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Build Your Own Rotary-Dial Cell Phone
hwestiii writes "Yet another indicator of how unrepresentative of the main Slashdot crowd I am (meaning 'old') is that, like vinyl records, 8-track tapes, and Pintos, I can remember when rotary dial phones were items of everyday use, and not some object of retro-cool pseudo-nostalgia. Imagine my delight, then at finding this project in which an old rotary phone is turned into a cell phone. To give credit where its due, I originally found it linked from Hack A Day. I know nothing about home-built electronics projects, but this is enough to make me want to learn. If this catches on, imagine what they'll have to do to those 'turn off your cell phone' messages that play in movie theatres."
How many people have these at home? I own no piece of technology greater than like 10 years old. It probably costs me more to actually go out and buy an old phone than to get another cellphone.
Why would anyone want to carry around something like this? Doesn't seem very practical.
If, however, on the off chance you find yourself stranded in South English, Iowa, where the only pay phone in town is still rotary, this is how it works.
Pick up the phone and wait for dialtone. Insert a dime. (Yes, this phone still costs a dime!) Now, see the holes arranged on the disc? Find the one corresponding to the digit you want to dial, insert your finger, and rotate the disc clockwise until you hit the stop. Remove your finger. Wait for the dial to rotate back to its original position. Repeat as needed.
While you were dialing, did you hear those clicks? The circuit is actually being interrupted at a rate of 10 times per second. (This will be 20 times in some other countries.) The switching equipment in the central office measures the number of clicks and the time in between them to determine the number you dialed.
For more information, I suggest reading old articles of Phrack.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Maybe you should change your name to 'moronsky'
I doubt we are going to have to worry about this catching on because it defeats the entire purpose of having a cell phone.
It is a really cool creation though. The plans look so simple I only wish I had a rotary phone available to mess around with.
these are great for smaking others on the head, try knoking someone out with a nokia
Imagine how fun it would be to use this to send text messages!
Yay! .... Sorry, but I for one am glad that rotary phones have been tossed out the window. You can't dial nearly as fast and the size and shape of the phone is limited by the interface. But hey. Hacks are cool, so what can I say?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
They were crappy. Some had springs at the dial that were so strong that if you didnt hold the phone with the other hand you would move it around while NOT turning the dial.
Plus you started to hate people with numbers that had many 8 9 or 0 in it...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Damn you're slow.
May I suggest a system and network upgrade? You'll find that our rates for consulting services are very reasonable.
Cordially,
The re: post guy.
People here in L.A. already drive badly enough with the current variety of cell phones...
......
Police officer:
So what caused you to rear-end that other car?
Rotary cellphone user:
I just took my eyes off the road for 15 to 20 seconds to dial a number and then
I've had my rotary phones ever since I moved out on my own. I like them, possibly because I an clumsy with buttons. My closest friends, however, are fond of mocking my choice as follows:
"Hi... yeah I'm over at Bob's place. I would have called sooner but he has a rotary phone."
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
A quick trick of interest, perhaps good if you're ever in a situation where you can't use the dial pad and can't generate DTMF tones, is the super easy method of dialing a phone with nothing but the hangup switch.
On a mechanical phone (eg, any cheapo phone that doesn't need power or beep or anything), pick it up and listen for dialtone. Then just tap the hang-up switch with pauses for each number. For example, if calling 708-482-0623, you tap the switch 7 times, pause, then 10 times, pause, then 8 times, pause, etc. Rinse & repeat.
It's dirt simple, and most of us already know this, but... it's an easy fun thing to know.
Yet another indicator of how unrepresentative of the main Slashdot crowd I am (meaning 'old') is that
Don't worry. What you lack in youth you make up in annoyingness. You fit right in. Retard.
I'm 19, and I used a rotary phone for probably ten years growing up. I'm sure a lot of Slashdotters have if they moved into an older home. The only real drawback to the phones is that there is no way to punch in numbers after connecting. When you hear "Press 1 to ...", the phones cannot handle doing that.
I have fond memories of rotary phones, though. The satisfying click click click, the durable construction; they come from a time before phones were $10 pieces of junk. It's the same reason why so many programmers like the IBM Model-M keyboards.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
"from the whis-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-whis-k-whis-k dept."
Shouldn't that be:
from the whis-k-k-k-k-whis-k-whis-k department
Unless of course, building this project means you need to dual 911. In that case, I'll stay away.
I am an old fart too and remeber the early ghetto blasters, this is just like that strange phenonema. There was a backlash against tiny transitor radios, so people carried a portable stereo around on thier sholder. If this catches on we will all need much bigger pockets.
An old speaker phone would make a nice car phone!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Hook it up to one of these babies!
True believers seek redemption from the sin of death.
10 times per what? Only if you're dialing a zero.
;)
As any old phone phreaker knows, one can dial any (land) phone - even today - by clicking the receiver. To dial a three, for example, one clicks the receiver three times (within a second).
If you don't believe me, pick up your house phone and try it. This once was useful information, in the days of rotary phone locks, but now is just more useless trivia cluttering up my brain.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Paint it red and turn it into a Batphone.
