The world's oldest Linux peripheral?

[@fintux]

"Okay, so I will just casually learn a new programming language and write a device driver for a century old hardware, because why not" Pretty amazing! As a software engineer, I'm pretty impressed by what you achieved!

[@SilentGloves]

I came here to say that this person is a Software Engineer and hasn't yet realized it.

[@jonathanpullen7439]

@@SilentGloves I actually suspect that she is a JOAT. :) (Jack/Jill of all trades). I think you would have to be to keep a panel or crossbar switch working now that you can't just call western electric for new parts.

[@mrbmw42]

As someone who's spent almost 20 years building systems using Asterisk for various purposes, I have to say this is arguably the most incredible use I've seen. It's also *exactly* the kind of thing that the early community would've loved (things have, unfortunately, become a lot more corporate over the years). Great job!

[@jnelson4765]

I made my living replacing office systems with Asterisk and installing Hylafax fax -> PDF gateways for a few years. Only messed with a couple T1s, but this is truly next level.

[@DeviantOllam]

Your presentation style gets more engaging and charming with each and every video... Even this deep dive, in spite of it being very computer-y, was entertaining and totally understandable to me, someone who hasn't coded since college! 👍😁👍💚

[@eeek77]

Agreed

[@xurtis]

Wow, going from ‘I don’t know C’ to ‘dammit, I’ll write the driver myself’ isn’t a leap i think most would try to take but I think many would get a lot from. Hope you had plenty of fun learning that way, hope others take inspiration from that too!

[@xurtis]

Also, were you to teach computer science, i think I’d have loved to learn it from you. I really like your presentation style and I’d really like to understand how you manage to speak so well to a broad audience, engaging to those with experience and still clear to those without and without speaking excessively in technical terms; it’s something i think i could stand to improve on myself.

[@xurtis]

@@monad_tcp i think whether or not I’d recommend it would depend on the person; if you’re self driven enough I don’t see why doing it as an absolute beginner would be such a bad idea. Just be prepared to take smaller incremental steps and do your work on a machine that won’t be an issue if you do something catastrophically wrong.

[@SolarShado]

@@xurtis I feel like that depends on exactly how you're defining "absolute beginner". Seems like it'd be a pretty rough time if you don't even know what a variable is yet. But I agree that a lot of beginners could probably benefit more from something like this than continuing to green-field stuff from assorted tutorials. I feel like, in general, "reading actual, real-world code" is an under-utilized learning tool... (insert tangent about open source vs closed source here)

[@LouiseBrooksBob]

Her next challenge should be to rewrite it in Rust.

[@aftbit]

Nice job! I am a professional software engineer, and I can confidently say that branching out to your own implementation of a confusing function instead of refactoring is a time honored tradition, even if it isn't best practice! :) Does this mean that the Museum will be returning to C*NET or Phreaknet soon?

[@MarcinKwiatkowski]

Amazing. Awesome. Brilliant example of excel in engineering. As a software engineer and architect with 25yrs in telco industry I tell you - you are magnificent. People with attitude like yours are driving the world. I beg you, under any circumstances, please do not lose your enthusiasm.

[@billmoran3812]

Sara, your giddy joy from this accomplishment is palpable. You are a treasure! I doubt there are many people in the world with your unique knowledge and skills in telephony. I would absolutely love to spend a day shadowing you at the museum.

[@chriholt]

I totally agree with you Bill - I would love to hang with Sara and tour that awesome museum!

[@mutzbunny]

i just wanted to say, I am so happy to see, that you as a museum do such a wonderful job in preseving those machines. Yes it costs money to run those machines, yes it defininitely is not easy to do and requires a lot of effort. but I myself worked in a Museum a while, and they did not even try to preserve the stuff they had, the outright destroyed most of their bigger machines and computers to make them look like they are doing something while actually it all is controlled by a modern arduino. I found it really depressing how that museum treated their stuff. thats why i am even more happy to see places like the connections museum or the computer history museum do such a great job of preserving even bigger and more complicated machines. thank you.

[@MeriaDuck]

Goosebumps when that phone rang at about 16:40! You're a genius to pull that off. And a nice 100 year celebration feature for the machine.

[@slonkazoid]

clicked for Linux, stayed for the analog nerd stuff and proceeded to send the video to everyone. I'm still too scared to write kernel modules but modifying software to add the features I want is something I do often. good job on getting it to work

[@jnelson4765]

Kernel drivers aren't too bad - the interfaces are well documented, so long as you know the hardware you're interacting with. PCI and PCIe are very well abstracted and the vast majority of USB devices can be driven with a user mode driver.

[@Hauketal]

Someone (was maybe even Linus himself?) said, kernel programming is like old DOS programming: you make an error, you reboot.

[@bzert281]

Cracking open a beer to celebrate your moment of victory with the Panel > Linux > Panel round-trip call. That is a totally awesome feeling. ***K Yeah Indeed!!!

[@ralfbaechle]

As a kernel developer - the kernel is just another C program. After 33 or so years it has become pretty large and complex but you can ignore most of that to get started. There are many tutorials around. There used to be a project to introduce prgorammers into the Linux kernel, Kernelnewbies, Linux Kernel Newbies. Search for that.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

It's absolutely okay to say other people's code is bad, but it doesn't necessarily mean a lot, because everyone hates everyone else's code, as well as their own from 6 months ago.

