
ATDT relief - discreditable
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/12/11/ring/
======
codewritinfool
Oh man, this reminds me of a time that I got into trouble. We had a phone
system (Isotech 228, IIRC) that had these boxes call OPXIs that let standard
telephone equipment connect to the phone system. They provided talk battery
and ring voltage.

We had a modem tied to an OPXI, which required that our dial strings in Telit
(remember that? I liked it better than Procomm) start with "91,", which was 9
for an outside trunk, then 1 to select a trunk, then a comma for a pause. Then
the phone number of the BBS site.

The OPXI messed with the newer modem speeds. One Friday I decided that we
didn't really need the OPXI if I bridged the modem with the fax line, so I
did.

I didn't tell anyone. That was a mistake.

Monday morning I showed up for work and my boss (the chief engineer and
president) called me into his office. Uh oh.

He said, "Did you remove the OPXI from the modem line in the lab?" "Yes."
"Why?" "Because we didn't need it."

He then told me about how he came in on Saturday, finished up some PCB artwork
and went to dial into the board fabricator's BBS to upload the files (long
distance), and kept getting failures to connect. He tried it a bunch of times
before he heard banging on the front door. He went to the front and there were
multiple police officers outside. They said there were multiple 911 hangups
from this location and wanted to know why. He swore that he was the only one
there and there were no 911 calls. They then wanted to come in and look around
the building, so he let them.

After they left, he put it all together. The dial strings were set up to dial
91,1-areacode-phonenumber which dialed 911 emergency without the OPXI in the
path.

He verified that the OPXI was no longer in the loop and was ticked off. He
knew immediately who did it.

He said, "Things you do to systems other people use can have unintended
consequences. Please think those things completely through in the future."

Good advice, and I still hear his voice in my head today when I'm
reconfiguring something.

~~~
danielvf
Once as a kid, staying at a hotel, I tried to call some family staying in Room
117. For whatever reason, the call didn't go through. I glanced again at the
instructions on the phone, which said "please dial a 9, then your number". So
I did. The police showed up fifteen minutes later.

And while "9" is a bad special prefix, the "91" in your story has to be the
worst possible in the US.

~~~
loeg
> And while "9" is a bad special prefix, the "91" in your story has to be the
> worst possible in the US.

Possibly the only worse prefix would just be straight-up "911." 91- is just
unimaginably dumb.

~~~
chrisswanda
Our building once leased out a portion to a call center based in India.
India's country code is "91" and to get out on the PBX was "9". But this old
junky Nortel system would outpluse immediately when it saw the dial string
"911". So when ever someone would try to dial "9911XXXXXXXX" it would
immediately outpulse to our local PD when the dialed digits equaled 911. And
whenever the outbound caller heard the PD pickup, they would get scared and
just hangup.

Ugh. Those were good times.

------
ghouse
I read ATDT -- thought "Oh, the Hayes command to dial - wonder what it means
now." Great story. Good memories.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set)

~~~
jetrink
That command set is still in use! I was working with it just last week to
control an LTE module.

~~~
3chelon
AT commands are still in use inside your smartphone. On an iPhone, when the
main CPU wants communicate with the baseband chip to make a call or send SMS
or whatever, it literally sends AT commands.

In fact, one of the earliest iPhone jailbreak exploits relied on a
vulnerability in the AT command interpreter inside the baseband.

~~~
kazinator
Commands that have to prefixed with AT are still in use. Most of the actual
commands after the "AT" part are not recognizable to someone who knows dial-up
modems; they have nothing to do with the Hayes set other than the AT
prefix/misfeature.

~~~
3chelon
Yeah, that's what always confused me about it when I worked on GSM phones back
in the mid-2000s - if you're going to overload an old protocol so heavily,
it's time for a new one.

~~~
emmelaich
Probably nostalgia! That would be good enough for me.

------
tacon
I hosted an international Mailman list that blew up on my dialup Linux box in
the mid 90s. Every inbound message was expanded to a batch of thirty recipient
outbound messages, for a very busy phone line. I also had busy squirrels that
every few months would degrade my line, especially in the winter when the
phone line boxes offered some warmth.

One night I came home late to find a police car parked outside my house. The
officer told me they got a 911 call from my house. They wanted to "look
around", to verify that I didn't have some woman locked in my house or
anything. Standard procedure, they said. I have no idea how long the police
car waited for me to return.

