Here's All My Phone Stuff

[@soupbrina]

please cathode ray dude. please. PLEASE talk about phones for two hours. oh my god please i've been waiting for a video like this. i am being so serious

[@s0ygecko]

I think the other guy that likes to talk about old technology is called Alec... You know, from Technology Connections. Seems very likely to fall in the same over explained things. Just saying.

[@stickmaker10111]

Im specifically interested in VoIP and the RPC/SIP protocol behind it

[@stickmaker10111]

Can you link your other phone video you were talking about?

[@OggVorbis69]

These type of videos are super nice and pleasant to watch for us, your viewers. Yeah technology connections lovers would enjoy your videos too.

[@lurkersmith810]

@@s0ygecko Well of course, both are in my subscribed and alert feed. Both have similar senses of humor, as well as the ability to make a 2 hour video that geeks like me watch all the way through. I wonder if a collab might be in their future! Viewers may also like Techmoan and VWestLife. A great way to spend the geekend!

[@lucasstiles8012]

I like that you're being yourself. "Here are my interests, and here's what I learned when I dived in." kinda vibes

[@drsunshineaod2023]

Yeah, it's so good! It's so authentic.

[@manchmalscott]

"otherwise i'll assume you hated it which seems likely" counterpoint: actually this fucking rules. favorite genre of video.

[@JaredConnell]

Idk Who be thinks his audience is but with us it's not likely

[@efad3215]

Same, love it!

[@astrrra]

yes i genuinely want like at least 12 more hours of this (of course not as a single video but you get the point)

[@DannyBeans]

Seriously loving the freeform ramble. If this was as unscripted as it feels, you're a really interesting and engaging off-the-cuff speaker. I'd watch another video like this in a heartbeat.

[@ACRPC-dot-NET]

I've got the phone autism, love messing with my PBX and hooking up phones, but for the most part, HATE talking on the phone lol

[@rarbiart]

Add me to the list

[@scott8919]

Welp, I apparently have it too then.

[@Toast_Points]

I don't have phone autism, but I DO have infrastructure autism, so this video still hits for me lmao

[@amateurprogrammer25]

i'm the same way. i'm massively autistic about sonic the hedgehog, i can rattle off about 80% of the lore, name every character and every game or other piece of media they've appeared in, but i've yet to finish a single sonic game because i'm just so bad at them >_

[@johnwfmak]

+1, a have a Nortel fetish 🤤, and Yes Got the ResponsePoint too.

[@dgpsf]

1:55 knowing that your Dad watches your channel makes me so happy. I know I would be proud of you if I was him. If you're reading this, Mr. Ray Dude, you raised this kid right. :)

[@probnotstech]

I just watched someone talk about and demonstrate phones for 2 hours, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you.

[@JRatLSE]

Hey Gravis! ISDN allowed for much higher audio quality, so it was a mainstay in radio up until quite recently, at least in the UK. AFAIK, ISDN failed there just as badly as in the US, except in this one specific domain. The BBC installed probably hundreds of ISDN audio mixers across the country, which remote reporters or guests could use to get on-air ‘in quality’. Most were in local BBC stations, but I remember one in the back of a church café, and another in a forgotten cupboard on some university campus. They were installed in pretty much every football ground that could conceivably require broadcast commentary. Politicians had them installed in their houses, I worked for a PR agency that had one for clients to use, and the BBC would send crews out into war zones with a codec and an ISDN-capable satellite dish. As far as I can tell, absolutely every one of these used the same codec/mixer, the Glensound GSGC, aka the COOBE - short for commentator-operated outside broadcast equipment. It was a delightful piece of design, resembling a prop from a 1980s techno-thriller. I say all of this sounding like I’m a greybeard talking about the good old days, but I’m only in my 30s and these things are still around! They’re on their way out - BT is phasing out ISDN in 2027 - but ISDN was a cornerstone of UK broadcasting until Covid hit. Until then, we would insist people come into a studio if at all possible, but once we started letting people go on air from home via Zoom or FaceTime, there was never any going back. The sad thing is, nothing is as reliable as ISDN for this purpose, at least in this price range. It sounds way better than VOIP and it’s infinitely more reliable. There are other proprietary codecs - Comrex and Tieline - but they’re really expensive and not any better than good old ISDN. EDIT: Oh, and to your point about ISDN supposedly being an international standard? It was practically impossible to make ISDN calls between the US and UK. Like, it was theoretically possible, but each call involved an outlandish amount of back and forth between our engineers and theirs, neither of whom really understood the finer points of ISDN because, frankly, nobody does.

[@sor-z3p]

UK consumer grade ISDN was moderately popular in the pre-broadband era. Up until 2007 or so you could get BT Home Highway for around the cost of two phone lines, and the supplied equipment was comparatively user friendly as it had two analogue phone ports with two separate phone numbers plus the ISDN S/T bus port with its own phone number. The later version even had a USB port to connect directly to a computer, so you didn't need the terminal adapter It then started to die down as BT rolled out ADSL and the variant used in the UK would not allow ISDN and ADSL to co-exist on the same line (as compared to that used in other European countries which did, with a slight decrease in upstream speed). Not as popular as Germany, but nothing like the US.

[@peterhurst]

@@sor-z3p Agree - I worked with IDA which was ISDN's predecessor, around mit to late 80's ISDN was a thing for years, but primarilt E1/T1 for large company siwtchboards until BT came back with E1 with less than 30 channels at reduced cost and reduced cost BRI lines coupled with much xheaper BRI kit. There was a period of no more than 5 years from around 95-99 where BRI suddenly became a thing for decent homeworking for many

[@thomasacratopulo8114]

On the subject of ISDN lines I remember hearing from Matt Grey (a former broadcast engineer and current KZbinr) that ISDN lines used to be ordered in when running an outside broadcast for a radio station, for both commercial and the BBC. They have now switched over to using special boxes that connect to multiple 4G mobile data networks and send out the signal on the strongest one, apparently these are quite expensive but I suppose this must be more convenient then having to order a new line every time you go to a new location.

[@peterhurst]

@@JRatLSE yes, we used to provide ISDN lines for ob at many places, I remember 8 being put into Sky vans at the Reebok when it opened so they could feed the match.

[@Iamdebug]

I quoted out a tieline for a wireless STL backup link where it had to have quality, the wireless project never went anywhere but the hardware was quite interesting.

[@DzSwipe]

I love the implication of 2:16 that after learning what tip and ring were at 10 years old, your next step in life was to get a job at an e-cycle store

[@CathodeRayDude]

i mean, essentially

[@elosacle]

They're pretty much up and down the west coast now. I have early childhood memories of going to Free Geek and picking up old electronics. It's also where I learned how to build PCs for myself.

[@tekvax01]

The 66-block non-cutting side is used for wiring the same phone pair to multiple extensions. You just snake the pair of hook-up wires between the 66 block terminals and punch-down without the cutting blade.

