I'm Getting Old!

Way back when a TDR was expensive and huge. I had to sign for one and return the thing when I was done. Now? Pffft! 

This just showed up at the house. 

Heh! I love upgrading "electronally".

 

Technology Marches Forward!

It does leave wounded behind though.

See this:

AT&T home cell thingy. It does not have the strength to ring the bells on this, nor deal with pulse dial.

Nor this:

Last I heard was POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) had to present ringing voltage of at least 120 VAC over -48VDC. 


Since AT&T at&t is trying to kill POTS, it makes sense. 

So now, I need to figure out how to detect the ringing from the thingy and boost it to run the ringers on these phones. 

Sigh....

Sometimes the Techobabble is Worth the Effort!

Random tech notes from the past couple of days. Although I grumble about the ministrations to make all the tech stuff work, sometimes favor can be found. 

Take this for example.  A fellow Blogger went to a concert last night and posted a link to a youtube video of one of the songs by the band. I listened to it at *ahem* work and heard it through the really crap speakers and monitor there. 

I came home and searched for the link on my PC to send to my TV and home audio system. I was rewarded via Wi-Fi connection of the TV by this:

  













Although the audio was compressed, it was good enough after running through the receiver's gentle algorithms for restoration. A bit better than RIAA equalization  as a matter of fact. Good enough means that. Not as good as the CD or *gasp* vinyl it did rock the house though. 

Then this. 

  















Gismo on the right is the at&t Wireless Home Phone thingy. After dealing with the local Telco last year, this was painless. 

I have my problems with at&t. 

GameTrailers
Get More: Comedy Central

They got this right though. Porting the number? Done. Two day delivery of the gismo and simple activation? Done. 

 Don't get me wrong. I still like old school!

 








Just nice to see all the happy shiny stuff work for a moment.

Hmm.... uh, technology!

Because I have a deep loathing for large monopolistic entities I have decided to switch from one to the other. TWC/Comcast has my primary phone service here at stately manor with a VOIP modem. 50 bucks American a month. 

AT&T at&t sent me a letter offering this:

What is it? A Cell phone disguised as home phone service. At 20 bucks American a month I thought I would give it a try. The hardware has shipped, lets see if porting the number over from TWC goes as smooth. I'm thinking not. at&t did not ask for third party verification for the port. 

As with all such matters if all goes by the book, its swell. Any deviation and I stand a good chance of loosing service for a bit of time. 

Any Leather Care Experts out Here?

This Christmas I received a thoughtful gift! A lineman test set from back in the day. Before I go further I need to know how to take care of the leather on it. Looks like this:

Neatsfoot oil? Saddle soap? Any suggestions for this piece of history? I know the Retrotechnologist can help with the internals, but first things first! 

Guess I need on of these!

A whole house DSL filter!

Just waiting on the Amazon drone now!

This Should be Fun!

So having become thoroughly fed up with my VOIP and Internet provider recently, I have chosen to kick those that shall not be named *CoughTimeWarnerCable,Cough*, to the curb. I opted for GTE, Verizon, Frontier to provide POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), high speed interwebz, and long distance service to stately manor. 

There is a problem though. I was too clever by half when wiring the casa in 2006. I now need to find my notes to move back from a cable based service to CAT 5e distribution. 

I still need to provide service to the old phones, backup to the alarm, and well, still make phone calls to annoy my friends occasionally (friends, you have been warned).

I accept the challenge because loosing over half the cable bill monthly is worth it! 

Ah. Back in the Day!

Way back when I worked for "THE PHONE COMPANY". The Bell System. I was there when it was broken up so that I no longer worked for Western Electric, but now AT&T Network Systems. That became Lucent Technologies, but I was long gone before that happened. 

Yeah this pretty much sums up the attitude around there then.



I thought it was pretty amusing when my friend commented on a recent Blog post that he crossed up some 1400 phone lines. 

Dude. Take out one of these. While you are wearing the happy name badge that says "Network Systems".

   









Yeah, there went Peoria! 

I still have some documentation around here.

I don't know WHY I keep it around though! 


 

 

Retro Tuesday- Smart Phone

Version 1.0-

Comes with two apps:

1. Listening

2. Talking

Spring Break Retro!

I'm on Spring break this week so I have my evenings free. Since Mr. Bell patented the telephone today in 1876, here are a couple.