Sure enough, the dial string at the time included embedded 9-1-1 so if just
the right digits were dropped, it was a 911 call.

------
rgj
1997 : I used a text-to-email gateway and hooked it up to procmail doing a
sleep 300 followed by an ATDT to my cell phone.

Whenever I wanted to get out of somewhere, I went to the bathroom and texted
to the gateway.

5 minutes later my cellphone rang with a “very important call” :)

------
lcuff
Back in the day when I actually had an office a guy from across the hall would
come and lean on the door jamb and talk at me, endlessly if I let him. Mostly
cynically about the company. I came up with my solution: After a couple of
sentences I would just look back at my computer and start typing, and not
respond. He'd go back to his office and play Tetris.

~~~
sethrin
My mother has always suggested being "busy", with as little specificity as
possible. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm not available." The nice thing about this
excuse is that it doesn't wear out: one can always be "too busy".

------
heywire
> the blathering would start, I'd look over, he'd nod, I'd do the phone trick,
> and then it would be over.

A coworker and I had a similar arrangement at the last office I worked at :)

~~~
mabbo
I live in fear that I am that person.

~~~
le-mark
Used to work with a guy who was similarly boarish and oblivious, he'd comment
on his email to the entire office, every damn morning. Interesting wikipedia
minutia? Whole office. I quit in large part to get away from this person.

~~~
giggles_giggles
I do this sort of thing compulsively (announce minutia to the poor souls
trying to work around me) and then feel incredible shame about it later. For
me it's probably related to my ADHD, since that's an impulse/executive control
disorder, so this behavior matches the pattern of being unable to resist the
impulse, and then later I feel anxious/guilty/embarrassed about it. It'd be a
lot easier to manage if I had an office with a door, or even a cubicle.

I might try to get a remote job so I don't have this problem. I feel terrible
about it but can't seem to quit. I must be so annoying to my coworkers, who I
quite like. Maybe I'm starved for social interaction. I'd like to say sorry to
you for your coworker on behalf of all of those like us.

~~~
pfhorge
Just my two cents, but if I was your coworker and you told me the situation, I
can virtually guarantee that my annoyance would instantly transmute into some
degree of sympathy and tolerance. It goes a long way to know that you're aware
of the problem and feeling some stress yourself. Suddenly it isn't something
you're inflicting on me because you're oblivious.

~~~
lentil_soup
Also, it could help break the social barrier and lead to them being honest
with you when they feel annoyed.

"OC, you're doing it again! :D"

------
edoo
That is a funny story. I used to dial into BBS' with modem commands. You could
learn the screech patterns pretty well to know if something goofed before the
computer did. Modem command sets are still quite prolific and if you ever mess
with a M2M LTE module you will be right back in it.

~~~
3chelon
I can still hear the screech pattern in my head, and I know exactly what you
mean about knowing before the computer. There was short repeating pattern and
if it repeated too many times (more than about twice IIRC) then the game was
up, time to redial.

------
gwbas1c
Hilarious! Even better than what I thought the link was for.

I honestly thought the article was going to be about the absurdity in
determining a modem configuration string. Back in the late '90s, all modems
shipped in default configurations that only worked for very old
configurations. They all needed to be configured to do things like hardware
handshaking, and tell the computer that the other end hung up.

These drove dial up BBSer's nuts, because every vendor used a different AT
code just to set the modem to a normal configuration.

I always wished there was something like ATmodern to standardize on.

~~~
bwann
The worst were pages that compiled large numbers of random modem init strings
for different modems. They just got copied around from page to page with no
context as to what they did, nor why. They often wound up being worse than
factory defaults.

------
zaat
My own private ATDT relief was the day our phone company upgraded their
systems and I could finally start using ATDT instead of ATDP, making the dial
time so much shorter and significantly raising the chance to be the first
dialer when someone finally logged off from any of the heavy loaded BBS lines
from the redialing list.

Communications was really sucks, but we were lucky enoguh not to know it back
then.

~~~
gregmac
I remember always tuning the DTMF timings (duration/spacing) to make the
dialing as fast as the phone company could reliably allow. Even to this day
when I hear the DTMF tones playing at the default speed, it pains me and makes
me want to go adjust the dial command (ATDT) to speed things up.

~~~
raldi
I did this!

I also had a USR Courier with a button on the front that could be reprogrammed
to do anything. I reprogrammed it to dial my favorite BBS, so I could turn on
the computer, press the button, and by the time AUTOEXEC.BAT had finished and
Telix was launched, I'd already be connected.