[@CJDarkRose]

As someone who's career is building PBX and VoIP systems in a commercial setting, I can nerd about phones old and new too and enjoy it right up to the point when the damn thing rings and I have to answer it.

[@X2Brute]

I have a similar thing with photography, I love the science of optics, CCDs, Film, etc and my DSLR is one of my favorite gifts I've ever been given, but I don't actually like TAKING photos all that much

[@whtiequillBj]

"I"d like to talk about phones... for a bit ..." is the first 3 seconds of a almost 2 hour video. great video. merry thanks giving to you too.

[@daemonspudguy]

When do we get a "Telephones But As A Concept" T-shirt?

[@StellaFoxxie]

Telephone Butt Set As A Concept

[@thany3]

Surprise Butt Sets

[@keineAhnungka]

In Germany having ISDN with 2 lines and 3 phone-numbers was a common thing. And boinding those two lines for 128 kbit/s internet access was pretty seamless, too. You could even get signaled an additional call while using bonding and while it was ringing decide to switch your internet back to 64 kbit/s to be able to take the call.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

You still get 3 VOIP numbers on most providers.

[@krellykrells]

we're so back

[@redpheonix1000]

The Caller ID part reminds me of when Mehdi from Electroboom made a circuit to extract the audio from the phone line into a normal line level signal to feed into a recorder, and while he was testing it on his real phone line calling himself from his cellphone, he accidentally recorded his Caller ID data burst and left it on the video, probably not knowing what it was. People obviously decoded it and started to call him, so he took the video down and re-uploaded it to hide that sound.

[@Iamdebug]

I'm hoping someone educated him on what the burst was Instead of being an ass about it, I feel like he would be genuinely interested in that kind of thing.

[@MysteriousFigure]

​@@Iamdebug I think he knew of the noise, just not that people could decode it with youtube audio and all the noise from his circuit, he did call them smart people after all so I imagine it was more so people ringing him and being like "by the way, you left your caller info in the video"

[@BestGirlGrace]

ah, the phone nerd experience of hooking everything up, getting your phone number all ready to go, and realizing you don't talk on the phone much unless it's interacting with a business or older family members.

[@BestGirlGrace]

and, if it's not clear, this is scratching an itch i've had for ages and I'll gladly tune in to Phone Talk any time. I'm still wondering what the hell "hot number" and "warm number" are from Erlang: The Movie.

[@CathodeRayDude]

@@BestGirlGrace the purpose of phones is to allow irritating relatives and collection agencies to contact you

[@Drmcclung]

@@CathodeRayDude and volcano insurance

[@plushifoxed]

i definitely feel this one, haha. i picked up a western electric 2500 and an ooma box to use it with... and it mostly just sits on my desk looking pretty (sand-colored!). the most exciting thing it's done in the past month is i used it yesterday night to call the jury duty update hotline to make sure i was still expected to show up, lol.

[@erintyres3609]

You can find assorted videos of a home PBX where an expert took it all the way. He might have a phone in every room, or a set of multi line phones with buttons that light up nicely. The Teltone device shown in the video can not dial out or support multi line phones, but it does just about everything else that you would ever want to do with four phone lines.

[@siberx4]

I can confirm that Type 110 punch-downs can be used for Ethernet. I was involved with a commercial construction project in 2013 or so where they used, shockingly, _gigabit rated_ versions of the 110 punch-downs (in fairly large blocks just like for phones, not just the modern keystones or little 1U rackmount ones) for tying in all their network cross-connects across one wall of the server room. You'd use a special bundled 4-pair cable (like a naked Cat5) with no outer jacket as the patch between punch-downs, absolutely wacky to see in person. Edit: After some verification online, what I'm referring to is actually technically called Gigabix (a variant of Bix block), which is slightly different type of punch-down but it's the same idea. Apparently there are even versions rated for Cat6/10gig, which is insane to me.

[@spareiChan]

Can confirm, work in IT and working on CCNA, they support 1G no issue (some can even handle 10G but 2.5-5G is more realisitc), use them with CAT 7 too. Both in punch down patch panels and keystone connectors. They also make "toolless" 8p8c that are just 110 connectors that don't need a punch. They are commonly used to change the heavy "branch" bundles which are often shielded (and now-a-days have a rigid support inside) to the lighter and short range usage "patch" cable, hence patch panels. I have installed AV and security before and they used mostly CAT 5(mostly 5e) but often used CAT 3 which can actually come in 2 pair to over 25 pairs.

[@em_being]

Every time you warn that a topic is going to be especially boring I get so excited. Please never stop, never doubt how much some of us are here for this.

[@rarbiart]

@@em_beingI totally subscribe to this statement.

[@elosacle]

Every time CRD says "This is going to be boring" all I hear is 🔥BANGER ALERT 🔥

[@stuart.cripps]

Watching Gravis dial by tapping on the switch hook = core memory unlocked.

[@DurradonXylles]

I love hearing you go on about tech stuff, Gravis, I would not at all mind another grab bag video like this on another category of technology (or even more phone stuff). A large part of the charm of your videos to me is watching you enthusiastically get out into the weeds about technology that most people wouldn't notice and/or care about and breaking it down as much as you possibly can.

[@hannahlamond7710]

"I'll assume you hate it since it's like 2 hours long" Nonono you couldn't be more wrong, absolutely love the long deepdives into things you do like this, whether it's little guys or phones or quickstart, or any of the other things It's always interesting topics, in a great format, by someone who gives information in what's honestly the best way for me atleast, any time I go into deepdives they always take a similar path to how your videos go lmao

[@LatwPIAT]

28:30 ish: Sidetone is a consequence of how POTS is designed, but can be eliminated with a circuit that subtracts the signal from the receiver's microphone from what gets sent through the speaker. It's typically not eliminated entirely for two reasons: 1) The presence of sidetone indicates that the phone is connected and functioning, and 2) It is believed that people regulate how loud they speak based on how much of their own voice they can hear: when sidetone is set too low, people will tend to shout. (Conversely, if you do nothing to remove sidetone, they hear themselves very loudly and will speak quietly, which reduces the signal to noise ratio on the other end.)

[@BlakeLeeper]

Yes, in fact my wireless Jabra headset for work has an option for adjusting sidetone.

[@grantstevens5]

The lack of sidetone on some early cell phone handsets is often blamed for the annoying phenomena of users speaking overly loudly on cell phone calls in public. (The lack of sidetone on many headsets really irritates some old analog part of my brain.)

[@LatwPIAT]

@@grantstevens5 There's an uncited claim on Wikipedia that landlines are typically set for 8% sidetone while cellphones have 4%, which should also more generally encourage talking more loudly than on landlines. (I suspect to increase the signal to noise ratio over the more noisy crowd/outdoors environment mobile phones are used in.) But modern solutions require modern problems, so we've bypassed all this nonsense with sidetone by just having people set their phones to speakerphone while on the bus.

