Plugging a Vintage Telephone Exchange Into The Internet So People Can Use It

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

it will be more sorted out as the week progresses and there will be a livestream of it on saturday and sunday when the museum is open** ill leave it running this evening for you to get a taste then i will bring it back online on saturday and sunday in museum open hours with a livestream! 01843808393 uk landline To dial just dial some numbers. Dial # to hang up in the exchange Not everything is wired back in yet but enough to try!!! there will be omre for the livestreams in the weekend which will be on this museum is not obsolete youtube channel 6900 phone and answering set 6901 phone and answer machine 6902 toilet 6903 phone 5820 announcer 5813 announcer 6907 disk

[@davidjmemmett]

I’ve just called the toilet and LMNC answered! :D

[@POKker1996]

Tried calling from France but I got a message that it wasn't toll free. I guess I don't have toll free calls to UK landlines sadly

[@davidjmemmett]

@@POKker1996 it’s a local number

[@ScottsSynthStuff]

Calling from the US, all I get is the song playing, not sure how to get a dial tone in order to dial...

[@alderankorym]

Trying to call from France, it says that the line doesn't exist.. :/

[@dakiloth]

Dialed and he answered. Don't know why I panicked and hung up instead of telling him what an amazing job!

[@dualtonemultifrequency7168]

Im gona dial him now

[@ScottsSynthStuff]

We had one of these step-by-step switches in our local exchange when I was growing up. When they introduced DTMF, they added converters in the switch itself. You pressed a 6 on your touch-tone phone, and you could hear the 6 clicks on the line as the converter at the exchange generated the equivalent pulses. Perhaps you should hunt down some of those DTMF converters!

[@sonosus]

That's what Sam's done but with an Arduino. There's more info on Patreon.

[@kasuraga]

@@sonosus He's saying it would be cool to have the og converter hardware. It would be cool to see how they differ in translation methods.

[@davechisholm9670]

I confirm this - In New Zealand the then NZ Post Office (Telecoms) division operated mostly BT Step by step exchanges exactly like this equipment (plus a few NEC Crossbar exchanges too - they made some bizarre hypnotic rhythmic noises! oh man, Sam, that's another rabbit hole for you to fall into! LOL). During my Planning Engineer trainee years I spent time with the techs servicing some of these, and I had to wire in a few of these STC manufactured DTMF converter boxes containing 4 cards per box IIRC, precisely for this purpose: allowing people to plug in and use DTMF phones in a telephone exchange area that did not yet contain a digital exchange. A decoding IC did all the DTMF decoding and sent the matching pulse trains into the selector racks to select the called number in the usual fashion (Sam, you also need to have some fun with a Uniselector rack, maybe for droning!). I had couple of STC converter boxes stashed away 30 years ago that I could have photographed, but think I tossed them a decade or so back, however I'm sure a few techs in the UK will have scored a few when the old SxS exchanges were decommissioned, might still have them lurking in their sheds and could cough up a couple for the Museum)

[@toranamunter]

@@davechisholm9670 2600 pip-pip-ker-CHUNK 🙂fun times with R5 🙂

[@tux8664]

That's how the last SxS was circa 2001 in quebec

[@stitchfinger7678]

I've never heard of someone collecting public service hardware, but that's a really neat collection to have!

[@puzl3r_ttv]

better than collecting coins in my own personal opinion

[@VideoNOLA]

A fellow in America found himself being arrested after the police "discovered" his back yard filled with old traffic controls (lights, signals, railroad crossings, etc.), despite all of the equipment having been donated to him by a former employer. I believe he was using the apparatus to teach children all about roadway safety. #murica

[@awesomestuff9715]

@@VideoNOLA that is quite sad, hopefully the equipment wasnt confiscated

[@deusexmachinareznov4975]

@@VideoNOLA actually that was in australia

[@redsquirrelftw]

@@VideoNOLA That's sad. So many dumb laws these days.

[@littlebacchus216]

I love the LookMumNoSIMCard rabbit hole but I have a feeling that exchange is going to get really busy.

[@killerdbz1990]

It's been smashed, from the moment he put it on tiktok....

[@at0mic282]

honestly I'd love to visit the museum that's not obsolete... I love the old way of electromechanical controlling!

[@outerspacebass]

@@at0mic282 it's obsolete in that most homes have had their copper cut 😢

[@macronencer]

7:50 What you're doing here is actually an early form of phone hacking. Sometimes people would try to prevent phones being used to dial out by fitting a key lock on the dial - but it was still possible to dial numbers using this rapid break/make technique. Amazing, I never thought I'd see someone doing that again :D

[@abcnz1]

Yep - I remember here in New Zealand as a young lad (45+ years ago)...we used to go into a public phone box and tap out a number we wanted to call using the receiver 'hook' (in reverse as Sam mentions: 0=10, 8=2, etc.) and we could talk for free.....wow, I think we saved a whole 4 cents? Anyway, that was a very different meaning of 'phone tapping' :)

[@stevenclarke5606]

Back in the 70’s my parents put one of those locks onto the phone to stop me from making phone calls, obviously they cost money, so I found out that you could bypass the locked dial, by using this method, so when the phone bill was higher than expected I could just say that it was nothing to do with me . Lol

[@TheGramophoneGirl]

Same :) You had to do it very quickly and it was easy to make a mistake and misdial.

