines for, you know, five grand, it can’t do any of this. None. None. None. None of it.
Anyway, so
I was blown away. It was my first real hands on with an Amiga for real, you know, not just some demo machine, but actually getting to see it, touch it and play with it, and Milo is a really good guy, Milo. Also, as a side note, Milo, because he moved to Amiga happened to him. He was a big Commodore 64 guy, right. So he had a couple of Commodore 64, and he had a couple of the highly coveted 1702 monitors, which, if you were any sort of real common or a purist, you had 1702 monitors, they were the best of the best. They were made by JV See, things lasted forever. In fact, I often tell the story about the camera shop in the East Wenatchee mall
that had
a video camera pointed outside of the front window, and it like it was like, you know,
it was showing out to the 1702 monitor. And that that was there for probably 15 years. Every time I’d come back from the Navy on leave, or whatever, that was like a pinnacle piece of it. It was always the same 1702 it had been, you know that you got to figure the guy was open 1012 hours a day, that machine ran six, seven days a week, 12 hours a day for 15 years, never had a problem was still there. I’ve got 17 new tools in my shed that or God knows how long and they all still work. It’s simply phenomenal how they built that for 1702
was it you know, that’s what you had if you had a Commodore 64, and you were serious about him,
and also had the benefit of being pal capable to which was awesome. But I
digress.
So Milo
allowed gave me the great privilege of loaning me a 1702 monitor, because what I had going on at that point in time was I had a computer 128, which I had a bomb, it was the 1802 was the 1802, the Amiga monitor was at the monitor, because there was one monitor that would let you do at column text mode,
and the 1702 could do it. But it was very, very hard to see there was a little higher resolution monitor that the 128 could use, I want to say 1802, but that doesn’t sound right. That sounds like the Amiga monitor. But anyway,
so I also had a Commodore 64 as well as the 128, so he loaned me one of his 17 Oh tues
so that I can have both machines set up side by side and have them both on at the same time. So this
the 60, while I was on the Commodore 128, I would have the Commodore 64 copying games or I would have it playing Sid music, whatever. Ya know, it was sort of my background entertainment system. So anyway,
so those of you who are looking longtime listeners know the story about
what was going on at that point in time. And I’ll give you a quick recap. My parents had purchased a piece of property in South Wenatchee that had this little tiny red house on it. And this bigger house that had been destroyed inside by a fire. My dad was a general contractor. So he would, they bought this property and moved into the red house. And essentially we’re going to fix up what we call the gray houses Brown. Now we’re going to fix up the grey house. And once it was suitable for, you know, anybody to live in it, you know, a bathroom and a bedroom, I would move in there while they were finishing construction. So that’s where I was, I was in that area, and I was in that house and I had all my. You know, I had a CD player back then I had lots of movies I had to VCR, plus the digital copy box I was talking about. I had a really, really well tricked out room.
And of course, I had the Commodore 128, the Commodore 64 and the monitors everything else. Well, one day my house was robbed, they came in through the window and they cleaned that room out. Now based on everything I can consider. It has to have been an inside job. I mean somebody I knew this wasn’t a random act you couldn’t see in the windows.
There was a very short period of time when there was nobody home at the other house and my friend and my immuno my friend Troy who lived there with me, we were both out of the place. So yeah, it had to have been a very well planned deal.
Well, fortunately, my parents were insured
so after the deductible was matter, whatever what return was done on the room was about I remember it being $1,000 just under $1,000. And $1,000
was not even close to replacing what was in that room. Not even close.
certainly wasn’t gonna buy me another 128 it wasn’t gonna buy me another CD player wasn’t gonna buy me you know, it’s gonna buy me like a computer and a monitor. That’s
what I was going to get. And one floppy drive. That was all I was going to get out of that brand. You know what I’m saying? The worst part of all, of course, was that one of the seven one of the monitors, the 1702 didn’t belong to me to begin with. It was Milo’s and
I told my parents you know my parents said listen you’re going to have to do right and you’re going to have to buy my low new monitor before you buy your at 17 Oh tues were cheap. You know, and there were no used 1702 is you couldn’t just go up to eBay and get one sentience couple of days, I had to pay full price, which if I remember, right, was 299 bucks at the time to replace the monitor.