[@grantstevens5]

@@LatwPIAT I seem to recall that early Sprint CDMA phones provided no sidetone at all, at least for the first generation or two. I still get flashbacks when I talk into a PC headset that is "dead".

[@poofygoof]

I was the de-facto sysadmin of a NEC/Nitsuko PBX when it replaced a channelbank with multi-line phones. The T1 support was initially pretty rough, and didn't have any sidetone, and I could hear marketing calls from across the building due to raised voices. A firmware update brought back the sidetone and things got back to normal...

[@mar4kl]

You just answered about a letter-size page and a half of "Why did they make this (like that)?" telephony things I'd been wondering about for many years but never had any idea who to ask. Thanks, Cathode Ray Dude!

[@daemonspudguy]

"I grew up with phones." - Gravis "Ray Dude," 2024.

[@ParametricAvocado]

He gave the line delivery of the century, I loved it so much

[@lurkersmith810]

A line I remember from somewhere in Season 2 of "Shining Vale", when a teenager discovers a standard rotary phone: "That is a phone. I know, because I looked it up on my phone."

[@vwestlife]

My Verizon FiOS ONT supports mechanical bell ringers and rotary dialing, and works pretty well with modems and fax machines, but has no sidetone and no "comfort noise" (the soft whooshing sound that was purposely added after the switch to digital eliminated background noise and made people think the line was dead).

[@wlhyatt100]

66 block notes: Non-cutting was used for daisy chaining lines, while this is/was a no-no, jamming more than one phone line per pair of connectors on the output side was a bigger no-no. Use the non cutting side for things like shared fax lines. If your boss was a cheapskate and you needed more than 24 phone lines to land on 66 blocks, you could skip the bridge clips completely and use the two sides that are now independent as additional capacity. Techs always preferred using them with bridge clips, but sometimes having that capability could help you out if you were in a dilly of a pickle.

[@m__rocka]

20:07 well deserved moment of self-indulgence, that SVD video was very entertaining.

[@Techdisk42]

12:54 interesting factoid: my grandma, despite not actually having internet service, gets her tv and telephone line via a fibre optic modem. Her copper phone lines were cut long ago and now her house telephone wiring is just plugged into the back of the modem with a regular old RJ11 jack. And, even on her high end fibre optic modem, pulse dialling is still 100% functional and works perfectly.

[@Blackadder75]

yeah, her glass modem /router runs some software emulating the old phone magic...

[@alexparker4244]

on fiber optics, all dialing is pulse dialing

[@musashigundoh]

My grandma has that too (although she can use the internet a bit) and once the OLT crapped out on their end and it took the telecom company almost a month to fix because it was the winter holidays and they were massively short on qualified people for the amount of fiber they've installed. All while she had no phone, no internet, and no TV service. That's why I always try to have my services separate.

[@No-mq5lw]

I knew someone from nowhere Pennsylvania where their old folks had a pulsed phone and nobody could make a call with it. Wish I knew that telcos had to keep pulse dialing online even to this day when he shared that story. Mine have a wall phone with a crank on the side. There's zero chance that thing is going to work.

[@juri14111996]

same where i live, exept ist still a lot of dsl, but without analog phone. so my grandparrents used to have a dsl modem with integrated voip to ata converter.

[@peterhurst]

Gravis, @29:00 sidetone is very deliberate I was trained by BT in the 80's and I can't recall the date but the GPO engineers had tested the use of sidetone and it's desinged to instill confidence in the speaker that the device is working. They tested no sidetone and the experience was odd for most users and IIRC they tended to shout

[@racecar_spelled_backwards868]

1:11:30 Touch-tone dialing was an extra $5 into the late 1990's in Tampa, FL. We were cheap, so no touch tone for us. Some phones you could leave the switch in pulse and press # to switch MID CALL to tone so you could navigate phone menus or dial tone once you got to your long-distance carrier (in the 1990's in FL, MCI ONLY supported tone). We had a Panasonic phone with this feature in the 1990's IIRC.

[@RubyNemesis]

There are a riff in MST3k, in the short Century 21 Calling, the short from the episode The Space Children, that references the touch tone surcharge, only $2 for them according to the riff.

[@dmug]

I didn’t know they charged for touch tone functionality. I suppose the concept of long distance charges or even talk minutes are foreign concepts to kids.

[@xpehkto]

I just checked to be sure on my Panasonic KX-T2740B, switching to tone dial is by pressing *, not #. And I remember this being standard, as basically nobody in Russia had tone dial until mid 00s, and so for many years every voice menu here told people to press * first if called from fixed line. Other interesting thing on KX-T2740B is that it remembers mode for every digit entered, which is good in the sense that by moving switch it allows you to flexibly program it to call number, switch to tone, navigate voice menu, flash, switch back to pulse, call other number, switch to tone, navigate other voice menu... The downside is that when you eventually get touch dial support on the line, you were need to reprogram all numbers (it can store 30) to take advantage of that, as otherwise they would still be dialled in pulse.

[@maplifiers]

Bringing back deep memories

[@BReal-10EC]

I miss Radio Shack. Those external ringers were very common in more open businesses - like some type of loud work environment with a small office and phone (some type of workshop/manufacturing plant), or even just a phone and large indoor area (like a warehouse). Basically any business with a phone that didn't have somebody sitting at the phone as part of their job had a loud ringer. I think even the Wendy's I worked at (first official job) in the 80's had one. Only worked there for a few weeks before the whole crew quit at once in solidarity against the manager...then drove around the lot running off customers. lol. Memories. Regarding ISDN.. wow, I would have paid through the nose for reliable 128 baud internet in the early 90s. Even late 90s.

[@PhillyMJS]

My mind immediately went an auto service place. They'd put the external ringer out by the service bays when the actual phones were in the office.

[@minchy83]

I was a telco linesman for close to 20 years, we were always told that “butts” was short for buttinski, because you would ‘butt-in-ski’ on other calls. It always sounded dumb and I never really believed that’s where the name came from but still to this day I haven’t heard any other explanation. I think a lot of these terms got lost in translation over the last 60 odd years of info being passed down from tech to apprentice.

[@Drmcclung]

@@minchy83 I think that one's a bit apocryphal too, like the origins of the Octothorpe. To me, a buttset just means butt connectors.. a portable handset with butt connectors. At least that's what all the Ma Bell guys used to say so who really knows 😆

[@poweron3654]

I could watch you talk about anything for four hours and it's extremely engaging just from your personality alone. Keep up the great work.

[@ChristinaK1024]

I am a phone nerd. It took this video for me to realize "dialing a number" comes from spinning a rotary dial. I never questioned why the verb for putting a number in was dial. Brilliant!

[@CATech1138]

you're phone lore heart is gonna faint when you find what "dropping a dime" means

[@CATech1138]

and it's non criminal cousin activity of answering a phone with "it's your dime"

[@CATech1138]

that dead air is called "blow battery" in the field....non digital phones use remotely sourced power and that power on a line without a dial tone is shown by that live mic effect...