[@AirPiracy]

Yep, I used to do that in the States back in the early '80s. Sometimes reception areas in hotels and schools had an "incoming only" phone with a circular dummy plate in place of the dial. This was an easy way to dial out and save payphone costs.

[@tenchuu007]

Ha, I remember doing this as well, and it was old tech then!

[@CuriousMarc]

Massive amounts of work here! Congrats on getting it all working, this is mighty impressive.

[@RetroJack]

Good to see you here!

[@SubTroppo]

@@RetroJack Moi aussi.

[@AlexDaDermahurr]

OMG ITS YOU I HOPE YOUR HAVING AN AMAING DAY/NIGHT/EVENING WHATEVER IT IS FOR YOU

[@MixMastaCopyCat]

Just wanted to say, perhaps randomly: your series on teletype machines is AWESOME!!!

[@richardbrobeck2384]

for sure amazing job !

[@TheRinger1976]

If the world ever falls back to full analog, you'll be one of the tech overlords of the post-apocalypse

[@andycrask3531]

You mean when not if 🤣

[@howiekeegan8804]

This is brilliant, Sam! As an ex BT Strowger engineer from the 70s & 80s, it's great to see and hear those switches stepping!

[@adeladd7638]

Me too,I don't like to think of how many of those things I've cleaned. Once we had got thru the entire exchange it was time to start again.

[@howiekeegan8804]

@@adeladd7638 yes, wiper and bank cleaning routines were certainly a chore!

[@fredmanicke5078]

I know a guy who contracted telephone systems in Puerto Rico on a X-Y cross bar system and was complaining about bugs in the system.....literally bugs shorting out the cross bars. I hear your cleaning woes. Have a good day.

[@adeladd7638]

@@fredmanicke5078 It was a long time ago,but I can still the clack and brrrr of Strowger kit if I think of it.

[@toku_floyd]

Lovely to see and hear. We have a working Strowger unit and a Crossbar working in our museum. It’s a hands on museum, with all the different types of phones still working. Plus other connected peripherals, very popular with the visitors.

[@ericgulseth74]

Absolutely fantastic... It always breaks my heart when I see old and obsolete equipment get tossed. Thanks for holding on to the dream.

[@justkelly6992]

Having worked telecom for 40+ years I see absolute value in someone knowing something about how to build, set up and maintain these systems. There may come a time when we will need to revert back to electromechanical devices as discreet electronics may be damaged from coronal mass ejection or EMP from a rogue state. Old is not necessarily bad. Awesome setup.

[@kaybikerow]

Next time I get a chance to travel abroad I just have to see your museum. Your enthusiasm is infectious and your projects are a delight. It brings back memories of the fun I had with electronics in my younger days.

[@KangJangkrik]

Yess please allow us to visit

[@richardbrobeck2384]

I would love also to see it !

[@oprahwinfrey878]

Check out the massive telephone exchange in Seattle Washington. It’s called connections museum.

[@waldroc942]

That brings back memories of my early days at BT. I was a circuit provision engineer working in the old Strowger trunk group switching centres in Telephone House & Dial House in Glasgow. I could tell you a few stories about my days back then... tomato plants growing on the window sills, homebrew brewing in cupboards, pinging little nuts and bolts out of the 5th floor window onto steamed up cars (hookers) below in Bishop Street car park while doing a nightshift. Great to hear those old selectors stepping up and clearing down again... brilliant stuff!

[@piclife1178]

Amazing, imagine the noise in a full exchange in the 1970's. It reminded me that the original control system on the Thames Barrier used telephone style relays. About 150-200 relays each gate end wired in relay ladder logic fashion to produce the control sequences. Thousands of wires going back to south bank central control to drive hundreds of incandescent bulb indicators and push buttons. All replaced with PLCs, serial communication lines and computer screens between 1992 and 1997. I did all the new drawings and converted over the control logic lol

[@greenaum]

Nice! I bet you were tempted to take a couple of walls of relays home with you. That's insane that they actually sent that many wires so far, in some hellacious foot-wide cable I suppose. Sounds like it was designed in 1901 or something, who on Earth would do that? Even way back when they could multiplex signals on a wire, even if it's just using a few frequencies.

[@MD-ob1gq]

I'm a phone tech in the States, we're an old GTE market with GTD-5 switches still. These will still work as pulse or DTMF. We actually get calls for false 911 calls due to bad equipment or wires making and breaking the circuit looking like a pulse dial. The accumulator doesn't know the difference and if it sees 9 pulses then a couple more, it thinks you wanted to dial 911. Cool project!