Seriously, I always wondered how Alfred carried that thing around when it had a cord attached to it. A cellular batphone could make much more sense.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
My grandma still uses her rotary dial phone (still works fine) - its easier for her to use because of her eyesight than a new ultra small touchpad phone.
I wonder if the original poster is aware that vinyl is still alive and kickin'?
We had a 1971 pinto in 1990... ;) Ran great...
I bought a rotary phone a couple of months ago in Toronto at Active Surplus... cost me $9.99
I remember 8-tracks and vinyl - never owned any of my own though.
BlackNova Traders
Setp 1: Make rotary dial cell phone.
Step 2: Add games, internet, and email access.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!
People will still recognize rotary phones as long as we keep giving toys like the Fisher Price Chatter Phone to our kids. Who can forget that red, white, and blue phone with the googly eyes that moved as it was pulled.
I remember it when I was a kid. I just noticed one in our house, so someone must have bought one for my kids. It would surprise me if it is the only rotary phone my kids have ever seen.
Why, I have one less than 1 ft away from me that works great - must be at least 20 years old. Wish I could say the same for all of the push button phones we've gone through over the years. It even has a proper bell for the ringer.
:)
It's retro, and I love it. The only thing you can't do with it is navigate those horrible menu systems that every company seems to love. You can't do that with a touch-tone phone most of the time, anyway so that's not really a loss. Every home should have one
How come you say "dial" a number instead of push a number?
Anyone *really* old remember the letter prefix phone numbers? "Just call Zenith 4265. Operators standing by..."Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
You can now exit the matrix!
Well as long as we're making useless devices...
I can remember when rotary dial phones were items of everyday use, and not some object of retro-cool pseudo-nostalgia. Imagine my delight, then
Stop right there. You imply distaste for the "retro-cool-pseudo-nostalgia" to which rotary phones have been relegated, and then immediately shift gears into experiencing "delight" at the prospect of a hack that indulges in that very quasi-nostalgia. Seems to make sense.
I found an old firebox phone with rotary dial, earpiece on a cord, and microphone similar to those seen from the '20's. I set it up to operate on our regular telephone line, and now use it out back in the "Florida room".
Growing up in the '50's, and when dad was with the Signal Corps, we got to see a lot of the old communications devices, and still have bits and pieces saved over the years. I still use our old Hallicrafters receiver to tune into shortwave.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
This one got lifted off Hack a Day *the same day*...
Do you see what I did there?
just imagine sitting around the house entertaining and the rotary cell phone rang. it would probably freak a few people out once they realize it has no cord as you carry it around. then it becomes a good conversation for the usual 7 minutes.
always mosh clockwise
...are not nostalgia. You still need them for scratching!
Use it for practical jokes on dumb people and/or kids (say around halloween time)... you'd need to arrange for a person to call and pretend to be somebody dead and then someone else points out that the phone is not plugged in...
Hate to admit this but, here in Pittsburgh, which is far from the middle of nowhere, it still costs an extra $1.50 on your phone bill for touch-tone service. So I can't agree that a rotary phone is "some object of retro-cool pseudo-nostalgia," at least not according to the phone company.
It would be cool if this device is able to send dtmf signals in order to make it through the first few levels of voice-mail hell. (Many companies these days don't even bother with the "stay on the line to talk to an operator" option!) From the article its not clear if it can do this. I'm guessing not, though the cellular module probably has the capability to generate the tones...
This is straight from the handbook "1001 things to do when you can't get laid".
Build it into a loafer thus having a genuine "Maxwell Smart" shoe phone.
.
Hey, one good dated reference deserves another..
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Many years ago, probably the late 80's, I was at a restaurant in Vancouver waiting for a friend who appeared to be late. I was directed to the restaurant courtesy phone and was miffed when I discovered that the call from the restaurant to his home was long distance (Vancouver had some weird long distance rules back then, now fixed). Anyway, the courtesy phone had a long distance restrictor device attached so I pulsed dialed manually by clicking the receiver. All my tapping caused some curious looks from people in the restaurant waiting area, but it worked.
I believe digital switches are much less tolerant and "manual" rotary dialing will no longer work now on digital circuits.
i can't believe the cynicism!!! MY GOD what a great hack...making the old work with the new!! nobody would want this as their only phone, but hacking is about CHOICE...but i guess consensus is consensus...i'll never see it as a product
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
On a regular US land line, the incoming signal that sets the phone ringing is 90 Volts peak-to-peak. This voltage more or less drives the coils on the ringer directly. Because it's a genuine electromagnetic affair, it sucks down tons of current -- far more than you're going to get out of a puny cell phone battery running through an inverter.
You're probably better off just playing a sound sample of an old-style ringer.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
At least the guy gave credit to hack a day but really /. is afloat thanks in part to hack a day.
Oddly, they used to make drop-in replacements for those carbon buttons that were more modern, but it's probably getting harder to find them than the genuine thing.