[@pyography]

1:18:35 My great great grandparents owned a ranch, about 500 head of catle. Growing up in the 80s, I remember they had one of those ringer-only things mounted under the eves of the house and set to full blast. They could hear it over most of their land. It used to scare the crap out of me, ringing at random times as phones do. One day it stopped working, so they replaced it. I enjoyed tearing it apart. I fixed it, too. Somehow the solinoid detached from one of the terminals. The design was simple enough that it was obvious where it had been connected.

[@wolfsatyr]

as to whether he is like this all the time, at parties we could spend hours listening to him doing this.

[@muffin_j_lord]

I think if there's one thing you can learn from running this channel, is that when you say to yourself, "I find this fascinating", there's bound to be others who do as well. Thanks for this!

[@hellomiakoda3782]

OMG, back in the day, I used to use automatic callback ALL THE TIME! I won tickets to something from a "be the X caller!" contest with this feature! It was so handy for so many things! It was my favorite POTS feature!

[@BlobVanDam]

This is a topic I didn't know or care about, but as always I easily sat through the entire (2 hour!) video and enjoyed the hell out of it. Just make whatever videos you want in whatever way you want, and I'm going to love it.

[@AlRoderick]

Got to say that the bed of nails connector probably is quite sharp, but it doesn't penetrate your skin for the same reason an actual bed of nails doesn't. The points are distributed across too much surface area to penetrate when it's your finger, but when it's a tiny round wire they go straight through. I remember when they demonstrated a bed of nails on Beakman's World back in the '90s.

[@RobLion]

Great video as always; thanks! I'm positive the "great big spike" in the butt-set clip is for single-pair Aerial Drop Wire that runs from the pole to the (single-line) customer's house, which has super-thick PVC insulation around a pair of typically 18-1/2 gauge (?!?) copper-clad steel wires - extra strength for self-supporting the drop in tension. I was surprised that you said the 2500 set was a pain in the ass to open up to show the ringer bells; in my experience they are super easy to open (like, one screw?) and extremely well-designed for maintainability. I also love and have great respect for the engineering that went into all of this telecom hardware, and it's fascinating to look up the old Bell System Technical Journal issues that are collected various places online where a lot of these technologies were first published.

[@ИгорьКравцов-д4щ]

I think you've catched right audience for specifically you. I will gobble any weird or "boring" tech information presented by you. I love your videos, all of it, they are scratching some itch in me everytime

[@jameshunt5316]

Micro-perforations or “probing the wire” as technicians call it speeds up and exacerbates corrosion, can cause voltage drop and cause line distortions. It’s a convenient and lazy way to diagnose wiring issues but causes massive problems long term, (as short as a few months.) 1:41:50 it would if the end of the wire wasn’t open to air and you only pierced it once and kept the nubs in forever.

[@Vinpupx1]

Phones might not be my hobby but your explanations and twitchy enthusiasm helped sell the video. There's so much standardization (until there isn't) which seems like it helped make bespoke products. It does make me wonder how this all works now with the ever constant expansion of cell phones.

[@salvagegeek]

I like how you said that the biggest phone nerds really don't like talking on the phone. I'm a ham radio nerd, I repair and make videos about ham radios and really don't like talking much on the radio. Isn't it strange?

[@StaleReference]

Even as an avid connections museum sub, listening to you talk is always a joy. This was lovely, and I would happily listen to your 20 minutes on hunt groups

[@connormatthews9674]

Idk what the viewer retention figures look like but the fact that 38K people clicked a 2 hour video about phones should tell you everything you need to know. 😅 Also, I'm a viewer with an undiagnosed attention problem - I can't sit and watch films because I can't focus on them for that long, and any activity I attempt to complete either goes unfinished, or I have to stimulate myself with a million smaller activities happening all around me to get anything done. I went into this not interested in phones, and came out not particularly any more interested in the topic. And yet I watched all 2 hours in one go and was interested in what you were gonna tell me next. You're just that sort of entertainer. Like you said in the video, democratisation of video is crazy powerful and I'm glad you're using your time to contribute this sort of knowledge in this format. ❤️

[@WizardTim]

A very interesting showcase but I just about lost my mind at 1:43:38 when you pulled the die out of the punch down tool... I've had my current one for like 10 years now and have always been disappointed it didn't have a cut blade as it's always been a pain to cut the tails with side cutters often in a cramped space and I guess videos just don't commonly show people switching between the dies until you just showed it. And sure enough now that I look at it closer, the die looks to be a separate part and yeah, pulling it out has revealed it's reversible with a second die with a cut blade... Thanks for that one.

[@Dong_Harvey]

I had a boss give me his old punch down tool when he showed off his fancy overpriced new one. The old one sucked to use and seemed jammed. Later a coworker explained that I could switch out the blade. After several days of attempts to pull the damn thing out because the boss jammed it so hard as to make the tool unusable, thus getting a new one. I finally fixed it by putting it in a freezer and plying the hell outta the blade. Good thing it's a Klein

[@slightlyevolved]

Now that I've watched the whole video, to add to my previous comment: - I worked at RadioShack, and we had a variation of the line emulator that was integrated with some kind of computer hardware and a CDROM drive. It was tucked in near the ceiling back when they had the old Sprint phone section (with the cherry wood separators and silver/acrylic accents.) All the wired home phones were connected so people could pick up a handset and it had the Jetsons (remember when THOSE were licensed mascots?) and some interactive "press X for Y" functions. Keeping that demo working properly was a real PITA. I don't think many stores beyond mine has it running into the mid-2000s like I managed to do. - The suction cup pickup did work on later phones. I don't know if they still had the magnetic coupling, and I think instead were just a higher sensitivity microphone. They worked on a number of cell phones. Not all though. - There was also a third kind of recording device. Similar to the handset cord interface you showed, but went into the line side instead of the handset cord. These also had the advantage to being able to pickup ALL phones on that line. In fact, they made a higher end model that had a "remote" cable for plugging onto a cassette recorder. You'd leave the recorder active, and it would pause and unpause the motor via the cable, when the line went active. Even if it was another extension. - hehe..... BUTT set. - Yes, Nortel did become Avaya. I want to say it was a merger of Nortel and Lucent that created Avaya, but don't quote me on that part. - ISDN: they ran both channels to all subscribers. They still only *assigned* one number, but allowed for slower data services while still using the phone. As a "standard" ISDN was those two 64kbps data channels, which it could aggregate dynamically, splitting and joining as needed to allow a single voice call over one of the 64k channels. Now, in places like Japan, the most common was a phone and fax line, which is why MANY MANY residences had a fax machine and fax stayed relevant well into the 2000s (2010s even?) there. (Also, ISDN fax was MUCH faster, as most fax machines were limited to 14.4 vs 64k. Rven today, "high speed" 33.6k fax is an option that is even poorly supported on current devices.) ISDN failed mostly due to cost, lack of consumer devices, and marketing. As in, they didn't bother to market outside of business and home offices. It also just plain wasn't available in most areas until well into the 90s. By that time, as it would have caught on, cable and DSL came to be. Especially DSL. That was so much cheaper for the telcos to roll out vs ISDN. - S/T... I'm wondering if they did that because of T, for Trunk. As it would have been the PBX Trunk to the NT1>U. That is would perhaps leave S for Subscriber? Perhaps it's an even farther throwback, Spur Line? Who knows. Just a wild theory of where the moniker came from. And while the S and T interfaces are electrically the same, they DO have some different signals with a T interface handling some of the network transport functions that an S doesn't do. - 110 was primarily for three reasons: 1.) Cat5 (I'm not 100%, but I think Cat3 at it's peak was still using 66 blocks.) 2.) High Density/8p8c direct to Jack, (bridges are still mostly 66) 3.) Wire gauge, twisted pair and Cat3 used 22 or 24 gauge, Cat5 used 26 gauge wire. 110 was designed for this smaller diameter wire. 110 are for Ethernet, but I am not sure if that, as you suggested, was their original use. There's no doubt that it's their most common use though.