[@trulyinfamous]

You should make one of the lines repeat a loop of Slow Scan Television with an image. Anyone could call it up, use a SSTV decoder, and see the image after waiting for a while. There's a lot of interesting possibilities. Mechanical stuff like this is endlessly fascinating. On an unrelated note, it would be cool to see a synth module that is controlled by a Geiger counter that has some uranium glass near it under blacklight. The glass would glow green in the dark, and you would have pretty much true randomness controlling a synth.

[@smrp1984]

I absolutely love this idea, huge SS TV fan myself!

[@k03hl3r]

The synth module idea has been done! kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJuUgZt7prt1p5Y

[@fredmanicke5078]

All you need is a pair of Mitsubishi VisiTel, one your end and one the other end. My parents had a set and used them to see the Grandkids from Montana to Texas.

[@smrp1984]

​@@fredmanicke5078 This would work for video but what we are talking about "SSTV" is a way of sending still images. It is commonly used by amateur radio operators "hams" and is similar in function to the way old dial up modems worked. Each signal/image is on a specific audio frequency so you could actually have a number if different images being transmitted at one tome and use your computer do decode them. I have done this with music as it only uses one frequency/tone I have used a audio notch filter to remove the frequency of interest for the music audio and then insert the data stream... depending on how you do it you can almost hide the data signal in the music.

[@greenaum]

@@smrp1984 Hm multiple images at once, clever! Seems in line with the technology and way of thinking at the time. Seems like it's AM modulating a lot of particular tones. Why not FM modulate instead and be able to send pictures quicker? Or do both... somehow... RF isn't my thing. If you could send several images at once, could you do moving television? That's sort of the idea anyway right? You'd need memory to store each of the images which means a computer, and the ones at the time suffered from lack of colours, and shortage of memory! Just the things you' need. I suppose you could build your own computer with a nice grayscale DAC for the colours, 16 shades per pixel maybe. Hm did hams ever use the Baird-style mechanical television? With a home-made Nipkow disc and an LRD or photodiode you'd have a camera infinitely cheaper than the ones on sale commercially in the '70s. Incidentally shouldn't Nipkow be seen as the inventor of television? All Baird did was use Nipkow's "image dissector" disc exactly as it was supposed to be used, to do the job it was meant for. All he did was wire a radio transmitter to the end of it, and a neon bulb behind another Nipkow disc in a television receiver. If I were a patent examiner I'd have rejected Baird as "obvious", an obvious use and follow-on of Nipkow's disk. I wonder if he got any royalties. I doubt it.

[@mstandish]

You should hook up a BBS to it. That would be cool to dial into.

[@BartManNL]

LookMumNoBBS! Not sure if there is still terminal software available which can handle that

[@davechisholm9670]

@@BartManNL There were several good options for BBS server software back in the dialup days of 300-57600 baud, some of it distributed on CDROM, and still likely to be out there - so a vintage Mac or Windows PC could still run a BBS from that era although you'd need a modem bank. I have a couple of genuine old modem racks designed for the purpose, but I'm way down here in New Zealand! Just like faxes, traditional modem calls began to get drop-outs and suffered resynchronisation problems once exchange lines went digital, if the digital"slip" in the near and far end A-D and D-A converters in the remote Exchange cabinets weren't synchronised - Another long story!

[@Corathor]

@@davechisholm9670 There are still some telnet bbs around, just need to google a bit :)

[@fredmanicke5078]

I found it hilarious that you tested and overloaded your system using the people on the internet. I use to see this problem on occasion at an air base using a all relay office. They called the problem a 'Chained office' and it usually happened at noon time when the boys would call their wives: "What's for lunch?" The whole office would roar with clicking as the line finders tried to find a vacant line.

[@stutterat]

I had a computer networks exam today. There was a question about components telephone/fax communication. I didn't study for that topic while studying. But I had watched this video recently without realizing this topic was in my syllabus. So I just explained the whole part about how a circuit it completed to the exchange when handset is lifted and also transferring the destination phone number to exchange using tone modulation. I think I covered everything the question asked. Thanks a lot.

[@seanbuford987]

The coolest machine on KZbin. thank you for including everyone. we need more communities working together in this "sick sad world". together working for a brighter world future.

[@Triggeroni]

This is just filled with all types of awesome! You make us all feel a part of what you're doing! Never stop... P.S. I have been in many remote BT Exchanges in Cumbria & Lancashire where this gear still exists as it would cost more to remove it than to just leave it be, so I've stood face to face with this kit, impressive engineering.

[@greenaum]

Might be that asbestos is our friend! Any office where they find it, they just mothball and leave it to die naturally. Good way of preserving things! I'm half tempted to snap off a bit of chrysotile from somewhere and crumble it's dust around somewhere I want preserving. No idea if the office you mention has it, but it's typical of the time from the 1940s up til the 198os. Lots do.

[@willdatsun]

those old phone sounds , instant nostalgia and wishing to be transported to the 1980s . Excellent work

[@dykodesigns]

I remember when the internet used the phone line as it’s infrastructure. Early modems used acoustic tones to encode the data and that’s only 25 years ago.