Also, the user interface issue of not knowing whether there was a problem with the call makes the hack much less cool, since much more annoying. Even if it ruined the retro feel some indication should have been given of call status. An unobtrusive LED near the base of the phone would do. For that matter some old office phones had a "message waiting" light that was incandescent, but you wouldn't notice the difference if you dropped a white LED under the dome. That could have flashed a few status messages to let you know why things weren't working as they are supposed to.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
You can actually approximate the action of a rotary phone on a touch-tone phone by tapping the "hang-up" button. This is all a rotary phone does anyway. Just tap the number you want to call, leaving spaces to denote a new digit.
For example, to dial "3," tap the button three times really quickly. then pause and enter the next digit. You can dial entire phone numbers this way.
Not useful, but a cool trick for parties. And by "parties," I mean, "groups of nerds who are interested in hacking rotary phones."
"show me all the blueprint show me all the blueprint show me all the blueprints"
Behold. (circa 2000)
There used to be a unit called a celljack. It plugged into the DB-25 connector on a Motorola brick, and then the handset cable plugged into it IIRC.
I remember seeing them in a magazine. I had the idea that you could mount one of those standard desktop touch tone phones in the center console of your car, and be a true player. I'm not sure if it would do pulse dialing. The proposed purpose I guess was to drive either phones on a boat, or run a fax machine or modem from a cell phone.
We actually found a similiar device while dumpster diving, but no documentation is availible nor any info about what phone it hooks to.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
I still remember the days of rotary phones. They were standard issue in the dorms when I was a college freshman in 1983. Some of the things I remember:
Phoning long distance sucked. You'd roto-dial 11 digits and often get just a busy signal. Forget redial or speed dialing.
They were damn near indestructable and when you did break them they could be repaired rather easily. It was not like the total component replacement of today. It was actually kind of fun to tinker with them.
I started in electronics about 1954 and wrote my first software in 1957. My best friend worked with me in those days.
The game is not just for you young
whipper-snappers.
Gene Mallory
mallory@lasermail.com
For quite a while now I have wanted to take an old handset like the ones on a rotary phone and make it into a bluetooth handset for my cell phone...
Kinda like a wireless Pokia
moo.
First post via rotary phone! Took me a while to dial my ISP, but I hope I still got the first comment.
Back in 1985, there used to be a device made by a company called Tellular that replaced the handset on the brick-phones of the day. That had a dial tone and loop current generator, and sensor for off-hook, (and of course dial pulses, which are rapid hookswitch pulses), and DTMF's. The device would also generate a 100V ring pulse for incoming calls. The net effect was you could plug a standard rotary or DTMF house phone into the box and it would fake a network interface, dial the cell phone and hit send automatically.
I co-designed a system called "Limo-Phone" that interfaced between the phone and the Tellular box to time and charge for the call. This would let a Limousine have a standard TrimLine or Princess phone in the back, the fare could place calls while there like a normal phone, and the device would tally up the bill at the end of the ride!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
That is not sad at all. Rotary phones were transitory technology, like buggy whips and button hooks. What should make you more sad is that many people today don't know basic stuff, like how to "do" food and shelter from scratch. (Well, at least in most "first world" countries.)
Beleive me, knowing how rotary phones work is waaaaaay down the list of skills I'd like folks stranded on an Island with me to have...
How about; how to make a fire, grow some food, make some soap, etc., etc., etc. Even though we use these things every day, folks don't really know how they work. (Quick, tell me how to make charcoal, and 3 reasons you might want it).
However, to commiserate with you a bit, I once had a young relative get in my car and wonder how to put down the window (it had a crank, not a power-window button). Sheesh.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Here is a mirror: Mirror
Have you metaroderated recently?
1. Rotary phones were built to last (unlike many digital phones). They can survive a drop from a two story building onto concrete. Just go down, pick it up, plug it in, and it will work.
;-) )
:-)
2. Rotary phones can withstand 300lbs of pressure before they will break or deform.
3.Rotary phones can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees. This may seem a stretch, but rotary phones have been in buildings which have burnt to the ground and still worked.
4. You do not need to be able to dial a rotary or digital phone. You just need to be able to push the button/hanger on the phone. As the original poster stated, the way in which rotary phones work (not cell phones mind you) is that they disconnect for a short period of time (like a 1/10 of a second) and then reconnect. What you might NOT know is that all digital land lines can be operated as a rotary phone too. So in an emergency, all you need to do is to tap the button/hanger on your phone's base with a slight pause between the dialing of the numbers. It will still connect. (So to call 1-411 would be one click, a slight pause, four clicks, pause, one click, pause, and one click. Try it sometime.) (I used to do this to dial out from the university on phones with a phone lock on them!
5. Digital phones sometimes have a switch on them to switch between rotary mode and digital mode. You can switch it to rotary mode, dial the number (and hear the antiquated clicks), and then switch back to digital mode to handle any of those "Press 1 to do Blah". I discovered this at my mom's house. She had rotary service (way out in the country!) but I'd dial the line, let the roatry part go through and then switch the phone over to digital mode to do things.
