Hacking Soda Machines
by MeGaBiTe1 (megabite1@hotmail.com)
After reading a letter in 21:1 on vending machines, I decided to so some research into this topic. Soda machines, to be specific. What really goes on behind the six-foot tall picture of a Mello Yello bottle?
First of all, I'd like to say that this has been tested by myself and others in the U.S. I don't know how much soda machines in other countries differ from those in the States.
Most aspects of these machines can only be accessed from the inside by the refill guy, but any passerby with the right knowledge can look through a DEBUG menu that is present on any Coke machine with a LCD display.
To get into this menu, you must enter the button sequence: 4 2 3 1
On machines where the buttons are aligned vertically, the first button in the column is 1, second is 2, etc. Doing this should display some text on the LCD (sometimes EROR, sometimes CASH).
Once in the menu, there are multiple options you can select. To navigate within the DEBUG menu, use these buttons:
- 1 - Back
- 2 - Up
- 3 - Down
- 4 - Select
Now on to the nitty-gritty of each option:
CASH - This option lets you see how much money is in the machine. You can also scroll through it to see how much money has been spent on each type of soda, ordered by their button number.
EROR - May be some soft of area to log errors. In my personal experience, every machine has displayed the text NONE when I selected EROR.
RTN - An option used to return or exit the DEBUG menu. It is not found on newer machines.
VER - Probably used to display the OS version.
SALE - Displays the number of sodas sold. This option can be navigated in the same fashion as CASH.
Well, that's about it for now.
If you're wondering, "Can I get free sodas from this menu?" the answer is "no."
It would be plain stupid for Coke to design their machines to dispense free sodas with a combination of publicly available buttons. There is probably a lot more to find out about these aluminum spitting beasts, so have fun.
Also, check to see what model machine you're using (it should say on the back). A quick Google search may reveal some manuals or info.
Shouts to Xeon, Spency, CyberHigh, Harlequin, Dave, and all the people at scriptriders.org and jinxhackwear.com.