[@LynxCarpathica]

I want the deep dive explaining "boring" video. I love that shit. Please give it to us (unless this is that video, I'm only at the beginning)

[@PiedmontWheelRepair]

I came all the way off of the NewPipe app, found a logged in youtube account just to leave this comment. I watched this video all the way through and enjoyed it, there was a bit of information i did not know. But then you mentioned the Harmonica connector and i actually gasped. I had bought some old Cisco equipment that was a VoIP gateway and it had that 50pin connector on there and I did not know enough to know that there was just a breakout dongle like that you could just buy. I literally bought one on ebay as soon as i saw you plug it in. Thank you for showing this because i bought some breakout cable that i had no idea what to do with in the past.

[@Blackadder75]

I teach IT classes to kids 16-20 , and despite their iphone addiction, most of them have phone phobia these days, they are afraid to make a call. But they still have to learn it in class because lots of the corporate world still uses phone calls in business to business communication. When you order something online and something goes wrong, the aI chatbot often can;t fix your problem so you still have to call a human to get some action.

[@scout8145]

That seems really helpful! I only learned the social norms of phone calls by overhearing my family members talk on the phone all the time, and practicing by talking to family on the phone myself. (Even then, I still struggle with it, because autism.) But there’s way fewer chances these days for adults to model phone calls for their kids, so I’m really glad people like you are teaching them directly! I’d be curious how your students feel about other phone-adjacent activities where the social norms are different, like Facetime/video calls, Zoom, video game voice chats, Discord calls with friends, etc. My guess is that it would vary a lot depending on the individual student, but the ones who are comfortable with it have had loads of practice.

[@robertschnobert9090]

I hope you teach them how to send a fax as well! I still had to send a fax to cancel my credit card four years ago haha. They try to make cancelling as hard as possible. Effing vultures.

[@Blackadder75]

@robertschnobert9090 no faxes, we retired those 20 years ago in my country (NL) But our German neighbours still use them, so it would still be a useful skill for workers who deal with German firms.

[@t0b0]

​@@Blackadder75 oof, I'm in Germany and the easiest way to send official mail to the government is still by fax. I just faxed a form to the court a few days ago.

[@rarbiart]

Destinctive Ringing was a feature that troubled many "fancy" phones predating the feature, those who offered a selection of funky ringtones at users choise. When the operators started to use ringer sequences not similar to 1sON/4sOFF, but e.g. 2times 500ms ON and then the pause, a lot of those phones refused to play a ringtone entirely. (or just unreliably.)

[@apl175]

I briefly had ISDN for Internet (Bell Atlantic Infospeed residential ISDN) - 2 bear channels, 1 control channel, 64 kbps x2 = 128Kbps bonded speed over standard physical telephone lines. If I was on a bonded data call, and received a voice call the system would drop one of the two channels and allow the voice call to come through. Once the voice call was over, the data channel would reconnect automatically to the ISP. I do also remember that the T/A had analog ports, and when dialing regular phone numbers on those ports the voice call seemed to complete super quickly.

[@joshuahutchins8369]

As someone that has been a network engineer for over 10 years that had to retroactively learn the phone system, I can confirm we owe a LOT to The Phone Company. So many great ideas (even going so far as to say we owe them for the concept of VLANs) came from there. Great vid! (I miss all my lineman tools...)

[@tekvax01]

I used to dial pulse phones with the off hook, all the time. It was great if you got to a phone with a dial face lock installed, and didn't have the key. Also, I used the pulse dialling via a relay connected to my TRS-80 computer with a telephone address book program that I wrote to automatically dial the phone number after you selected it from the menu in the computer. FUNFact: the regular POTS NT/WE phones could only do 10 PPS but you could dial the number twice as fast on the computer with 20 PPS! I impressed a lot of friends with that fast dialling trick. It also was nice to get into radio contests faster than the other callers to!

[@MickeyMousePark]

i used it on pay phones that had broken number pads..also in some stores back in the day you could pick a house phone that did not have a dial pad and flash it 9 times to get an outside line then use it to dial a number...it was an art to dial with off hook ...

[@scottthomas3792]

As a teenager in the '70s, we lived in a rural area...you would hear " ghosts" of other conversations sometimes while talking .. it's what happens when you have lots of wires close together... inductive " crosstalk". The bell would give brief rings during storms. On that order, a science teacher had a phone bell conected to an outside longwire antenna and ground....the bell would " ding" during storms, at surprising distances, sometimes.

[@StarryCactus]

Hey that PBX video was the first one I watched from you! Can't believe it's been, what, 5 years? Also- I can confirm that pulse dialing is still supported as of at least last year on Google Fiber Phone.

[@DataCab1e]

My dad worked for Bell Labs in Indianapolis (which then became AT&T Consumer Products after the breakup) straight through the 80s. His work didn't really involve telephony tech, as his job was casting copies of prototypes for phone housings and such. One thing he got through that employer was a unit called a Telstar, which I'm not entirely sure was intended as a consumer device. Ever run across one of those?

[@saoirseocathain2429]

fuck, this video was badass. More of this, please. Also can confirm a few things. your hookflashing didn't work because that line sim wanted 10 pulses per second, usually 67ms on hook 33ms off, starting from off, and you weren't matching that.

[@rarbiart]

@@saoirseocathain2429 the famous "pulse break ratio", to be adjusted in every modem and ever pbx according to local standards.

[@saoirseocathain2429]

@@rarbiart lol. We've alwazys used 67/33ms when doing audio simulations of 1970s phone switches and their usage, then 20opps for inter-switch pulsing when not using PCI, or MF, or CCIS

[@Psythik]

Check out Evan Doorbell if you love old phone stuff. He has hours and hours of recordings of how the old analog networks used to sound. I was born in the 80s so I had no idea that you could tell if a call was long distance just from the background noise alone, or that multiple people could talk to each other if they all dialed the same number and talked over the busy signal. Real fascinating stuff.