[@Pwills]

Yes it was called dialup internet

[@etiennnelacroix4653]

So true! Glad I lived through those early days

[@bsadewitz]

25 years ago, a transition to ISDN should have been underway, but it never happened.

[@alphabetaxenonzzzcat]

@@bsadewitz Yeah ADSL(aka broadband) rather did away with the transition to ISDN.

[@deepspacecow2644]

It still does in rural areas, archaic dsl

[@davidyates748]

This is a tremendous achievement Sam and everybody else who contributed! There's very little that can make me happier than to see and hear a working Strowger type mechanical exchange. Fantastic!

[@petesmith2234]

I used to use the Multitech Multivoip units to carry analogue circuits over IP. They take SIP and convert it to 2-wire FXO/FXS, 2/4 wire E&M and vice versa. They also cope with DTMF and pulse dialling and were available from 1 to at least 8 channel versions.

[@jani140]

Also Sipura devices like PAP2T just do exactly that. There isn't even a need for an asterisk in between. And those things are old an cheap. No need to re-invent the loop. They also come in variants with mixed FXO and FXS ports.

[@ianhannant4353]

You just made me remember a story my later father would tell me. Before I was born, my dad was a Policeman and they used to have Blue Police Boxes (like doctor who!) in the street to enable them to call the station.(before RF Radios). I think they had a pay phones in them or phones with no dials, but he would tell me how you could pulse the on-hook to dial the station for free and other users. Back then only a hand full of people had phones and most numbers was only 3 digits. I am an EE Engineer and started playing with Electronics at the age of 5. watching your videos remind me how I was at your age, but unlike today, I had no audience to share my enthusiasm with. It's so nice to see the technology not only being retained, but made to work and shared. Keep up your amassing work and channel. p.s. I am sure I just see a couple of computer creep in!!

The nerd scale just went up to 11! Very cool and very well done sir!

[@KamikazeVildsvin]

There is something quite unique about all this old equipment. idk, even tho it seems really complicated and tedious, it still feels more natural and intuitive than modern "black boxes". Great job Sam. Keep the intuitive spirit alive!

[@TRIPPLEJAY00]

Sam that is fudging cool bro. I felt like a kid calling a premium rate number without parent's permission. You must buzzing when you got this working. 👍

[@davepainter2070]

That was an flipping great video. Thanks very much for getting involved in a bit of strowger exchange equipment. When I was a youngster in early 80s I worked for BT in a trunk exchange. I was one of many engineers who maintained 19,000 group selectors. Those sounds bring back memories. It was so loud in there.

[@alancordwell9759]

Awesome! So glad you are doing this stuff - preserving history. I've always been fascinated by the old strowger kit. I remember back in the late 80's when BT were upgrading all the exchanges here in Sheffield to electronic, there was a scrapyard near where I worked that was piled 20 feet up in the air with those racks. Wish I'd tried to get some of it now... :-/

[@DaveWithMS]

I used to work for Bell Atlantic repair, and I got to tour a local exchange full of 1AESS switches. I love seeing New Life given to Old technology.

[@hgbugalou]

I love seeing young people keeping all this old gear working. It's crude and inferior but still useful to learn about plus the chunky clicking is very satisfying.

[@AsmodeusMictian]

This is possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I work for a managed services company and one of the services we provide is SIP / VOIP. That alone is sometimes pretty damn complicated, but this? This is nuts! I'm absolutely amazed that you got this thing working at all, and your 'first connected call' dance was very well deserved. Thanks for the awesome video and keep up the great content!!

[@unsoundmethodology]

Very, very cool! (Random story - in the early 1970s, when my mom was in college, her small northern California hometown was apparently one of the last places in the US with a manual switchboard for long distance. She'd joke about calling home from her out of state school - "Yes, operator? I need to dial Quincy, California. The number? Five. No, that is the whole number...")

[@fredmanicke5078]

They were using auto ring down in Essex, Montana at the Izzack Walton Hotel (Essex No. 1), Operator answered from Great Falls, Montana, circa 1994.

[@denton3737]

I got about 30 seconds into the video before I thought "I wonder if I could trunk my FreePBX into this switch". 4 minutes later, you were already doing it. This is quite impressive, another interesting project would be an international pseudowire T1/E1 to trunk your exchange with another.... possibly internationally. There would have to be conversions as your switch isn't a digital switch, but that's what makes it an interesting project.

[@grishka212]

I wanted to say that you really needed to buffer the dialed digits to avoid dropping anything, but y'all figured that out :D In general, a buffer is the way to go when your program has to output data at a slower speed than it comes in.

[@marcianoacuerda]

So that buffer works like a queue??

[@grishka212]

@@marcianoacuerda a FIFO queue is a type of buffer

[@marcianoacuerda]

@@grishka212 I see. Thanks for the response!

[@rescdsk]

Heck yeah, the feeling of reaching out through the phone network by dialing numbers, and making something in the museum move, that must be amazing

[@martin_mue]

The noise in an exchange with a view hundred connections must have been infernal.