6. Digital phones can be dialed by whistling into them. It isn't easy but you can do it if you practice long enough (and are bored enough).
7. One of the last interesting things to know is that if you are ever, ever stranded somewhere with a broken phone and you need help, you can still use the phone line and dial the phone. All you need is to bare some of the wire and you have a telegraph. Hold the two wires together to complete the circuit and then use the two wires just like you would the button/hanger. Take them apart and you break the connection. Hold them together and you've got a connection. Operators are probably not as smart as they used to be about this (since telegraphs are not so common place anymore) but it used to be that you could do the old SOS and they would send someone. However, if you dial 911 using the above method and twist the two wires together afterwards the police will come out to investigate.
Just a bit of FYI stuff.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
/.'s continuing love affair with del.icio.us continues..
I remember being a trepedacious teen trying to work up the courage to call a certain girl... and sitting there with my finger against the stop, the last number (a nine) half-dialled, heart pounding.
:D
I haven't thought about that in years. I guess now you could say it was "Obsolete Panic."
I wonder who the poor bastard is that has his number in the photo.
From the article: ... My girlfriend probably didn't want a call at midnight just so I could ask her "Guess what I'm calling from?"
Girlfriend? No way. Definitely a hoax.
Mr. Spleen
I have both used an abacus and washed my clothes on a washboard. But I don't feel superior for being older. Instead, I feel ... er, older. Look at all this gray hair! Well, the women like it, so it can't be all bad...
I honestly think that they should teach at least college math students how to use an abacus and a slide rule. The reason is simple--- if you are really trying to learn *math* instead of *arythmatic,* these tools really help you get the feel of how the numbers actually work.
BTW, I am in the under 30 crowd.
I teach people how to use computers. And I *start* by going back to basic concepts. I start by explaining the really technical concepts in plain English like they did in the user manuals from the late 1980's. That way people have a fundamental sense of how things fit together and the computer is not so scary.
Altogether too many things classified as "progress" are actually simply things which make us disconnected from the fundamentals of how things actually work.I do still find important uses for old technology. In particular the old telephones do a great job of explaining the various problems and solutions for two-wire voice traffic and are a whole lot more accessible intellectually than the newer ones.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I have an old Commodore phone that came with my 300 baud Vicmodem. It's actually just a white Nortel rotary with the Commodore logo on the dial and front. I love the reactions I get from my kid's friends when they try to dial by pushing the numbers in the holes. "Mr. Ellis the buttons don't work" Ha HA FYI, with these old phones the carbon in the pickup needs to be loosed up every so often by hitting the receiver on something.
you still have to connect it to the phone to send SMS messages.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Motorola makes something called a "Cellular Connection". It's a box that plugs into the phone on one side, and provides an RJ-11 POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) connection on the other. It supports pulse dialing too so there's no need for any PIC firmware debugging.
--
Sigs are a waste of space
that "whis-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-whis-k-whis-k" is the rotary equivalent of 911? Am I the only one who got it? Just a thought.
Regarding your #7--Does this mean if you just tap your receiver hook in an SOS pattern, you might get a visit from your phone company?
Haha...I thought I was the only one here that ancient. Didn't get my first push button phone until about 1991. Hell, I remember paying almost $800 for my Commodore Vic 20, and about $500 for Pong the week it came out.
I bet that if you looked in old thrift stores, you could find a rotary phone or two.
...i-i-i-n-ng!
My dad volunteered at a thrift store for a while about a year or so ago and he sorted through old phones that had been donated to see which ones still worked. Once in a while he would call me on an old rotary phone while testing them, then he'd ask me to call him back. When he answered, I could hear the bell still ringing on his end.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
I find this to be an interesting comment, because non-rotary phones are *NOT* digital. They (well, in North America) are DTMF, meaning they work with two tones played at once to signal the button press. This is all calculated by having one frequency for each row, and another for each column. When you press a button, the row and column tones are played, making the indicated dual tone. As such, you cannot dial a DTMF phone by whistling, unless you are capable of whistling two notes at the same time.
One other interesting bit of trivia is that DTMF phones can have a fourth column of buttons A, B, C, and D. However, these typically would only be found on test sets and AUTOVON (US Military) phone systems.
I should qualify my first statement a bit more... By non-rotary I mean non-pulse dialing analog phones which are also POTS. It's possible a phone could be ISDN or whatnot, and that would be digital, but people with ISDN handsets in their homes are few and far between.
...but I don't feel particular superior about having known and used rotary dial phones. Matter of fact, I don't much think anything about it, because I don't much think of it. I also don't think much about how I used to call dial-up systems on my rotary dial phone that plugged into an acoustic coupler that was connected to a Hayes 100 Micromodem card in my Heathkit H89 microcomputer running good old CP/M. I also dont think much about my old Betamax, my Atari 2600, my Colecovision, mother's old 8-tracks, the vinyls I had as a kid, that kickass AM transistor radio (kmart brand!), my first PC, PC-Pursuit, or Tymnet dialups (hey, we used BofA's homebanking service, okay?). The fact that I remember this stuff doesn't prove I'm superior...just old.
