It's mine, I tell you.
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@jonty awwwww. 🥺
Every time I see someone find someone else with the right key for their newly acquired payphone on the payphone subreddit; I feel like it’s almost as good as seeing a dog being adopted from the pound.
@alexisw Wait there's a payphone subreddit??
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@sa I have an entire box of ATAs, don't worry - the main problem is going to be getting into the damn thing as we don't have keys!
The fun problem is going to be reverse engineering the firmware to figure out the phone-home configuration protocol, if you fancy helping with that
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It's mine, I tell you. My own. My precious.
@jonty I assume this is a retired BT unit? The payphone number seems to imply that, but I'm more familiar with the Bell System ones.
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@sa I have an entire box of ATAs, don't worry - the main problem is going to be getting into the damn thing as we don't have keys!
The fun problem is going to be reverse engineering the firmware to figure out the phone-home configuration protocol, if you fancy helping with that
@jonty well, there's always the master key
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@alexisw Wait there's a payphone subreddit??
@jonty i think several - all fairly quiet, but /payphone is the better one focused on preservation and restoration to function (photos of them in the wild with location and function status too)
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@Famicoman If you could let me know that would be great
@jonty As soon as someone tells me I’ll tell you
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@tryst
Spider Redistribution. -
Do I have the keys? No. Can we pick the lock? Also no.
I contacted a company who stocks spares for UK payphones, asking them to send me a set of keys to try.
They replied with "That will not be possible" and the following photo.
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I contacted a company who stocks spares for UK payphones, asking them to send me a set of keys to try.
They replied with "That will not be possible" and the following photo.
@jonty “but can I visit you and try to find the right key?”
But how did BT solve this problem, their engineers surely didn’t carry all possible keys around?
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I contacted a company who stocks spares for UK payphones, asking them to send me a set of keys to try.
They replied with "That will not be possible" and the following photo.
@jonty I feel like you know many, many lock pickers who will see this as a challenge.
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I contacted a company who stocks spares for UK payphones, asking them to send me a set of keys to try.
They replied with "That will not be possible" and the following photo.
@jonty got to like a company that provides a reason.
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@jonty “but can I visit you and try to find the right key?”
But how did BT solve this problem, their engineers surely didn’t carry all possible keys around?
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@jonty I feel like you know many, many lock pickers who will see this as a challenge.
@jamesbridle I am torn between wanting some friends to have fun and wanting a functioning payphone quickly
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@jonty My sister is 14 years younger than me, and when I said "oh what you've never used a payphone?" she said "Yeah well I've never sent a telegram either" and I crumbled to dust
(then I showed her how pretty phonecards used to be and made her jealous of those, but I'm not sure I won the exchange)
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I contacted a company who stocks spares for UK payphones, asking them to send me a set of keys to try.
They replied with "That will not be possible" and the following photo.
@jonty I think those are all for the customer-premises types of payphone (solitaire etc) - they all seem to be tubular locks
I'm not sure about the generation you've got, but earlier payphone keys wereregional, so each telecom region had their own set of bittings.
I expect yours is similar, so if there is any way to narrow down where it was originally installed - and then you try some of the ex-BT staff facebook groups, you might luck out and find someone who didn't return their keys?
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@jonty I think those are all for the customer-premises types of payphone (solitaire etc) - they all seem to be tubular locks
I'm not sure about the generation you've got, but earlier payphone keys wereregional, so each telecom region had their own set of bittings.
I expect yours is similar, so if there is any way to narrow down where it was originally installed - and then you try some of the ex-BT staff facebook groups, you might luck out and find someone who didn't return their keys?
@lpbkdotnet Yep, we realised that too!
This phone came from Bath (we've even found the phonebox), but I'm not sure I can be bothered to chase engineers. We know the lock was changed in 2007 as we did some keyhole surgery to extract the logbook.
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Do I have the keys? No. Can we pick the lock? Also no.
@jonty hook it up to a landline, insert coin, call the lockpicking lawyer
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I contacted a company who stocks spares for UK payphones, asking them to send me a set of keys to try.
They replied with "That will not be possible" and the following photo.
@jonty Send them the payphone...
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@jamesbridle I am torn between wanting some friends to have fun and wanting a functioning payphone quickly
@jonty @jamesbridle Can't they just have fun, then replace with a lock you have keys for? (Based on the assumption that it is like most locks that allow replacement when open.)
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@becomethewaifu Oh wait, you meant on the phone not in the background! No, that's just an LCD sadly.
I do have a Canadian payphone with a VFD in it which looks cool as hell
@jonty @becomethewaifu yeah; if I remember correctly, the LCD was used to display call duration, time left, and -- if it took phone cards -- credit remaining. But it's been a while, so...