[@davidyates748]

It was... I went into one of the last Strowger trunk exchanges in Birmingham before it was decommissioned, hearing protection was mandatory and it was still bloody loud!

[@martin_mue]

@@davidyates748 I wonder wether you could tell the time of the day by the noise level. Do you know how many subscribers where connected to the average exchange on a city level?

[@davidyates748]

@@martin_mue Yes, you could tell the time of day by the noise level! The way the system works is that there are several levels of "concentration", a local exchange might have 10,000 subscribers directly connected to it but only 100 connections to it's parent exchange, on the assumption that not everyone wants to make calls at the same time. This concentration ratio continued all the way up to the national switching centres which routed calls between cities. Modern systems, although digital, operate on the same principles, as does broadband internet infrastructure.

[@martin_mue]

@@davidyates748 That is interesting, I know my local exchange here in Berlin, it is a huge two story windowless building that probably contains only a few 19" racks with todays technology.

[@davidyates748]

@@martin_mue Yes, funny enough when I visited the trunk exchange we were there to survey for the installation of modern digital switching equipment. This was a room about the size of a football pitch, full of mechanical telephone switching equipment - when I went back a few months later it was all gone, replaced by two suites of equipment, probably ten square meters in size, and eerily silent.

[@mooredogfather]

This is fantastic work, I wish I had your energy and brain, I really appreciate people who embrace the older technology. Not many understand what it takes to make a telephone work the old dial system. I worked as the fist male operator at my high school pbx, the local hospital, the Army in Germany and finally at AT&T in my home town. I supervised the old long distance cord switchboard before it was retired, fun times with conference calls and overseas calls. I have three old manual switchboard that I made work with a console and loaned to a movie company and it was used in the movie "Vast of the night'. By the way, I used to make calls from locked telephones using the tapping method you demonstrated!

[@DewtehDew]

Sam, you never cease to amaze me. Thanks for all the years of sharing your brilliance and creativity. Also, your community is fantastic.

[@mahnid]

Spent a lot of time in old exchanges as a youth. lovely to hear the sounds again. If i concentrate i can still hear the rhythm of the ringing machine.

[@andrewmeadows2596]

Wow I have no idea what your talking about half the time when it comes to electronics. But I find your videos fascinating .I didn't realise how much I would find telephone exchanges interesting.

[@jeffredd9965]

i think there's always space in the brain to learn... learn a little about everything or loads...

[@deepspacecow2644]

Take a look at the connection museum's channel, their entire museum is in an actual still functioning telephone exchange, with all sorts of different switches and power systems.

[@demonic477]

as much as I love the old phone systems and the old rotary phones I have to say If you haven't gone insane already it will make you insane listening to the switches for to long . there weren't a lot of people who could work with them for a long time before they had to take time off and just get away from the exchanges for some peace and quiet . still just getting to see one work after all this time is a joy

[@chadromanowski2408]

I work for Verizon in NYC..a lot of that old switch equipment exists right next to all the fiberoptic equipment.. no one ever disconnects it because believe it or some of its still live

[@Barflew1]

Sam Is Amazing..👍Never seen this,set-up and running..Put all the equipment in and tested it in Huts and Vaults for 18 yrs.Cabinets too.From a Northern Indiana location..Had to spin down a Hundred pair of wires in a block in under an hour.Retired now.Most rewarding job I ever had.Still in touch with all the old Installers..We worked in Philly for a month..In a Old Telephone building..Interesting Setup...Some of the old equip.was there..Don't know if it was Live..

[@Mister_Brown]

yeah you often see stuff plugged in and drawing tons of power that isn't actually used anymore

[@petevenuti7355]

​@@Mister_Brown I used to charge my batteries off the phone line when the power was out... I also have an old d-com voice over IP modem from the 90's that actually has a switch to use pulse or DTMF , used to have it set up like a bat phone, just pick it up the rotary receiver and it automatically dials one important number over IP.

[@sandrainthesky1011]

My grandmother was an operator back in the days of switchboards. This machine made her obsolete so she took up a music career instead! Still ingenious methods of mechanical magic hey? Very impressive as always you crazy man!

[@alexandremargat2350]

I swear every time I say this channel can't be more amazing, there's a new video even more amazing.

[@rogerwarren2459]

What you need is a original Mitel DTMF to rotary convertor . That device enabled North America to DTMF enable its strowger exchanges. And laid the foundations for Mitels PABX business .

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

Yes but finding them is something else. That interface device is actually mitel

[@rogerwarren2459]

@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER Only one I saw was in the Mitel Products display in their Ottowa head office . Pride of place as it was the product that started it all off. . Theoretically there should have been thousands in North American central offices

[@InterLinked1]

I have to applaud the ingenuity here, but I think you made it more difficult than it needed to be ;) Rather than manually wiring up a phone wire interface, you could have just used one of the many telephony card interfaces / E&M from Digium for Asterisk. Then you can let Asterisk handle all the DTMF pulse conversions in both directions and have a much more reliable connection. Let me know if you need any help with Asterisk, by the way; you had mentioned you had some trouble with that. I help other hobbyists set up Asterisk systems all the time. There are peer-to-peer hobbyist switching networks that let you have unlimited outgoing/incoming calls with VoIP - no need to pay for PSTN trunking!