I don't feel particularly unique because of any of this, nor do I think myself unrepresentative of the Slashdot crowd...because I'm only 25. Once again, Michael is ego-tripping - but what else is new? Can we fire him now for constantly editorializing and ego-stroking in his submissions? (Any takers as to how long before this gets modded down to Troll?)
TouchTone is NOT digital -- it's an analog dialing system, in fact, the only analog telephone dialing system of which I can think.
Actually, there are three ways to dial digitally with plain old landline telephone service:
*The pulse switch that most phones have
*Tapping very quickly
And you guessed it, since pulse dialing is digital,
*A rotary dial.
Which shows you that progress isn't always digital -- the whole advantage of TouchTone is that it uses sounds within the spectrum of the human voice, meaning that the circuits need no capacity beyond what they already need to pass along DTMF -- which facilitates the menus. This is why cell phones go into a TouchTone mode after the call has been placed by their internal digital dialing systems which are nothing like TouchTone or pulse.
Exterminate all rational thought. Just perfect for filing your reports from Interzone.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Dude, that doesn't apply to the rotary in my bedroom. Hell, that thing deforms just if someone looks a bit heavy on it.
It's a rotary, but it's the El Cheapo-kind that was made in the 70's. It used to belong to my parents; they got it from the telco when they got their first phoneline back in the mid-to-late 70's.
I keep it in my bedroom because it's an excellent phone to answer when someone calls me and wakes me up. It's got a nice fuzzy distortion in the speaker and it always makes me sound pissed-off (even if I'm not angry, excellent för telemarketers).
It's completely useless to dial out with though, since I've got VoIP since may '03. But it works fine for answering calls.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
Back when I was a kid my modem was a 300 baud acoustic coupler.[1] Someone on one of the BBSes I called told me how to connect to the internet. Easy enough, as the local university had a phone bank that wasn't password protected. Dial in, and you get into a terminal server of some sort, then type a hostname and you telnet to it. Unfortunately I was stuck there as I didn't know how to get an account on any machine connected to the net. (I was given some to try, but they didn't work) Since I've never been a cracker, that was the end of it. But I can honestly say I connected to the net with a phone like this one.
[1]I had other modems. I used this when my parents grounded my from the computer. It wasn't connected to a computer, instead it was built into a 132 column thermal printer terminal. (I think it could connect to computers, but I lacked a RS-232 port on my Atari).
- 1. Rotary phones were built to last (unlike many digital phones). They can survive a drop from a two story building onto concrete. Just go down, pick it up, plug it in, and it will work.
These phones were built to last because, as I remember it, in the '50's, '60's and early '70's the phones were usually still owned by the phone company. Homeowners leased them and paid a monthly fee to use them. (though I think you could purchase them from the phone company, but they were expensive) So the phone company wanted them to be indestructible.2. Rotary phones can withstand 300lbs of pressure before they will break or deform.
3.Rotary phones can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees. This may seem a stretch, but rotary phones have been in buildings which have burnt to the ground and still worked.
In the late '70's, when the FCC decided open up competition and to certify other phone makers, then people could buy their own phones from just about any store. That's when the phone makers started using cheaper materials...
Cheaper materials == lower prices, but more broken phones, so more phone sales!
PS - Did you know that the first touchtone ten-button phone was introduced in 1963?
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
You can buy GSM/GPRS modules that allow any standard phone to connect wirelessly, Here's an example... however, Rotary phones draw so much current when they ring that they might kill the batteries in that particular module before you can pick up. And try not to notice the $200 price tag.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Here at home we still use those Rotary-Dial Phones, they are here since the house was wired with phone lines and we haven't replace them, at first we did test a button phone, but the buttons got stuck fairly fast, thus, we never used that kind of phone again, and till today that's the main excuse to no "upgrade", altough with new phones this shouldn't be a problem anymore.
Still, i would like to change at least one of the two phones in my home, just to call cellphones numbers, which are around 12 digits!, quite a pain.
C-x C-c
You could - but it is unlikely. Since the letters "SOS" are something like 858 (or maybe 868 - I don't have my phone handy). You would have to tap the line ten times (zero on a keypad) to first dial the operator - then do the "SOS". :-)
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
This is true and I should have said TouchTone phones. However, I have dialed a TouchTone phone by whistling into the headset. :-) If you are at work, bored silly, you may try anything. :-)
I used to do this with modems also. :-)
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
From 1978-1982 I worked in a Central Office in south Georgia that only supported Rotary (pulse) dial telephones (we even had "party" lines back then.) The reason was, the entire phone switching system was electro-mechanical. When you rotated and released the dial on your black or beige Stromberg-Carlson model 500 phone, an entire set of X-Y stepper switches, housed in a building the size of a small gymnasium, mechanically moved to complete the connection. The noise was unbelievable, >90dB at all times, and I have hearing loss to this day from my four years of working in that concrete building. When a backhoe operator cut a large cable somewhere, we immediately knew when there was about to be a lot of trouble tickets, because the sound of many banks of switches slamming shut simultaneously could not be ignored. I still love the old, heavy, tough rotary phones, because they are, in fact, a representation of the old, heavy, tough switch buildings that very few people have ever seen in action. For the most part, they're gone now, but once upon a time in technology, they worked extremely well. I'm fascinated by this retro curiosity in rotary dial handsets.