Way back when (the seventies), telephone customers increasingly chose to buy and install phones not manufactured by Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of the Bell System. So the Bell System came up with the "Design Line" series of telephones that customers could purchase. Not really though. Early phones came with this disclaimer: "The telephone housing is your property. To assure quality of service, all working parts, e.g., dial, cords, and electrical components remain the property and responsibility of the Bell Telephone Company." Western simply stuck the working components of existing Bell telephones into contracted housings. Customers still had to pay rent on the guts. Finally around 1980, customers were allowed to own the phone outright. These sets were marked "CS" to denote that distinction. In 1986 manufacturing was moved out of the US.

This sort of thing simply marched to its death starting in the late eighties:

 

Here is a 1976 version of the Micky Mouse phone:

Sports an original Bell issued number card with the 219 area code. Indiana.

This was a standard Model 2500 desk phone with a Micky Mouse housing (insert joke here).

The Bell 2500 above.

So at about at the end of it and here is an example:

A Trimline phone totally encased in a Micky Mouse housing. I added the Southern Bell service award and a commemorative centennial paperweight to the picture.

I hope to spend some time here this week, but I do have laundry to do in prep for my vacation!

Retro Sunday! S&W .32

According to Mr. Roy Jinks, Historian at Smith and Wesson, this little "J" frame left the factory in 1961 and was shipped to NYC. It is a .32 Long revolver.

Of course we had to have some reasonably period correct ammunition:

It seems to put bullets where you point it unless someone tells you "high and to the right" (inside joke for an anonymous blog follower).

Bonus for all my blogger friends in Indiana, this little artifact was produced by a very good friend that knows of my Bell System collecting:

I have not decided to restore or leave alone. Nice ERTL toy.

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day! Stay safe!

Retro Sunday! The Western Electric 2905

In my very first blog post I relayed that I worked for Western Electric back in the day as a "Level 36 troubleshooter". This was corporate speak for "hey, we just made a boatload of these circuit boards and this pile over here failed final testing, can you take a look at them?" North Carolina Works looked something like this:

The breakup of the Bell System occurred while I was there. One of the conditions of the breakup was the fact that AT&T had to stop using the familiar Bell logo.

So the famous Bell became what we called "The Death Star" in 1984. I won't talk about the even worse "Coffee Cup stain o' quality" logo from 1996. I was long gone by then anyway.

Whoops I digress. Back to it!
The logo changeover caused some problems. Take a look:

It's 1984 and there is the Bell logo and the "Genuine Bell" wording on the box. First quick fix?

Yep, a big sticker over the Bell. That will do it!

So finally here is my 1984 Design Line Model 2905:

Note the Bell logo on the handset. Later production runs do not have any logo on them at all. I purchased it at a "AT&T Phone store" in July of 1984 just after getting hired by Western. It serves nightstand duty as it has since purchased.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Retro Sunday! Updated!

I have enough people hanging around now that gave me grief about the quality of the photos on this post. Point taken! New images! Yes, the phone is a Frankenphone. Best I could do, but it works admirably in the garage! 

Used to be that you could not swing a dead cat in the US without hitting one of these:

An article from CNN details the demise of this portion of the POTS. And to be true, if you want to run one of these you need a couple of things. First the owners manual:

Then the magic occurs here:

 This little thing did stuff like off-hook detect, ring the bell, give you a dial tone, coin detect and other miscellaneous stuff.


Phone booth optional!

Happy Easter everyone!

But on the other hand....

It seems that maybe landlines suffer from bad business practices more than loss of revenue. I have a Verizon landline and recently went online to "manage" my account. I had to request a PIN from Verizon to access my account. Hey email that on out to me right? NOOOO.... I had to get a snail mail copy of it. From FL. And another one two days later. From GA. And yet another one. From Charlotte. I hope there is not one in my mailbox today when I get home! Uh guys! you can tell time on the system to the thousands of a second but cant have your business offices integrated? Oh OK, fine I guess!

Lineline to no dial tone?

Really? The bell tolls for whom? In a recent response to an FCC Inquiry, AT&T (I still cannot adapt to the "new" lower case logo) says that traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) are "relics of a by-gone era". The number of households that ditched landline service between 2006 and 2009 in favor of mobile service doubled.

I worked on SLC-96 equipment built by Western Electric used in the PSTN back in the day. I am sure that there are still WP-10 and 20 cards in service that carry the "WE IT #96" stamp on the back of the faceplate. The stamp was mine and it meant that I said the cards passed final tests after I troubleshot them during assembly.


You must admit that in today's world, a technology that is backwards compatible with equipment over 100 years old is remarkable. A 99.999 uptime is nothing to sneeze at either. The Bell System was broke apart in 1984 but seems to have rebuilt itself like a T1000 terminator, only to die from neglect in the future it seems.

Excuse me, I have to make a call on a Bell 500 telephone while I still can before I hear this.



Oh, and FIRST POST!