------
Zelphyr
Boy, talk about memories. My fondest one is when we finally got a Western
Telematic console server I could dial into from home to troubleshoot a down
server. This instead of having to get up when the pager wouldn't stop beeping
at 3am, drive half an hour to the datacenter (I use that term loosely--it was
an office in a run-down office building), unplug and then plug back in the
server, check that yep it's back up and running, and then drive the half hour
back home.

I don't recall the details but it seems like that WTI console server used
Hayes commands somehow.

~~~
dev_dull
We're definitely spoiled now. However, I feel like there's so many more things
which "page" these days, and less tolerance for downtime. Did you track
"4-nine" uptimes back in the day?

~~~
Zelphyr
This was such early days in web hosting that nobody thought that was an
option. It was a little like the early days of Twitter where you just assumed
the web site would be down as often as not.

------
notacoward
Makes me wonder how many modems are still sitting in some company's closet,
forgotten but still hooked up and able to be used if you know the right
tricks.

~~~
moj
Several billion are being carried around right now in people's pockets,
actually: the baseband processor in mobile phones use ATDT/Hayes commands to
talk to the host processor(!).

It's quite interesting how the command set has been extended for modern needs,
for example see: [https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/u-blox-
CEL_ATComm...](https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/u-blox-
CEL_ATCommands_%28UBX-13002752%29.pdf)

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I kind of wish I'd never read that. Every time something like this comes up I
remember a quote from A Deepness in the Sky [0] and shudder at the thought
that we will be stuck with crappy software forever.

[0] " There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago,
before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura
said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs
still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance,
many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system.
Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly
complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a
counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human
had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more
closely. . .the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds
later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. "

~~~
jandrese
One of the things I love about that book is how he attacks below their layer
of abstraction. This is a pattern you see over and over again in real life,
people build a secure system at one layer, but don't consider all of the
implications of the layers below. Indeed there is so much complexity hidden in
those abstractions that it takes experts years to learn enough about them to
understand the attacks. The people who do work in those layers aren't
interested in security, they're just trying to get the things to work in the
first place.

Spectre/Meltdown are a good example of what happens when (after a couple of
decades) the security guys finally understand what the architecture looks like
at that level and start looking for vulnerabilities.

This is also why you should be wary of devices and especially device drivers.
This is why binary blobs in drivers are such a butt clencher. And then you're
talking about drivers that are stupendously large and are more or less
attached directly to your web browser.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It isn't as though being open source solves that problem, look at things like
Heartbleed.

~~~
pixl97
They may not solve the problem, but they do you allow you to solve the
problem.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Not realistically unless I have a lot of experience with driver programming.
After all, I can technically hand-edit the machine code of a binary blob too.

~~~
pixl97
> After all, I can technically hand-edit the machine code of a binary blob
> too.

Signed binaries make that a lot harder.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
And how does source code help that? I can resign a modified binary just like I
can a freshly compiled one.

------
macdice
I once wrote a program to send data for free anywhere in the world, by dialing
another machine and then hanging up. The remote machine's modem would say
RING. With the right excruciatingly adjusted and slow timing you could send
binary data insanely slowly. Start bit, then 8 data bits, maybe check bit,
something like that. Let's just say it never took off. Something on the order
of 0.1 baud.

------
noahmbarr
Why not be honest and direct?

~~~
g051051
Because it doesn't always work. I had someone try to get me fired because she
came into my office and said "do you have a minute?" and I said (because I was
legitimately busy with something important) "No".

She was enraged that I didn't drop everything I was doing to listen to
whatever problem she had, and went to complain to my manager, blithering about
rudeness, and me not being a "team player".

Since my manger was the one who had assigned me the important work, he told
her in polite manager-speak that I had done the right thing and that she
should try again later if she still needed my help.