Yes, I probably should have qualified it I guess with that my rotary phone is from the phone company. Recently, when the power went out at our house the TouchTone phone we have died as well. So I got out the rotary phone and called the operator and asked her to connect me to the power company's offices.
:-)
:-)
Which is another interesting fact about rotary phones:
1. They don't need power because the phone line provides the power for the phone to work. Unlike many of the phones in use today, rotary phones operate off of (if I remember correctly) 5 volts. This is the charge carried in a normal phone line (in the USA). Thus, if the power goes out in your home - don't assume you can't call someone for help. You just have to have a rotary phone to do so (or a cell phone now-a-days).
Ya know! There's something to be said for older technology somethings and reliability is one of those things. It may not be the easiest to use technology (remember Scotty in the StarTrek movie speaking to the mouse on the Mac?) - but it does still work.
BTW: Someone said that TouchTone phones were first shown in the 60s. Well, the first video phone was shown about the same time. It failed though. No one wanted someone else to see them in the morning. Especially ladies. Talk - yeah. See - no. Somehow I don't think that's changed all that much even after all of these decades.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
out in the garage, under the 4 mhz 8088 with the 12 inch CGA monitor.
I see your whistiling DTMF and raise you speaking 75 baud!
He stuck it to the man big time. They gave him his phone call at the police station, but he gave them a bogus number. They put a metal plate over the keypad so he couldn't hack them.... OR SO THEY THOUGHT: He hung up and dialed his hacker buddy with the reciever. What a HACKER!
I believe this character was modeled after Kevin Mitnick, who could negotiate modem connections and send data (ie. hack your planet) using only his mouth and a phone.
That particular model was pretty buff! There wasn't a spring-limit on the dial-forward, so that you could zip the dial around and let it buzz back into place. I war-dialed a few exchanges in Montreal with a phone like that--and then I built a computer!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I think he was talking about doing a dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot pattern, rather than an SOS based on the alphabetical representation of the numbers.
No comment.
Who the hell is Paul Horn? And what did he ever do to you?
Is the year my kid started school.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Some modder has come up with a digital sundial. Using one month's worth of spare time and $300 dollars in parts (photodiodes, acrylic/aluminum casing etc...).
It's usually -48 VDC, supplied by a bank of batteries in the central office.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I distinctly remember seeing a rotory phone hooked up to an acoustic coupler in the movie. It had an automatic mechanical thingie that worked the rotory dial. Morpheus used it to hack into the Matrix!
In the rush to make cell phones smaller and lighter, the designers have left out an important consideration - namely the size of a the human finger tip.
I've passed on several cell phones because the buttons were too small for me to operate the phone. I tend to sport long nails and this only complicates my issues.
At least with a rotary phone, I could dial it with my fingers easily.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
so, we're in the midst of this first generation raised on the one/zero. (myself included.)
maybe, the 'romance' incited by the loose 'make/break' ratio of rotary dial has something to do with the b0ring precision of DTMF?
the 'charm' of rotary is wrapped with the appeal of being slightly inaccurate.
(myself included.)
When he builds version 2 with a mechanical ringer he's going to have to get creative to find a way to power the ringer. They were designed to work on a 90-110 volt potential, which is the standard on POTS.
This is all just stuff you learn working in telecom for a University. We actually still use a lot of those old beige phones you see in movies from the 70's (not rotary, but with mechanical ringers). They still work just fine, and on the rare occasions when they are abused to the point of breaking, we can cannibalize and fix most of them.
Hannibal Lector also uses this trick in Red Dragon. A bit more of a mainstream movie.
Considering that i'm 19 years old and remeber using a rotery phone untill i was 10-12 or so I must be old. anyways I also remember my family getting a CD player. No 8 tracks but i know what they are. but vinal and tapes are fairly common....
anyways it seems that the definition of old might be a little bit off
P.S. I also played on atari 800's and 2600's.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
There's a rotary-dial pay phone in the car repair shop at the corner of Ashwood St. and Morris Ave. It worked as of a few months ago. -b.
Every touch tone phone ive owned has been able to call without power, aside from wireless handsets. The phone I have now is wireless, but it also has a corded phone on the base, which works fine when the power is out.
Wow, just wow...
Actually, the same is true with (most) touch tone phones and other equipment as well. If mains power goes away, the equipment goes into some low consumption emergency mode where it runs off the phone-line voltage. Advancend functionality (answering machine, ...) may be gone, but basic functionality (plain dialing) is still there.
If you have ISDN, the NTAB (connector box) will even "forward" this emergency power to the phone connected to its first outlet. This means that most of your phones will be dead, but one of them will still work, because the phone line does not carry enough juice to power them all.