[@saoirseocathain2429]

@@Psythik yup, already got all his stuff ion our server.

[@wraithcadmus]

I enjoyed this video, I think you hit upon what makes phones interesting, they're so simple and elegant in their base form that it feels like there's nowhere to get your nails in to pull it apart.

[@ellafoxoo]

Vonage are still going, I was interviewed by them a bit back when they were just acquired by Ericsson here in Sweden. They were a certain breed of weird to interview with.

[@jfbeam]

Nice to see they're weird in everything. 🙂

[@LittleDancerByGrace]

My last job used Vonage. Every single one of us hated it. Every setting is under the literal LEAST likely heading for it. Took me an hour, consulting two co-workers, Vonage's own help site, PLUS Google to figure out how to set work hours on the thing.

[@lesterawilson3]

I went to HS with one of Vonage's founders.

[@mctanuki]

omg THANK YOU SO MUCH you answered a question i have had since i was a kid and my home phone would some days not be able to dial out and every damn time the numbers would make those inverted number sounds i feel so vindicated thank you kind sir it's like you found one of my own personal Clock Men for me again thank you

[@m__rocka]

CRD, phones, 2 hours video? Match made in heaven!

[@slightlyevolved]

3:15, just this year I got one of my clients to rip out their 1994 Panasonic PBX. It still had a cassette tape on the wall for "voice messages" that hadn't worked for GODS knows how many years. The lead acid batteries had long since vented and were dated 1993. Two phone lines was costing them almost $200/mo....

[@dieKatze88]

That Exact line simulator is how I learned how to program VoIP systems back in the day to interact with real phone networks because I'm old enough that people still wanted to do that when I was in college. I passed my VoIP final on it thanks to the fact that I spent the time to program Cisco Call Manager to drop literally any call in progress if someone on the network dialed 911 and there were no free lines. That wasn't the law at the time. I believe it is now in some places. Safety rules are written in blood.

[@Drmcclung]

VoIP back in the day was so bad you'd think the whole mess was conceived and written by a cadre of bored, amphetamine-soaked sysadmins all suffering from imposter syndrome, looking to create a solution in search of a problem 😂 That was the standard 1999-2003 VoIP experience, before even getting into FXO cards that just didn't work, or took a NASA engine to configure!!

[@marcberm]

Because of the construction of the 66-block, without the bridge clips you can double its line capacity by punching down the two in/out pairs for a single line vertically, in a single "column." Tip to tip on the top and ring to ring on the bottom, for example.

[@Crusader1089]

The culmination of years of foreshadowing

[@SuperSmashDolls]

1:21:46 From what I've heard ISDN in the US wasn't just a digital phone line, you were expected to pay MORE for it. So instead of "we'll turn your $50 phone line into a $50 phone line that you can pay more to get a second line on" it's now "we'll turn your $50 phone line into a $100 phone line that you can pay more to get a second line on". In Japan they had payphones that proudly advertised "ISDN" on them, which is just really funny in the same way a gara-kei is. ISDN also had a 16kbps packet switched channel which was ATM - basically the Bizarro AT&T Internet that died to IP. Wouldn't be surprised if that was *also* based on phone numbers.

[@CathodeRayDude]

this is what i'm hearing from other comments too. what a great way to make sure the rollout completely fails! uuughhhhh

[@alaskanb3arcub]

Way back when, when I had a LOT more free time, I remember watching the the Tech Guy(Leo Leporte's old radio show) live streams. Apparently he had a ISDN for audio to/from the studio at MUCH better quality than regular POTS and better reliability than V0IP.

[@SuperSmashDolls]

@@alaskanb3arcub yeah apparently ISDN was standard kit for radio DJs and musicians for a while. I think there's even a band that had an album called ISDN.

[@resneptacle]

I absolutely love this type of video, long, info dump-y content of someone passionate about a very specific topic with lots to show and tell! Good stuff :3

[@K3NnY_G]

12:34 - Fun fact (I guess), while I could be wrong in other areas; here in Ontario Canada they actually killed off pulse dialing years ago, I was pretty young, but I remember Bell offering free converter boxes to convert pulse inputs to touch-tone so-as to not completely obsolete in-place solutions. Now if you go to an antique shop lots of the ones with old rotary phones will actually have notes on them saying they don't work (per se).

[@ChrisHarringtonMinneapolis]

Used to do big corpo ISDN stuff for video teleconferencing. You said "23" and my brain autocompleted "B plus D". I am sure I am romanticizing the old days where Polycom and Tandberg (and briefly Sony! 😂) all wanted to stream live low latency standard def video over 384kbps, and I spent I'm sure cumulative weeks of my life on hold with US West. Thanks for this, love it, can't wait for more telco content when/if the time comes

[@lamune6809]

Certified old guy here. Not an expert in this field but do have some experience working alongside a retired AT&T lineman. "butt set" - because it can "butt in" on phone conversations. The 66 block is split so you can use it as a simple cross-connect for 50 pairs instead of 25 if needed. We used the non-cut blade on the punchdown tool if you needed to daisy-chain a line to multiple stations. You can just run the wire in and back out as many times as needed. The 110 blocks have a front and a back. Usually they terminate twisted pair into something else. I used 110 blocks that terminated into RJ45 connectors for connections to a PBX. And good choice on keeping a Partner system around. I have one too. I set it up at home so the kids can call each other old-school style!

[@oandr]

please please don't stop releasing videos like this one. your passion is what makes them special

[@RickSwartz]

German ISDN customers back in the day indeed got two lines (cost quite a bit more than POTS, though). Deutsche Telekom even offered an ISDN data flat for an extremely short time. I also know configuring an ISDN modem under Windows 3.11 was a real pain in the ass. Since DSL was just around the corner, ISDN for internet wasn't long for the world. If memory serves, I had my ISDN line for just ~3 years before switching to the relatively higher 368k speed of a first generation DSL line.

[@trentbowman2117]

Back in the mid 90's, the owner of the place where I worked (who was always looking for a good deal) found a used PBX, probably at an auction 4 hours away, and brought it and several boxes of phones back to the office where us computer nerds were charged with installing it. Which we had no idea how to do. After convincing him to spend another $100 to buy a installation / users manual for the system - well, a different model in the same family but close enough - we figured out the basics of PBX technology, strung up some cables to a central room where the external phone lines came in, and got the system working. One immediate issue is that the rechargeable batteries on the board had long since died and would not hold a charge, so every time the power went out all the extension information / programming would have to be redone. (I personally forget several times to set the external lines to tone dial instead of pulse dial.) Eventually we got a set of replacement batteries and enough courage to take a soldering iron to the old batteries and replace them. After that we went back to playing Diablo and Starcraft - good times!

