🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Mar16.001210.27602@ddsw1.MCS.COM>, benfeen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Ben Feen) writes:
> I saw an interesting method of getting back at phone harrassers - It
> involves a car battery, a large capacitor, and some wiring thru your phone.
> I'm not gonna go into it, but if you go through a certain sequence, you can
> send a surge through Ma Bell's wires, straight into the offender's
> handset..........

  Uh-huh. Right. First, if you indeed send a high-current "surge through Ma
Bell's wires" the first and _only_ thing you're going to take out are the
fuses for _your_ phone line. Even supposing you got past that, _and_ that
it was a local call _and_ it was on a mechanical switch (which is getting
less and less likely), the phone on the far end is transformer-coupled, so 
all they would hear is a brief "click". Since any calls outside the local
mechanical switch are transformer- or electonically- converted to 4-wire,
it wouldn't get out of your local switch. Likewise, when you feed the A/D
converter in an electronic switch, it won't see it either.

  By the way, current local loop cable is something like #24 or #26 cable
(down from #18 tin-over-copper in the old cotton-wrapped pressurized lead-
jacketed cables). You can't put a lot of current through #26. If you did,
you'd melt the cable (that's why they have the fuses at their end). If you
did melt the cable, you'd have some _very_ irate telephone security folks
visiting you - or at least you would have when I was working for the phone
company...

	Terry Kennedy		Operations Manager, Academic Computing
	terry@spcvxa.bitnet	St. Peter's College, US
	terry@spcvxa.spc.edu	(201) 915-9381