And I do you believe it at some point. I found out later that Milo I told my parents, you know, it’s no big deal. He didn’t miss the monitor, whatever. And it’d be, you know, it came down to a learning opportunity for me to make good on, you know, I borrowed something, something happened to it. And, you know, Judge Judy would have said, I was responsible. So I was responsible, and I had to replace that before I got to replace any of my stuff.
And that hurt, you know,
it hurt a lot. But, you know, that’s, that’s what you do. And I learned a valuable lesson, because
So anyway, no, nothing was ever recovered. I lost everything. I kept an eye on the papers, looking for people selling it a yard sales or whatever.
And
yeah,
so anyway,
wow, this Milo talk. Well, I
was speaking with john over the weekend. And it turns out that Milo had passed away, he died. And, and I got to thinking about, you know, the,
the friendship that I had with with him, and that, you know, I hadn’t really kept in touch, you know, there was the, you know, there was no
internet, there was no Facebook, there was none of that nonsense. And, and, you know,
there was a phone call here I was in the Navy, I do believe I saw him once, when I was back on leave. And when actually from being on leave, I did go out and see him once or twice, but it made me sad. You know, this guy was part of some really, really good memories, some really pivotal, pivotal moments
in my past, and my childhood, you know, so, you know,
he was gone, and I felt bad, I didn’t even know about it. I think he died a few months back, and I didn’t hear about it. And nobody told me and I felt bad. And, you know, I mean, I don’t think I would have probably gone for the funeral or anything, but it’s like, you know, it’s a you know, it’s, it’s a bit it’s a piece of your childhood going away. And I realized, you know,
I don’t really love going up to, I don’t really love going up to win,
I always considered it sort of my, my birth my birthplace. It really isn’t. But I consider that sort of a home. But you know, when he doesn’t hold all the greatest memories for me anymore, you know, that was a smaller part of my life, you know,
with the high school there. But, you know, you realize the older you get, how insignificant those those years of your life really are.
And so if I go up, there becomes a whole thing. My ex wife, for some reason, tries to find some reason to see me. And there’s always some big Hootie hoo, and
but it occurs to me that I probably need to make a trip up there. Because I do have older friends that precede me by 2030 years. And if I want to see him before they go, and it’s not an obit that I’m reading about him, I should probably make a trip up there and, you know, see the see the people who, you know, takes a village, raise a kid, you know what I’m saying? And these were my Listen, my dad was great. And he,
he really stepped in and made a big difference, too. But, you know, there was a there was a disconnect, right? My mother wasn’t into technology. My dad wasn’t a technology was a general contractor. You know, guy was a genius with a hammer, but don’t put a computer for him. You know what I’m saying? You know,
I had Troy but he was out in Kashmir or whatever, and you needed to like minded people to hang out with, even if they’re, you know, 25 years older than you are. It was a good thing, and I learned a lot from them.
So it’s very sad to hear about Milo, I think of him fondly.
Yeah, so anyway, thank you for the good times. Milo, wherever you may be.
Yeah, so anytime I think about Amiga Milo is like the very first first the first guy sorry. Anyway, enough about my left.
Nice trip down memory lane, though. And I know Alex always digs the audio talks. So
ain’t no Roland It ain’t Roland talk. You know, I didn’t get into PCs until a lot later on in the game when they have the shake more or less figured out, you know,
big boy, I’ll tell you. What. The Amiga, the Commodore 64, the music still just blows me away.
I still go back. I still listen to I still listen to sit music. I still listen to Amiga tunes, you know, trackers, mods, you know, music mods,
see what was that my older computer friend got me investigated by the Secret Service white
i that that sounds like a good story. I got all sorts of good stories, though.
