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Comment by pimlottc | Hacker News Reader

> What I want to know is how he managed to get a secret landline installed in his parents’ house.

I'm assuming the poster had a secret extension to the existing landline, not an entirely separate line.

Or they just had a spare phone they plugged into the socket their parents didn't know about (the phone not the socket). I'd be surprised if OP has gone and spliced an additional line instead of their just being a socket in their room already.

You're exactly correct. There was a hidden RJ11 socket behind my bed that I plugged a previously-forgotten phone into. There was only one line shared throughout the house, which occasionally caused some problems with my _master plan_.

I'd be surprised if OP has gone and spliced an additional line instead of their just being a socket in their room already.

I wouldn't. This is how the nerdier of my friends got their computers online in the 80's.

In early modem days, a lot of people bought modems without thinking the whole process through. Once they got it home, they realized that either the room with the computer didn't have a phone line, the phone jack was inconveniently located, or after spending $300 on a 150-300 baud modem, they didn't realize they'd have to spend another $200 on a phone line + $50/month for the jack + $xx for dialtone.

Splicing phone lines and fishing them through the walls with a coat hangar became an art. And if it wasn't practical in your house, you sometimes ran a phone line through the trees to your buddy's house.

It was all very educational.

When I was a kid I "spliced" a line (connected it to screw terminals in the box on the side of the house) from my parent's main phone to the basement so I could shotgun two dial-up modems in the middle of the night (the basement already was wired for the 2nd fax/internet line). I wasn't explicitly trying to keep it a secret, but I also didn't tell anyone, my dad found it after a couple months when he tried to make a particularly late phone call and heard modem noise.

You are correct that I did not lay an entirely separate line. There was simply just a pre-existing RJ11 socket hiding behind my bed.

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