Xref: utzoo alt.folklore.urban:3134 sci.electronics:13381
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!snorkelwacker!bionet!ames!uhccux!huey.wslab.Hawaii.Edu!whelan
From: whelan@huey.wslab.Hawaii.Edu (Jerry Whelan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: free calls?
Message-ID: <8897@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 7 Aug 90 00:37:44 GMT
References: <32457@cup.portal.com>
Sender: news@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu
Followup-To: alt.folklore.urban
Distribution: na
Organization: Dot in the Deep Blue Sea
Lines: 24

In article <32457@cup.portal.com> dbell@cup.portal.com (David J Bell) writes:
=>OK: here's one to research. My son told us of a friend at work, whose
=>father had picked up from am aquaintance at a major aerospace/electronics
=>company, a replacment chip for some model of cellular phone. This 
=>replacement chip (possibly a ROM or pROM) supposedly allows unlimited
=>free calling.

	This sounds similar to those cable descrambler boxes one
can (could ?) buy.
	The story I heard was that someone borrowed a legit box from
a friend, copied the eproms and then just started selling those,
without telling the friend what he did.  So, as long as the
friend kept his subscription up, all the illegal eproms worked fine,
however when someone got caught, it was traced back to the original
owner who quite promptly changed his descrambler to a new one.
Suddenly (to hear the story) thousands of people were suddenly without
cable...
	I wouldn't be surprised if this replacement chip is a pirated
copy of someone else's (probably corporate) cellular phone "identifier."
But, never even having touched such a beast I don't really know how
they work.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
whelan@  (uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu || uhccux.BITNET || nextsrv.uhcc.hawaii.edu)