~~~
mevile
Someone asking you if you have a minute for something work related vs someone
chatting your ear off about non-work related things isn't the same thing.

~~~
pdimitar
You are right, it is not.

The interruption and the resulting loss of productivity because of it however
is the same in either case.

Focused work without interruption must be respected and enforced when needed.
If you are bored at work, go ask for more work to do, I'd say.

Or do as I did when I was still in offices many years ago: politely and
without raising your voice just ask the room directly: "Anyone up for 10
minutes coffee break?". If nobody would respond then I would still go at a
balcony drinking my coffee alone. Nobody is mandated to listen to my blabber
and I understood and respected that. It's rather amazing how many people
didn't though.

------
gfodor
Who else went through this:

"Star Wars? no that's not right"

"Modems? no nobody writes about those anymore"

<click>

------
IronWolve
Back in the BBS days, sysops would enter chat to say they are doing
maintenance and taking down the bbs. Then you would see +++ and DISCONNECTED

For fun, I started coding ansi sequences, that would say the sysop entered
chat, that the sysop was banning you for some really lame reason, and to never
call back, then showed "+++" and disconnected, and then a lot pauses to make
it look legit. I had fun creating ansi pranks.

BBS and Modem days, such fun.

Oh yeah. WinModems. FU.

~~~
JdeBP
Conversely, Shampage was a tool much loved by sysops themselves.

------
chiph
The Hayes Modem technical reference is available at Archive.org.

[https://archive.org/details/Hayes44012TechnicalReferenceForH...](https://archive.org/details/Hayes44012TechnicalReferenceForHayesModemUsers1993)

But I have an original spiral-bound paper copy - if you want it, email me and
I'll send it to you. Include the Fidonet ascii-art dog in your email.

------
tyingq
We used to use modems for almost everything. I even contributed a small piece
of code to the kermit project a long time ago, maybe 1989 or so? A kermit
script could have made this easier to do with 2 keystrokes...
[http://www.kermitproject.org/](http://www.kermitproject.org/)

------
perlgeek
At $work, we have a command line application that initiates phone calls, but
behind the scenes it uses a SOAP API to talk to the telephone server, which
uses SIP to talk to the phone on the desktop.

Quite a bit more overhead involved there... :)

------
webXL
The bad date rescue call sprang to mind. Looks like there's an updated version
of this trick: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chelsea-handler-gotta-
go!/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chelsea-handler-gotta-
go!/id1012517766?ign-mpt=uo%3D8)

------
martin1b
Glad I'm not the only one who did that to get rid of the annoying co-worker!
Ah, those days were great!

------
cheez
This reminds me of when I used net send to flirt with women in the computer
lab. I thought I was so cool.

------
anotherevan
I still have an analogue modem attached to my PC at home. I use it with NCID
to get caller ID info flashed on to my screen and TVs for incoming calls, and
to dial outgoing calls from my address book.

The best thing though, is the black-list to which I shunt various
telemarketer, etc numbers.

------
chrissnell
Don't forget ATV0 (I _think_....memory is hazy) to set the modem speaker
volume to zero (silence) before dialing. :)

------
icedchai
This brings back some memories. I got my first modem in December, 1988, 30
years ago.. 1200 bps!

------
wiredfool
+++ ATH

------
scott-smith_us
We had a bloviater guy at one company. I used to get up after ten minutes or
so and go to the mail room, then call the guy in the next cube and say "this
is your rescue call".

------
jstewartmobile
Nice try. Totally outclassed by smack-my-bitch-up.sh though

[https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-
scripts/blob/master/README....](https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-
scripts/blob/master/README.md)

------
jstewartmobile

       434 Points
       124 Comments
       123 Is
        25 mes
    

And yet only one comment suggesting the direct approach... You'd have an
easier time finding Waldo.

Is this low-grade nerdery really any easier (or smarter) than just saying, "
_Yeah, yeah, NT is great, Unix sucks, now I 've got work to do._"

------
londons_explore
Whats up with this new writing style on HN? This entire article could be
summarized as "You can do ATDT 12345 to dial a phone number on a modem, and I
used it for pranks round my office in the 90's."

All the detail about the coworker, the social cues, etc. doesn't really add
insight nor entertainment value, but pads out 1 sentence into 1 page.

Journalists used to use that style when paid by the word and they didn't have
much to say, but rachelbythebay _isn 't_ paid like that, so why is she writing
as if she is?

~~~
egypturnash
It's her _personal blog_. She's probably writing first for _herself_ , and
second for anyone who is interested in hearing her reminisce about whatever
Major Software Company she worked at.

Sometimes you just wanna tell a story about a thing that happened, you know?
"Me and my officemate kept on tricking this guy who endlessly droned on about
how useless our specialty was."

~~~
uxp100
Yeah, it's also not a new writing style for HN, her blog posts have been
popular here for quite a while.