I’ll tell you something that’s in that vein. I’ve told the story before. But while we’re on the topic,
so
back in the old days, and, and this
is sound related. You’ll appreciate this. Alex, back in
the old days before when phone lines are still analog. And, you know,
the world was not as technologically savvy as it is now
a guy I can’t remember the guys name, it’ll come to me. Somebody on the channel probably remembers it. And there was a guy, he lived in Texas. So maybe Alex knows who he was, was a guy that live in Texas. And he worked for I don’t know if it was 18, t ma belle, whoever it was, he worked for a phone company. And they him over very, very well. I mean, they screwed him out of like a pension. I mean, it was a really, really no good, very bad thing that this company did to this guy.
And he was
a Commodore 64 enthusiast.
And so he decided to take his knowledge of the phone system
and use his Commodore 64 to give power to the people.
Because here’s an interesting, lesser known fact that a lot of people, especially nowadays don’t know
telephone tones. In other words, when you pick up a phone, like not like a like an analog phone, or a home landline, and you dial a phone every time you push one of those buttons. It makes it different tone,
right? Everyone knows that. But do you realize that each tone happens to be made by three discrete sounds. And if this sounds oddly familiar to you, the Commodore 64 actually could do three discrete sounds. This guy took his knowledge of the phone system and the phone company
and created a program Hello telecom
Commodore 64 program.
They took all of his knowledge of the phone system, the inner workings and replicated it into a single easy to use interface.
So what is that me five minutes I tell a clone that they call it boxing. Back in the old days, you may have heard of blue boxing, black boxing, Rainbow boxing, all of
this really
revolved around the telephone company and the box I believe it was the boxing the boxes were used to generate particular tones
the most powerful tone the phone systems used back then happened to be 2600 hertz.
That was the super secret none more secret tone used by the phone company to sort of route or jailbreak the phone line.
So if you were an operator at the other end of at&t
and you connected to a phone line, you opened up a line, you can execute this tone by pushing a button on your box,
and it would send a tone to tell the phone line. I am an operator and I’m going to use you at that point. The system totally disregarded anything that you did, because you were an operator, and you could call whatever number you wanted. Long Distance local, it didn’t matter. You are an operator.
So as long as you broke open the line with that tone,
you were an operator. Well, the Commodore 64 k perfectly created 2600 hertz tone and that began the great tele clone days of the Commodore 64. So by doing a series of tones you could make all the free phone calls you want. Now this is back before unlimited data plans and unlimited local calls and circle of friends on Verizon and all that other nonsense back when making, you know, a 10 minute phone call before eight o’clock on the phone set you back 25 bucks
that’s in you know, 1980s money, right?
So tell a clone really opened up some interesting doors, especially when it came to accessing long distance bulletin board systems, right. Because piracy was alive and well. Right now we use use net and torrents back in those days. It was pirate bulletin boards. But there was no pilot pirate bulletin board systems in Wenatchee. If you wanted to call and get a free copy of The Three Stooges. That was a 16 hour download from New York. You know what that’s going to cost you in a phone bill. Unless, of course, you’re willing to do a little blue boxing and make that call for free. Yes, and it worked. And the phone company couldn’t stop you. That was great. Now the other boxes were things like brown box and rainbow box. I never had the balls to do this. But I was assured by certain people that it works.
You have your friend go to a phone booth. I know what’s the phone booth, right? There were these booths all around town that had phones, you could pay a quarter and make a phone call on because nobody had cell phones.
And you would send your friend to a phone booth. He would call you on your landline. Your home line
are you had your Commodore 64 waiting with telephone running
and you would hold the phone up to your speaker of your Commodore 64. And you would use the colored boxes to send tones to the payphone.
Just like an hour operator and just like an operator can refund you a quarter a diamond nickel by sending a special tone. So
indeed, could you
with the Commodore 64 and
listen listen, making free long distance calls one thing stealing money from a pay phone. Not something I was looking to get into. But I was assured that
it worked.
Anyway This went on for quite a while I got I got to get in there before five o’clock or they’re going to close on the
there was a lot of people a lot of people got into trouble that I’ve got a great story around this though. But I’m gonna
have to wait to tell it somebody
remind me to finish the story of blue boxing and how I didn’t get necessarily caught but it’s a good story anyway. All right. I’m gonna let you guys go this is Shane arm under Apache radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care.