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

Probably! I like solving projects this way. As if it breaks I can fix it cus it’s likely a hardware issue. Having tried with fxo boards and what not I could get it do to the right pauses and hangup routines so just went with this approach. Happy to revisit at some point however!

[@patrickohara1653]

I worked on this equipment as an apprentice in 1976 in an exchange in Cape Town. Fantastic memories. Thanks for your enthusiasm

[@homemedia4325]

just tested from Australia ;)

[@Ashley.0000]

Me too i got to talk to Sam.. too friggin cool

[@madusan1]

Those videos of the strangers brought me back to the late 80's - early 90's while I was looking after our base squadron in the cdn forces. It was a sad day when the replaced it later with a meridian SL1. Cheers from Canada

[@markedis5902]

Nice one. BT never really worked out a reliable DTMF to loop disconnect adapter. They just upgraded everything to system x. I was part of the upgrade team for payphones in London as the old pay on answer phones couldn’t cope with the upgraded system. They used a pulse between the A and B legs and ground , multiple grounds on a digital system apparently made system x an ex-system!

[@DrD6452]

It's pretty cool you got that old system up and working. What's even cooler is the people and minds that originally designed and constructed that amount of mechanical hardware to achieve what it was designed to do.

[@TheKorath]

Back in the 90's I worked for a company that installed voicemail servers based on OS/2. We had a bunch of different hardware cards to interface with the telephone systems. We mostly used Dialogic cards to service the incoming calls, Aerotel Pulse to Tone converter cards and PRI/BRI cards for ISDN/E1 connections. I have to say your solution is a lot smaller than what we used to put up with. Four analog phones lines required a full length ISA card. The pulse to tone cards were much bigger and much heavier than Teensy!

[@ed.puckett]

This is great! One definition of magic is action at a distance, and your stuff here exhibits just that. Dial a phone, relays and circuits start clicking and connecting and whirring and buzzing. So fun!! Keep up the great work!

[@collinhunter9792]

amazing, amazing. that is all from my life growing up. born, 1960 ,so now 62 and all of this is relevant to me. we had a massive phone exchange in my home town. all this stuff, always interested me. now in new zealand n i wonder what happened to the phone exchange back home.

[@LandNfan]

Very cool! My first job after USAF was as a frameman with South Central Bell in Nashville, TN’s downtown central office. It was an old office and still had 5 exchanges of Western Electric step-by-step switches, plus 2 of crossbar and Nashville’s first ESS exchange. It was my task to make the hard-wired connection on the main distributing frame from the physical presence of a telephone number to the cable pair leading to subscriber’s location. It was a noisy place with all those switches clattering.

[@fredmanicke5078]

Yeah, I been a Frame Monkey, too.

[@beautifulsmall]

I can remember tap dialing on the handset contacts in a phone box. Love the projects. I wonder how many things built today will still be working in 30 years.

[@justsomenamelesssoul8097]

I hope I will xD

[@ninamartin1084]

Only 1 way to find out

[@redsquirrelftw]

This is so cool. I work for the phone company, I help monitor the more modern version of these, DMSes, never got to see one of these in operation so it's pretty cool to see it working.

[@MrChorataBG]

Hello, I’m 20 years in the asterisk PBX configuration. I used to do this kind of work. I do not remember exactly but what you need is a SIP to Analog Gateway. I think that the exact is FXO gateway. And the gateways are coming with different numbers of ports for analog connection.

[@kipperkell]

I hope you acknowledge your genius. I think you are incredibly gifted not only with your skills for music and invention, but also with your will to do things and see them through. It is amazing

[@markb3146]

Welcome to the world of Telco... G'day from an Aussie who used to work in step (SxS) exchanges. Only for a short time... I still work for the telco and the exchanges still smell of the oil from the long gone SxS equipment We had siemens, BPO and APO gear

[@dozerblade]

I love the way you explain things, sadly I still don't have a clue what is going on. I admire you guys that understand electronics.

[@joeo6378]

Having spent some time with old phone systems for large-ish organizations, I remember being blown away at every step how much tech and configuration there is at every step telephony. Amazing technology.

[@Flymochairman1]

The number was 'Out Of Use' by the time I tried it. Always impressed at how well you can keep so much in side to be able to rattle all those stats. off to us like that, even with a script! Aren't the PC crowd so glad of ADSL/DSL came in, and on those same two wires. This has really shown that 'transition' in an opened out way for folks to grasp such major changes in telephony. Fantastic update, m'man! Keep Safe there. Cheers!