[@SaganCichocki]

Seriously. I watched the whole thing going. I can apply this at work. I have several not used pbx lines and a fully setup phone tree in a closet that never got unhooked. Get the information from your head out there! Please make more videos about it. Even if they are unlisted and not heavily edited but have the information available for learning! Thank you for making awesome videos.

[@DaiAtlus79]

1:11:48 my town didnt have any form of touchtone service til the mid 90s which also introduced a 7 digit exchange (before that, you could make local calls with three or four digits). The funniest thing was that outside services used touchtone so when calling them you would actually switch your phone to TT from Pulse when trying to access those touchtone services. We only got caller id/call waiting in around the mid 2000s (and DSL internet). They finally got Fibe there in the past year because the local govt mandate that all provincial buildings have intranets serviced by FiberOp). Northeastern Canada, NL to be specific (Central Labrador; and the feds and province for years were notorious for making smaller towns there wait a long time for infrastructure before fouls were called in the media to make things more current with the rest of the world (as well as ISPs were skewered for throttling customers and refusing to upgrade hardware without government subsidies).

[@pewdiefan001]

Working in I.T we started providing VOIP Services and I've had to deal with my fair share of Nortel PBXs and 110 Punch down blocks. My first Butt set I actually found on a site. A previous tech must have forgot it there and four months after seeing it for the first time, I decided to grab it. It's still in my tools to this day. Great video and I learned more about rotary and touchtone since I have less experience with those it was very informative.

[@T3hBeowulf]

After a surprisingly small amount of time, I found my inductive coupler microphone (37:42). 😅

[@aatheus]

Enjoyed this nicely broad look into part of your phone stuff collection. I would be interested in a separate video deep dive in PBXs. I used to love poking around in the guts of Asterisk and other such systems

[@EvDelen]

Love the video! Do more!!! A well timed video! Asionometry just did a video on AT&T. PRI had 23 channels because the 24th was used for signalling. A classic line could only support 56kbps because part of the frequency was used for signalling. Each PRI channel could support 64kbps because signalling was pushed to channel 24.

[@juri14111996]

yes. there was a video where they mentiond this on the serial port channel.

[@jfbeam]

There are two basic configurations of T1... "Voice" - D4(SF)/AMI "Data" - ESF/B8ZS If your T1 is ESF/B8ZS, it will pass 64k just fine. However, very few telco's would provide a "data" T1 for voice applications. (mostly because their 10mil year old switch simply can't do it.)

[@lesterawilson3]

With a T1 CAS (channel associated signaling), each channel was still 64kbps, but it is divided in to 56kbps for voice and 8 kbps for signaling. Nortel called these line-side T1's. Channel banks are another use for T1 CAS circuits.

[@The_Tinkering_Geek]

I can absolutely relate and the mental exhaustion that starts the moment I contemplate configuring a PBX system. I had so much redundant but working equipment recovered from upgrades, like your self probably, that I set up a PBX at home in 2005. I have a 2 story house and many kids and have 12 extensions. I used an Alcatel OmniPCX System. But you know what? It still works but...Has not been used in more than 10 years, other than the PA every now and then. I still pay for the land line, as its rather special as it has 6 sequential 0's in the number. But seriously at this stage I don't miss the PBX scene at all.

[@CoreyThompson73]

Your BRI was 2 barer channels (64K) with 1 data channel (9.6K) (2B+D), PRI was typically 23 barer channels with 1 data channel (that is also 64K in that case) that was provisioned on a T1 carrier (23B+D), but the number of barer channels could be anything greater than 1 and spread over multiple T1s if more than 23.. ISDN died mostly because the phone companies did not want to spend the capital on outside plant upgrades, DSL could be used with minimal changes to outside plant, in fact, by the mid 1990s and later most T1s and ISDN lines were actually transported between the CO and CPE using HDSL, since it only needed one pair and was more forgiving to noises in the line.

[@jfbeam]

BRI D is 16k. A PRI without a D channel has to be part of an NFAS group (Non-Facility Associated Signalling) -- we had only one location where we did that... because Sprint Carolina Telephone physically had no more PRIs to sell us, and we needed every line we could get. ISDN BRI is already one pair. If you remember IDSL, that's ISDN with the signalling removed. (raw 144k) That shit can be repeated for miles. (easily 10x the distance of ADSL) However, early BRI's did need a somewhat cleaner line. (analog lines can tolerate a surprising amount of noise.) I've never seen an ISDN PRI (T1) delivered over HDSL. (loads of little VoIP emulating boxes.)

[@lesterawilson3]

HDSL was also a bit spicy as it was carried using around -130 volts DC at up to 150 ma across the loop. Not enough to kill you - but enough to remind you that telephone lines to pack a little bit of a punch!

[@jfbeam]

@@lesterawilson3 I don't have the "book" around anymore, but telco line power is extremely low current. 130V@150mA is more than enough current to kill you, and enough voltage to get through your skin. That said, I've measured some smartjacks at 350VDC. You'd notice if you touched one, but even holding on to it won't hurt you. (when you need more power, use parallel lines.)

[@chrisrichard298]

Regarding polarity, back in the 60's and 70's when you had to pay extra for touch tone service, if the phone company suspected a subscriber of using a touch tone phone when they weren't paying for it, they would swap the polarity on your line, making the polarity sensitive touch pad inoperative. More.... intrepid... customers figured this out and would swap it back at the terminals outside the house, prompting ma-bell to pay you a visit looking for your "illegal" phone. The also would check the impedance of your line during ringing to detect how many ringers and thus how many phones you had connected. If you had an extra that you somehow acquired connected up they would pay you a visit. People "in the know" would disconnect the ringer in the bootlegged phone to avoid detection.

[@ppotty]

"I have never seen a BRI to PRI converter." There is one right behind you. It's that Atlas 500 you pulled out during the beginning of your video. I have one. It can definitely link the two with the appropriate cards.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Yes, but it's not "a converter," it's an incredibly sophisticated router that requires a PhD to configure.

[@ppotty]

​@@CathodeRayDude Now I feel smart! :)

[@nickwallette6201]

This is what I was thinking too. It has BRI U cards, which is what you need to provide your own ISDN service to modems or butt sets. And yes there’s setup involved in that. I think that’s part of why ISDN wasn’t popular. The promise of two lines meant lots of possibilities on how they could be used - like, one number that either could use, separate numbers, and rollover if one was busy, etc etc. On top of complexity, even the CO switch vendors tended to implement it differently enough that, to this day, you still have to tell your equipment _what switch vendor_ to emulate support for. A “national ISDN” standard was eventually created, but too late to be ubiquitous. One of my 3Com ISDN device manuals provided a phone number you could call for support where 3Com would _help you order ISDN service_ from your phone company - which is not something anyone ever had to do with analog POTS. And finally, it was super expensive. I was just talking to a work buddy that said he got it in the late 90s for an on-call remote work job. It was six hunnies a month. Not exactly a bargain to be 2.5-4x the speed of an analog modem. You had to need it, or have enough dough not to care. It’s kind of like IPv6, in that it was way too much solution to a fairly simple problem, and got in its own way.

