Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
Imagine how fun it would be to use this to send text messages!
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
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...
my parents didn't have a push button phone till about 3 years ago. And they still have 3 rotary phones in use in the house. We finally bought them a cordless phone, so they made big leap. They simply didn't want a new phone, like many people, if it's not broke why waste money on it. They make more then enough money, but they just bought a "new" car a year ago, it was a 97, my father drives a 92.
Until we bought them a new tv 2 years ago they still had their tv from 1984, bought after the previous one broke. Then we had to get them a VCR, they were on their second one since 84, and it's used 5 nights a week to record the news to watch later that night. Also they didn't get cable tv till 1999.
Plenty of people stick with what they have, this is why no new tech will ever sweep through and eliminate something old. The old base has momentum and lots of it. On a more related to slashdot perspective, their computer is a PII 400 that was still running the original install of win95 that came with it up until about 1.5 years ago when we put winXP on it (note that for being an install of win95 that went for years it had no virus or Trojan issues and such). It just worked for them, and they don't want a new computer anytime soon.
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.