[@umop3plsdn]

Dude holy crap I used to follow you closely and I randomly come to check to see what you are up to and now you're messing with old telco equipment... SO AWESOME. i'm glad to see you go down that rabbithole and bring some exposure to the old way of life. Also, leave it to you to integrate your way into it with such a cool idea

[@JB-fh1bb]

This is flippin awesome! As someone who got second hand stories of the original phreakers, I had no idea that the pulses were so DYNAMIC behind the scenes! I feel like I’d have sat there for weeks just watching people’s calls go through like some sort of retro Steamboat Nebuchadnezzar!

[@slamshed]

Fantastic, I have been saving bits and bobs like this for 30 years. I get it & appreciate the huge amount of work you must be doing to hold this together. My current vice is pinball machines, you need some in the museum.

[@oprahwinfrey878]

There a massive 3 floor gymnasium sized Mechanical switching museum in Seattle Washington USA. Called Connections museum. Its Only open Sundays. They have step-by-step switches numbers one to three and five cross bar switches…. And ESS switches… Functioning! They are all being held up by engineers from Microsoft and Boeing

[@JGS123WRPTP]

As someone who stands and stares at redundant equipment in exchanges on a near daily basis... I appreciate the music you're making!

[@lazaruslong92]

My father worked in a step relay Central Office in Quebec for Bell Canada. I still have the files for reconditioning the relay contacts in the step relay. Northern Telecom technology. The best in the world. Imagine going into a football size room with all these running at the same time. I visited when I was quite young in the 1960's. I thought I would loose my hearing. Very robust technology.

[@douglasboyle6544]

I don't even have words to explain how wonderful this is. Great work.

[@petersymonds4975]

Hello. I only worked on UAX’s as an apprentice. We had loads of UAX13’s and the odd UAX12. The 12 was built by a blacksmith and was rough1 the UAX’s were designed to be self-sufficient and to work in small buildings about 20ft x 10ft or smaller and with no toilet facilities or water and no heating. The older racks in the 13’s were grey in colour and cabinated! With a mains tubular heater in the base. Later the cabinets were removed and some heating provided. In a few exchanges a small 4x4 shed was provided if mains water was available for use as a toilet. If fuses blew or selectors jammed then the local telephone number of 299 was designed to give Number Unavailable tone (NU). The operators made regular calls to 299 and then decide to call out an engineer. I’m not sure of the circuitry but the condition for a free circuit was not a disconnected state as in usual Strowger.

[@hashmagandy2012]

Wow, wow! You just ‘floored’ me Sam. What on earth motivated you to buy, refurbish and integrate a Strowger switch to the Internet heaven only knows but your broad knowledge of old and new technology as well as an obvious determination to get it running, is so impressive. 👏👏👏 Like someone appreciative of my engineering resourcefulness once said to me, ‘if ever I was marooned on a desert island you’re the type of guy I’d want there with me’. (Trust you can appreciate the sentiment behind the comment.)

[@VicGreenBitcoin]

Bro, they should give you a royal ribbon for your work with classic electronics. These kinds of systems simply cannot be forgotten and you are taking an important step in this with your KZbin channel

[@lewisjacksonv]

This is cool as bits bro. You are a bright spark. I work for Openreach and nerd out going through the old exchange buildings, which unfortunately they’re closing down. Loads of ‘old’ tech still laying around.

[@bryanrbrock]

Thanks for the great work and for showing pulse dialing without using the dial. I never knew that was possible. Reminded me of a the scenes in THX 1138 shot in a telephone exchange. Cool!

[@markandsuriyonphanasonkath8768]

Wonderful! I was trained on "step by step" - i think it was called "Stromberg", not completely sure. FANTASTIC update, many thanks!

[@chrisburn7178]

Genius comedic timing at 4:00! You could always go into panto if the museum burns down 😁. Side note that might be interesting - the word "hello" pretty much became a standard greeting due to the telephone; apparently Alexander Graham Bell misheard Edison's surprised "hullo" and then they realised how easily intelligible it was and it stuck. (Simplified story but the general idea!)

[@StefanoBettega]

This is absolutely amazing! My father worked for the Italian communications service, so I well remember all of the time I saw that equipment working under my eyes!

[@Novaius]

This sort of thing is so incredible to me and I love every bit of it. Maybe one of the lines could be converted to a system that can encode a voice message and transmit it to an old fax machine somewhere else in the museum lol. Or maybe an old RTTY fax machine, since those were meant to handle large volumes of short messages (inter-ship communications during WWII and the like) without spitting out obscene amounts of paper.

[@isaacmurray8490]

I think that this older style tech is amazing. I’m a huge mechatronics nerd and i like older tech a lot too. So seeing an actual work phone exchanger like this is mind blowing-ly awesome.

[@brianm744]

Imagine in a post apocalyptic world.... these examples of EMP resistant technology would be essential to re-establishing, at the minimum, a temporary telephone service. And, the people who know how to build, maintain, and repair them would be a priceless advantage to people trying to rebuild civilization. My bizarre thinking comes out again. Great work here! Just goes to show you how quickly "nerds" can unite and collaborate.