I was hoping he'd put a little dial on a cell phone. This is still pretty impressive though.
Epilepsy is not something to be mocked or referred to casually like that just because you can't express yourself properly to describe what you did. "That epileptic thing" is a seizure and I know you have never had one of those or you would not be referring to it as if it were something people do for fun!!! You need to apologize and the moderators who modded your post up need some epilepsy awareness training. How such political incorrectness can be modded informative just shows /. is full of insensitive kids who take epilepsy as something to mock.
Considering how DTFM tones are combination of three pure tones of unrelated frequencies, I don't buy that. We used to handshake with modems by whistling (who will connect with higher speed stuff), and that was hard enough. And modem handshakes (at least in the sub 28.8 range) use only pure tones.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
I'm not sure if this is a joke. In case it's not, I suppose it wouldn't appease you to know my dad was prone to seizures and his condition was the direct cause of his getting hit by a train and losing his leg below his knee? No, I suppose it wouldn't.
Oops, I meant above the knee, not below. Either way, he was a cane-shakin' cripple for the rest of his days. He also had the ability to unhinge his elbow and bend his forearm backwards (I've heard this is supposed to be physically impossible). All the other kids stayed away from my house on Halloween.
It's not a joke. I'm sorry to hear about your dad and I'm really saddened that you have a family member who is afflicted with seizures and you still refer to epilepsy in such a casual and insensitive way. :( I hope you think twice before making another reference to epilepsy in the future.
It's all a big joke to you, but you're going to end up an invalid if you keep that up. You already qualify because you're mentally challenged, but wait until you become physically challenged, boy are you going to love cracking jokes about you!
But is reduced to about a 10th of that or less whenever a call is put on.
I had all but forgotten about dialing "manually" (I am another 40+ slashdot geezer) until I saw this article. Overwhelmed by nostalgia, I verified that it still works about five minutes ago on my Verizon land line.
Back in the days of 300 and 1200 baud (when baud actually meant baud, IOW) it wasn't that big a trick to fake a modem tone-- stupid human trick at best. You just had to whistle the right tone (an easy one to whistle for most). The trick was to simulate a Ctrl-C, which usually woke up the host on the other end, which obliged by spilling the logon prompt. A very very quick rise in tone and drop to the original got this done.
This is what Mitnick (and a few thousand others wanting to win a bet in a geek bar, myself included) learned how to do. When the audience was suitably drunk, the usual response was "Fuck! You speak computer, dude!" Where to pick up the skill? For me, the university I attended used to loan out portable/luggable 300/1200 baud TI printing terminals, thermal paper included. My rotary dial phone snuggled in the acoustic coupler just fine-- but you heard whistling while using it. A few hundred hours later, those tones were burned in your brain forever (I'm whistling the tones right now, lol.)
I guess all you have to do is hack in an old Kodak Instant and you have a camera phone.
anonyminity is hard to say
-48 VDC is the open-circuit voltage. When the phone goes off-hook, the voltage seen at the phone will be dependent on the loop current and resistance of the telephone, since the phone is in the center of a series resistor circuit. The central office battery still supplies -48 VDC, the voltage drops in the circuit just change when the loop current changes.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
DTMF numbers are made of two separate, simultaneous tones. For instance, the number one is a combination of 1209Hz and 697Hz. Please enlighten as to how you can whistle two tones at once.
Maybe they should turn a London Telephone booth in a cell phone next!
you'll go ape over the electromechanical central office switches they connected to!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You forgot:
8. Rotary phones are the only way out of the matrix.
Digital landline phones use DTMF == "Dual Tone Multi Frequency." I'd be very surprised if you can actually whistle those tones to the accuracy required.
I used to pick up the phone, wait for the operator to say, "Number please.", then tell her what number I wanted. Usually I only had to say the last four digits of the number, because everyone in my neighborhood was on the same exchange.
6: is just wrong, you must be thinking of blue boxing, from back it the good old days. a 2600hz signal would be played over a phone and it would release to the trunk and you could now control the trunker. for more info, read about "captain crunch" and some issues of 2600 magazine.
They're also found on most ham radios with DTMF capability, like most 2-meter HT's. The extra tones are often used to control repeater features like autopatch without interfering with the actual numbers being dialed.
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I was wandering if anyone else got this too, and wanted to post the same question, but you beat me to it.
--Coder
Pops cracked jokes about himself all the time. You know what? It made me respect him more, not less.
So what's sadder--suffering from epilepsy and giving yourself hypertension because you decide to get offended at every throwaway comment about your condition, or suffering from epilepsy and staying your easygoing self? I know what I'd do.
Have you seen a Typewriter at the local CostCo lately?
For some reason, this reminds me of a prop from Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
from the whis-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-whis-k-whis-k dept.
:)
Uhh, that's exactly the situation I'd rather have a keypad for, thanks. Every second counts!
(Pedantic note: If I'm not mistaken, it would actually be 10,2,2... right?)
