Universal Remote control , more universal mod?

That's the NTSC color carrier frequency. Not only were they made in the billions over the years (every US/Canada/Japan, etc) color TV had one, so did every VCR, and lots of other things.

I'm sure they will still be around for a while because while digital TV has taken over in the US, it has not in the entire world and anything with a composite video input or output needs one.

They became the defacto standard for things like telephone dialers, and many things that needed about a 4mHz crystal because they were so cheap and plentyful.

One of the famous "blue boxes" (telephone hacking devices) was made by taking a Radio Shack tone dialer and replacing the 1mHz crystal with a

Look up LIRC (Linux Ifrared Remote Control). There is a library of remote codes, a way of capturing new ones from a remote and since the definitions are in a text file, they are easy to "hack".

There are all sorts of input and output devices, if you have a PC with a regular serial port (not USB), you can build a transmitter from the proper plug, a resistor and an IR LED.

Geoff.

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I was not aware of that frequency as being significant , the equivalent over here is millions of 4.433619MHz and x2 of that , quartz crystals for Phase Alternate Line. That would explain why it was Never The Same Color (twice) if they could get away with using ceramic resonators rather than quartz.

I'd already looked at LIRC but no listing for my device. Yes easy enough to knock up an IR transmitter tacked onto a PC but I've not found a library of codes or algorithm for generating all permutations of IR transmitter codes, model trigger code or model plus functions

Often the ceramic resonators were used as filters and for devices that were designed to work at those frequencies, but where it was not critical.

I no longer have an LIRC setup to do it with, as I replaced my MythTV box with a WD TV Live. If you can find someone with a little PERL programing experience, they could write a program to copy each remote over to the LIRC config file, restart the LIRC daemon and send some codes.

Then it would wait for you to hit a key, and try the next one.

It does not have to be very accurate, for example, if your program were to send off, vol up, vol down, channel up, channel down, start and stop and something happens at all, you have the correct frequency, spacing etc. From there, you could play around to get the codes.

If I remember correctly LIRC was ported to the Palm Pilot, and if you could get it to work on a Palm III or similar device, there are lots of them in drawers just waiting for someone to ask for them.

Geoff.

Toasters even had a 3.58 xtal in them. Phreakers were removing them and replacing the xtal in walkie talkies so they could mess with drive up window radio equipment for McDonalds, etc...

In the UK we were deprived of Cap'n Crunch 2600 Hz whistles and the phone routing system to go with it

I remember visiting the UK in 1984 and trying to call back to the US. The only way to do it was to call the long distance operator and place a request for your call. When your turn came up, they would call you back.

Trying to call from a pay phone at a rest stop on a motorway was a comedy routine straight out of Monty Python. The operator needed the area code and number of the phone I was calling from to place the call.

In those days, there were no area codes on the phones themselves nor was there any marking on the phone as to where I was or the exchange it was on. All I knew was that I was at a rest stop a tour bus had made somewhere between London and Bath.

Another time, I wantedto leave a message on an answering machine, as in "look up the EUROPEAN size you want and I'll call you from Paris when I can buy it". After ten minutes of standing at a pay phone in a B&B, the oeprator finaly got through and as soon as he heard the recording, he hung up.

Geoff.

I could whistle at 2600hz and hang up the central opertator line. I made a blue box for a friend but he got busted before he used it. He was a greek with dual citizenship and had a girlfriend in Greece he would call using a reel to reel tape with some prerecorded tones on it. He got the idea from one of his greek buddies that was here visiting that built a working blue box and recorded the tones and their sequences on tape. The box was easy to build, all tin can 741 op amps on a self etched PC board. Problem was tuning it, I was only 17 back then and had no way to tune it. Said friend was set to take it to school electronics class and tune it when the FBI hauled him off one early morning in his boxer shorts :) He was deported back to Greece and lost his US citizenship.