[@maleiaty]

We have some HDMI in keystone format, they work completely normal. Trick is to use good cabling in the walls. You want a higher gauge if you're running more than 25ft

[@coordinatezero]

I LOVED THIS. MORE PLEASE. Signed, an old phone phreak from the late 70s/early-to-mid-80s. (Anyone else remember the 'comment lines' based in LA, SF, NY, etc? One wonders what Pacific Bell thought of THAT equipment hanging off their lines...!)

[@dgpsf]

What are comment lines?

[@robertschnobert9090]

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what comment lines are 🌈 ​@@dgpsf

[@Dwarg91]

As someone who also watches the Connections museum’s KZbin channel, this was a good dive into bits they haven’t gone over yet. Also something interesting about the connections museum’s KZbin channel is that they are also up in Seattle by Boeing field.

[@rarbiart]

2600Hz phreaking was great, all the routing stuff via countries still using c5 signaling. I spend nearly 2 years of my youth in that dungeon.

[@johngdoty]

I bet you had a subscription to 2600 magazine.

[@MickeyMousePark]

@@johngdoty i did and i built a blue box also..

[@rarbiart]

@@johngdoty nope, that would have been far too mainstream.

[@kevlar557]

On the 66 Blocks - we always used them for paging systems in schools instead of using them for telephony, even to this day when I have to install a Bogen paging system. They are typically set up where each classroom is an individual pair - so a large school can have hundreds of wires to deal with. All of the field wires go on one half of the 66 block, and we'd cut the end off one of those amphenol cables, and wire-wrap it to the paging rack. That way the field wiring would be able to be terminated, and the paging equipment could come in after the fact. Good times!

[@Viledisgorgement]

I worked on some garbage ESI phone systems for a few years and always hated it but outside of that context they are really cool devices on how configurable they are. Love this video.

[@chrisrichard298]

Re: 66 blocks. In an office setting like you describe, you'd have at a minimum 2 sets of 66 blocks. One set has all the incoming telco lines and the second set would have all the "house" cables going out to all the offices. These connections would be made once, and typically never touched again. Between the sets of blocks you'd punch down jumpers connecting line "1" with office "A", and so on. As a pair goes bad here or there and the telco reassigned the line to a new pair, you'd just pull the jumper and run a new one from where line "401" appears on the first set of blocks to where office "E" shows up on the second block. The practice is called cross connecting and it greatly simplifies making changes like that. Similarly, you'd do the same with the station lines of a pbx and the house cables going to offices, so if Jane moves her office to suite 32 from suite 12 and you want her to keep her extension number, you just yank the cross-connect and re-jumper it to the new office and presto. You'd never EVER swap the plugs on the pbx around because that makes a huge mess very quickly.

[@adamengelhart5159]

I would be interested in hearing about hunt groups. When I was in undergrad (late '90s/early '00s), the dorms had wired phone service, and not many people had cell phones yet. Most people had modern cordless phones, but I had brought an original Western Electric Trimline phone (a Touch-Tone model). If people were hanging out in the hallway and someone's phone went off, most people would look to see if it was theirs that was beeping, but when you've got the only phone that hits a piece of metal to make noise, it's a lot easier to pick yours out. I've also done the "pulse dialing by whacking the switchhook really fast" trick in the past, so . . . yeah, if you're looking for the opinion of folks who are not giant phone nerds, you've probably got the wrong person 😀

[@SeaJayMalm]

In college (2007-11), I ran an Internet radio station out of my dorm. The dorms still had working landlines, with individual 10-digit numbers for each one… so I advertised that as my request and live call-in line. I got a cheap cordless phone, and plugged a 2.5mm to 3.5mm TRS adapter into the headset jack… then to a Y-adapter, putting the “tip” signal on one mono jack and the “ring” signal on another. I patched the “speaker” signal into a Y-connector that duplicated the mono signal evenly across stereo RCA jacks, and hooked it up to an input on my DJ mixer. Then, I took the Booth mix out of my mixer (which was programmed to listen to Cue so I could remove the “hotline” channel from feeding back), and patched it into another RCA to 3.5mm adapter to feed it into the “mic” connection on the headset jack. I know I had to include one of those inline volume knobs (the kind meant for headphones) somewhere in the audio chain, but I’m blanking on what levels were too hot vs too low. But by the end of it, I was able to answer the phone with the headset, screen the call, and then if I wanted to put them on the air, just plug in the headset jack, pot up my mic and the phone’s output channel… and I had a fully functional on-air request line, and my caller could hear not only me, but the music out of the computer and any co-hosts who might have also been joining me over Skype. Of course; this all got an upgrade when I bought a MagicJack, which for those two don’t know, was a USB dongle with a POTS jack on the back. The idea was that you’d install the MagicJack program on your PC and subscribe to their VOIP service, and then plug your landline phone into the jack and use it like normal. The perk for my use was that the software also allowed you to flip a call between the handset and your computer’s sound card. This was obviously meant for people to use their USB headsets for calls, but I rigged it to pull “mic” audio from the PC’s line-in card (which was fed by that same booth-cue mix, just to a standard aux cord now) and spit out to line-out (again, standard aux cable to mixer’s line-in). So, again, screen the call on the handset, then flip it to the sound card when I’m ready to take them live. Of course, this was barely relevant by 2012ish, and today we’d just have guest callers join us over FaceTime or Zoom or Discord 😆 But back in the day I was pretty proud of how I rigged it up and was able to shout out the request line like a “real” radio station!

[@tulsatrash]

I mean, honestly, I'm at five minutes of 49 seconds and I'm now READY to sit down for a two-hour documentary about all of this technology that over time, and multiple generations for more than a century, tried to solve the problem of making telephony work.

[@J0hnnyxm4s]

Regarding self-amplified phones: My childhood home had a rotary phone with a volume knob built into the inside of the neck of the handset (the side that faces your face), and no external power source. Rolling it to 10 would make the caller deafeningly loud. I'm not sure if this was an amplifier, or just something designed to make calls quieter if you happened to be very close to the "phone company."

[@wlhyatt100]

PRI is a t1, it has 24 channels. 23 are bearer channels, 1 is a data channel. The data channel carries the caller/calling information and is a sort of inband communications channel that is not in the audio path, unlike modems.

[@numoutheimpfox]

Nortel went bankrupt in 2009 in a very high-profile case. It was the largest bankruptcy ever to occur in Canada and left a lot of people without pensions. They also had an accounting scandal not dissimilar to Enron in the early 2000s. Nortel's husk was around until 2016-ish as they sold off their thousands of patents to help pay for their bankruptcy, but I don't think they did any business past 2009. I remember using Nortel Networks branded phones at a call center job I had in ~2017-18. I assume they were VOIP phones. That call center switched to some kind of PC-based softphone in the months after I left that job. I wish I could've grabbed some of those phones that they presumably dumped.