It is possible to hum one and whistle the other, although I don't know if that would work to generate a DTMF. I've never tried to get any particular frequency(ies) when performing this feat.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
An emergency, such as when you and your phone have fallen from a two story building, your 300lbs piano (on fire) on top of you, and the dial is broken because your phone was not completely up to spec...
It may not be easy, but you could try to whistle the average frequency and modulate this by opening and closing youy mouth very quikly (or humming) at half the difference frequency. This way you would create an AM signal with the two side bands at the right frequencies.
BTW, these strange frequencies have been chosen such that their higher harmonics and mixing products are as far away as possible...
i always figured that if the iPhone ever came out, it would have a rotary dial.
they've already developed the touch wheel for the iPod... so why not have tap locations around the circumference? you would either tap or *squeal* ROLL around the rim to dial. an old school touch, and it would totally go hand in hand with iPod/iPhone convergence. flip a switch and it goes from iPod mode to Phone mode... and the touch wheel becomes a rotary dial.
You're old? Is twenty one old? I use records everyday (don't even own a cd player i'm afraid) and you can get any current release (and a lot of music has been repressed) on a 2xLP for about $12 US. If its a punk-ish band with short songs on a single 12'' then usually its ~8-9. Also vinyl is durable, i can walk into any thrift store and get a disc that happens 30 years old and still plays with far less sonic damage than a cd skip from a scratch. How many cds do you expect to work perfectly in 30 years? The cd got obsoleted by slick sound compression formats like mp3 and ogg (my favorite) anyway. Plus, if you have a good enough sound system records tend to sound better.
00010111 always try everything twice
Ahh, yes. I've actually done that a few years (~12) ago. There was always something weird about making a call across public frequencies, because you would want to be sure the person on the other end knew that anyone could listen in. And PTT is a pain to the person on the POTS side, because they can easily be stepped on.
I'd love to be able to do something like this with an old phone. Here's an idea I hoped to have time to pursue, but had to give up:
I'd love to stick a board with a small form factor (say, mini-ITX and a flash drive) into the base of one of those puppies (if it would fit), add wireless networking to it, and have just enough of an RTOS in there to stream music to my stereo. You could keep the holes in the body to a minimum: just have jacks for power and RCA-style stereo cables out the back of it.
The dial could be used for streaming audio presets. "What? KEXP.org? No problem, just dial 7: "whisk-k-k-k-k-k-k-k". Imagine the Airport Express with lots of style.
And of course, it would have to have a tiny Web server for configuration purposes. You could even use the hook as a power switch (want music? Take the phone off the hook!) and use the receiver as an antenna.
Unlike most other consumer products these days, the thing would just... look... cool. Especially an older black phone made before the seventies.
Anyway, this could have been a lot of fun, but there are just too many constraints on my time these days. And, getting a rotary phone to cannibalize is surprisingly difficult and expensive these days: they're antiques, and are priced as such. (In fact, more than a few have been bought up by outfits like Restoration Hardware, who in turn pervert them by replacing the dial with a circular array of buttons. Makes me want to cry.)
Just my random musings of thwarted ambition..
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. I always wondered why the voltage drops when you pick up the phone. (Yes. I measured it.)
KLondike 5-3226
- Mr. Plow
KL5 = 555, the TV fake number exchange.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
This 1927 gem of a video is a "must see" for anyone who has never used a rotary dial phone and for everyone who has!s e1927_256kb.mp4
http://www.archive.org/stream/HowtoUse1927/HowtoU
Operator: "The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."
Then my answer would still be the same. It is unlikely that, until you've connected to someone (like the operator) that a machine will notice anything. However, intermittent on/off signals do, after a while, cause a service tech to come on the line to test out what is going on. At that point, if the person is familiar with morse code, they would recognize what was being transmitted and respond. I believe you actually have a better chance with a tech person than you would with an operator. Since most phone operators are not required to know morse code. :-)
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
This is interesting because when the power went out at our house recently the base unit died along with everything else and I could not make a call with my TouchTone phone. Now, it is a wireless TouchTone phone which is most probably why.
:-)
So, so long as your TouchTone phone has a standard connector back to the base unit it too can be used. Very interesting indeed!
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
I know nobody will read this, but I was just browsing around and came across Jamie Zawinski's mention of just such a thing. 5 years ago. http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/tty.html
There was such a monster 57 years ago, except it was called a Direct Dial radiotelephone, invented by Ramsey McDonald of Richmond, Indiana. Richmond Residents went wireless long before the rest of the country thanks to the Two-Way direct-dial mobile radiotelephone service. His first patent was granted in 1955.
To call from the radiotelephone, the user dialed 9 first and then the landline number. Callers to the radiotelephones dialed a specific number that included a digit designated for the individual radiotelephone. A bell or buzzer would signal the incoming call, as well as a call light. If the recipient was not in their vehicle to take the call, the call light remained on to indicate a missed call.
I'm amazed nobody so far has mentioned pokia.
If you want to go retro / futuristic at the same time, this is the way!
Cheers & God bless
Sam "SammyTheSnake" Penny