Even 'Dr. Johnny Fever' knew not to mess with the Phone Cops! ;-)

N_Cook wrote:

Sigh. The ceramic resonators were used as a chroma trap. Quartz crystals were used for the color reference. As far as 'Never The Same Color', network programing was carried across the US on buried coaxial cables or by microwave relays. Unlike tiny European countries, we couldn't broadcast from a singe site. Because of this, they were video amplifiers and equalizers spaced at regular intervals. Because it was mostly tube, and there were thousands of them in each network they required constant maintenance. When the network switched to a different feed from a different studio, there was a phase difference. temperature changes on the coax caused it's properties to change, as well. That was why VIR and VITS were developed. It allowed for automatic equalization to compensate for temperature changes, or when a signal had to be rerouted. There were a lot of redundant paths, to allow for equipment failures, or live remote feeds in the days before STL equipment. The flexibility of the system was proven when Bell Telephone technicians tied every TV station in the country together in a couple hours, to allow full, live coverage of the assignation of President Kennedy. I was at school when it was announced over the PA system. Less than an hour later, all the students were in the auditorium watching the news coverage live. By using some spare equipment and knowing the system inside out, they were able to adapt it to a use it wasn't designed for, with no permanent changes.

Also, when the nation wide distribution system was designed and built, there was no color TV. The fact that it could handle color at all proved that it was well designed.

Sneer all you want about NTSC, but the 'National Television System Committee' was around a long time before color TV.

This is basically backwards. The US had high quality, phase-linear transmission systems. Europe did not. The problem with NTSC was sloppy studio standards.

On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:44:09 -0400, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

They found out in part by talking to his girlfriend. She explained that he used a tape device. I stayed at his place the night before so i was there at 6 am Sunday morning when they came a knockin on his door. I was zipped up in a sleeping bag peering through an opening when he answered the door (had a safety chain) opening it part way just enough for an arm holding a gold badge to pop through :) I stayed in the bag while they looked for a tape device which he didn't have there at the time. They found a loop of tape on an Echoplex tape delay box for guitar that he had and un-looped it with a pencil thinking they found the evidence :) They asked him who was inside the sleeping bag and he said just a friend and they never bothered me. He had hid the blue box pretty well and it wasn't found because they found the tape quickly so they were satisfied they had what they were looking for. When they left I dug out the blue box and destroyed it. Since they really had no evidence of a device that could make the calls but knowing the calls came from his number back when he was living with his parents they could only deport him and revoke his citizenship. He never went on trial for the calls. Just was given a plane ticket and said see ya later. They probably made it impossible to get a visa back into the country since I never saw him again. But he did call me maybe 10 years later from Greece. He said he was in a friends recording studio. That was in 1982.

Lots of TV programming was not in color here until 1967. I remember an old Soap called Dark Shadows. I remember when they first started airing in color. Must have had problems because they when between B&W and color almost every other daily episode for weeks.

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So was that Allen Funt who televised the assignation between JFK and Marilyn Munroe?

Yawn. Keep proving your stupidity. The President being shot to death was a national tragedy. Maybe the next one will be in England, so you can have an even bigger laugh. Maybe you'll get to roast marshmallows at the wake.

You're lucky it wasn't Scully & Mulder. They would have know where it was, before the door was opened. ;-)

I thought he kept them secret? --'^^^^^^^^^^^ Freudian slip?

Wonderful what slips a careless spellcheck will show ;)

Grant.

Bwahahahah I loved that show when it was on.

I remember that day as well as I do 911. Us kids were having a 'circus' in a neighbor's back yard. I went home to get something, forget what it was, and my mom was pissed off and crying and told me I couldn't have what I wanted because the pres had just been shot. That was Nov 22 of 63 so we must have been experiencing global warming back then if it was warm enough to play outside with normal clothing as I remember.

Many universal remotes need to know what KIND of box before the code search works. It helps to know the corporate entity that built the box (for instance, TiVO responds to Philips satellite converter box commands, because some Philips satellite converters were TiVO equipped). And some of my Apple computers responded to (? Samsung or Goldstar) TV codes. It seems odd that TV codes operated the FM radio in a desktop computer.