Old N&V Issues!
Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 7:11 am
I was looking over some vintage Nuts & Volts magazines (1995), before I decide to pitch them (any takers!) and again noticed that every few pages there were full size ads for 'cable decoders' that were, or could be hacked. Many of the pages in between were ads for cell phone cloning. It was an open market then and yes, I dabbled in both for a while. Today it is virtually impossible to hack either because the technology has been so advanced. Years ago, because of the primitive logic, the identification codes for the receivers and the EIN for the cellphone was in an eeprom and accessible with software. Today it is hard coded into the million pin mother chip.
I still have step by step instructions to hack a receiver, that was used on a local UHF channel for pay tv viewing at night. I think it was called Super TV. Lift 1 chip and remove a resistor hidden underneath, add a couple of jumpers and it decoded everything! Normal subscription, sports...whatever was broadcast. Quality was, kind of like the old SCA broadcasts for Muzak. Not great but, it worked.
I remember the Grabber, a early laptop/cell phone lash up that was placed at a high cell phone traffic area, like an airport. It collected the EIN and MIN numbers from nearby cell phone users. For few day's parking fees you could log hundreds of number pairs. Just program them into a cell phone and talk free. If one went silent, just use the next number! There were phone clone setups, to make several separate phones act like extensions. At one time we had 4 cell phones, all using the same number.
Ah yes..Those were the days!
Maybe I should write a book someday, before the gray matter turns sour!
Len
I still have step by step instructions to hack a receiver, that was used on a local UHF channel for pay tv viewing at night. I think it was called Super TV. Lift 1 chip and remove a resistor hidden underneath, add a couple of jumpers and it decoded everything! Normal subscription, sports...whatever was broadcast. Quality was, kind of like the old SCA broadcasts for Muzak. Not great but, it worked.
I remember the Grabber, a early laptop/cell phone lash up that was placed at a high cell phone traffic area, like an airport. It collected the EIN and MIN numbers from nearby cell phone users. For few day's parking fees you could log hundreds of number pairs. Just program them into a cell phone and talk free. If one went silent, just use the next number! There were phone clone setups, to make several separate phones act like extensions. At one time we had 4 cell phones, all using the same number.
Ah yes..Those were the days!
Maybe I should write a book someday, before the gray matter turns sour!
Len