[@retinaquester]

And I always took phone for granted until I setup my own SIP server on our office. (with Free-PBX) but boy that's a learning curve. Cannot imagine how much work this was, truly next level.

[@amrkoptan4041]

The amount of enthusiasm coming out is tremendous! thank you for making everyone's day better with a smile on their face

[@nigelbiscombe9199]

Love it. We used to dial home from the surf club by tapping the number rather than putting money in. Before they realised the way around the system. :)

[@eher_meh]

I've been watching your videos for a few years now. An I just love what you created! I collect (and use) so much old and obsolete junk myself and everyone asks what I want it for, what the point is, says it belongs in the trash and you don't need it... but I just love it when switches still make noise and you can see how things work... We'll be coming soon! Greetings from Germany...

[@Retinalism]

Used to work on these in country areas in Australia, we called them RAX’s (Rural Automatic Exchange) in the early ‘70’s. Later we installed Ericsson based “ARK” “crossbar” switch based exchange equipment. Enjoy your journey with the Step by Step (SXS) equipment you have there.

[@petersymonds4975]

Hello. When I first set foot into a Strowger exchange it was a non-director called Cardiff Empire (opened in the 1958 when the Empire Games was held in Cardiff. Some of the older racks and selectors and cables were all Battleship grey in colour, the later ones were what was called Light Straw in colour, made the place a bit less darker. The Cardiff Empire exchange when I visited was claimed to be the 2nd biggest in the world, second to Paris, France. The London exchanges were Director exchanges, a unit there managed multiples of 10,000 customers. Cardiff had a capacity of 100,000 plus traffic from its dependent exchanges around the city centre, some with10.000 customers, some with just 300 customers. Plus connections to other trunk units across the UK and International Operators. The first thing you felt was the noise. As engineers/technicians you used your ear for non-normal noises and your noise for the smell of burning coils that you would discover before it caused an alarm.

[@girlmastergeneral]

This is the best video you've ever done! So freaking cool! A++ Glad to see it all come together like this and all of your loyal fans pitch in with their different skill sets to help!

[@jamesbethell42]

I think there’s a whole generation of us “phreaker kiddies” who grew up in that weird point in the 90s where engineering and curiosity intersected. For me personally anyway. I remember diving into the dumpster at the local telco to retrieve codes. It was a brave new world where the sacred knowledge was hidden from the new generation and we were gonna get it whether by hook or crook or by prybar into a telco van in the parking lot at night. Its different now. The internet, like with this video, is like you can learn anything. But back then we were literally pushing buttons to see what happened. I’m very glad to have been born when I was.

[@DavoidJohnson]

Used to work on these back in the 60's 70's and 80's. Usually building new ones or adding to them or modding them. They are seriously showing their age now as am I.

[@dekumarademosater2762]

madness that fills my heart with pure joy

[@sw6188]

I absolutely love these old stepping exchanges. I wish we could go back to using them. Would love to set one up here in NZ and have subscribers using it in a small town.

[@KarlandKristy]

That’s pretty cool. I always get this déjà vu around this guy’s videos. I had a friend who was an engineer. He actually designed attack avoidance systems for military aircraft. He was so brilliant that trying to get him to explain anything to you was like trying to read the medical dictionary. You can’t pronounce half of it. You have no idea what 3/4 of it is. And it’s really cool, and fortunately I have enough of a background to understand most of this, but for your layman this is quite over their heads. And admittedly some of it is over my head. I don’t know why you would want to get something like this to work again other than for the museum. But it is cool to see what level of technology made the simplest of things happen back then. Believe it or not I have some AT&T stock that was handed down generationally. My mother was born in 1932. She actually worked on a switchboard that required you to pull out wires and plug them into other holes. Predating this electronic technology by a minute. She bought the stock options and they were willed to me. Somewhere I even have a picture of her working on the ENIAC whenever she started her military career. Anyway, keep up what you’re doing. And I’m glad that there is enough people out there that do understand stuff like this. Or at least, like me, have enough of an understanding, to enjoy the fact that this is existing. I used to do phreaking when I was a kid. How else are you going to call your buddy that lives on the other side of the county line 100 yards away from you yet long distance on the telephone line?

[@less5406]

When my dad worked for AT&T here in the states in the mid 80's, he took me to a PBX room. Holy smokes...it was loud and hot in there and it was HUGE!!! Thousands and thousands of these switches constantly clicking. I didn't get to see one that had been converted to digital switching. Dad said it took a fraction of the space of the mechanical switches.

[@dizzious]

Dude! It's so cool that you're actually making this thing work and be usable to people. Keep up the awesome work!

[@hartpa]

Dude. You're ace.And the guys supporting you. Fair play!!!!!!

[@mem11977]

I don't have very good cell phone reception where I live. I have a modern cordless phone for my landline. But, I also use a rotary phone when my power goes out. It takes me back to when I was a kid in the 80's and early 90's. I love to watch my 82 year old mother use it. If you younger kids have never used a rotary phone. You should try it. It's a blast from the past...