[@melanierhianna]

I'm a tech lead in embedded software and have worked in it for 30 years because I love writing code that makes real world stuff happen. That joy when you run code and something happens to some thing elsewhere is wonderful. Congrats!

[@MichaelCowden]

As a nerd who also gains personal satisfaction from tackling big projects of little commercial usefulness, I approve of and applaud your dedication and success. Congratulations on your achievement. I will never reach the level of satisfaction you must have from this extremely cool project. I bow to you and will forever have you in my personal hall of fame for accomplishing the adaptation of a panel switch into a Linux peripheral. This is just spectacular, and lives high up among many significant achievements made by you and the Museum staff. Damn good show! (And thanks for the awesome video to explain it, too.)

[@felixe2890]

That's absolutely magnificient! Congratulations on the work and your determination for pushing through this!

[@sysmatt]

21 minutes of magnificent storytelling -- Love it. Awesome work!

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

Thank you! 🙏

[@RalphHightower]

Congratulations on modifying the dadhi (sp?) to get everything working. It was a fascinating video to watch. For nine months in 1994, I was a software developer contracted to MCI in Cedar Rapids, IA. One puzzling problem to solve was eliminating the various beeps and boops that a customer heard switching to an audio recorder for delayed message delivery. In the "bull pen", there was one contractor who would dial another number in the room and hang up when it was answered. George was helping me test it. Once I confirmed that it worked, I told George, "I have one more test." "One more?" "Yes, Sashi." He said "Let's do it." George recorded "Sashi, we know you're doing this. Stop. You've been warned." I set it for a 5 minute delay, and we went back to the "bull pen". Sashi's phone rang, but he didn't see anyone using the phone. His face turned pale.

[@erininstereo47]

Learning from scratch on how to use modern software to interface with historic hardware is peak technological badassery.

[@PhilipStorry]

You should be insanely proud of this achievement! It's great to see an integration that helps us understand the old panel switch better. You should also be proud of this video, which was not just interesting but had clarity and enthusiasm. Thank you very much for doing this.

[@dinkc64]

Wow this is one of my favorite episodes - great job Sarah! thank you for going into detail with the code and how things work I really really enjoy every second of this one, bravo! 🎉

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

This sort of content is what the internet is for. I've been making code talk weird old protocols to and between weird old hardware (and weird new hardware) since 1972 and I still get that H*CK YEAH! moment when things work. Fabulous work Sarah!

[@BahamasRunner]

Just great. I'm doing some programming myself so I can imagine how much effort you put into this. Congratuliations for this unique accomplishment!

[@roleyrevs_DRZs]

This is awesome and very inspiring. I love code that affects physical objects / machines, and I love old phone equipment. Well done to you for getting to the end of the objective. You make reference of New Zealand as one of the locations that there is a working phone exchange of similar age to the one in the video. I live in New Zealand and have played with the exchange at the Taranaki Aviation Transport and Technology Museum. I was completely mesmerized by it we went for a hour, I stayed the whole day!. Keep up the cool content and your infectious enthusiasm for what you are doing.

[@ZaphodHarkonnen]

As a professional software dev with 10+ years experience? You don’t give yourself enough credit. That’s pretty solid code with great practice around making a clean break to handle something outside the original architecture and referencing other documentation for detailing the why chunks of code do what they do. That’s a lot of the stuff I work with less experienced devs to get them to do and you’re already doing it.

[@compu85]

Congratulations!! I know you've been working at this for some time. The work you and the other volunteers have been doing is nothing short of amazing. The effort needed to get the switching systems to do more than just "make a phone ring" isn't lost on me :)

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

Thanks! I think that most of the time, we only demo the basics, and it's nice to hear that someone appreciates all of the other cool stuff too

[@compu85]

@@ConnectionsMuseum It's like the difference between getting a Jukebox to play a record placed on the turntable, and getting it to make automatic selections, skip empty slots, and count coins properly - in both cases it "does something" but one is much further from the machine's original intent!

[@youritguy1]

That’s was an awesome videos. Loved how your able to link systems that are 70 or 80 years old to the 21s century. It was very interesting and entertaining.

[@kelli217]

Yep, that's right up there with TTY devices, which originated right around the same time as that panel switch. I think the first Morkrum (predecessor of Teletype-in this case, the company, not the genericized word for the device) machine was around 1910, and the first panel switch around 1915. However, it isn't quite clear whether those first TTYs were using Baudot code or some proprietary solution. The company called their earliest codes "Blue Code" and "Green Code" and so it isn't possible to claim definitively that the Baudot code type of TTY, that Linux supports, was before 1915. Giving the panel switch the edge!

[@TallinuTV]

That is fascinating. Getting devices from such distant eras to work together correctly is pretty impressive. Nice job!

[@joenichols5253]

Thanks for making all these videos this is awesome to see this work the way you set it up

[@scarfboy]

That "*bleep* yes"... I felt that :)

[@figueroalabs]

This was very exciting. I was jumping up and down when the call got through. I used asterisk back in my previous life for non standard scenarios, so I know how hard this was. I'll certainly have a look at the code and enjoy it as well.

[@stephensalex]

Sarah, you are just awesome!

[@cabrooks2000]

Great job! Asterisk is not a small thing to jump into, that you were able to overcome is, um, ‘nuances’, is really remarkable! Hope I get to stop by the museum if I’m ever in town!

[@jeffkutz4917]

Absolutely impressed with the size of the job you took on, and accomplished so gloriously, especially handling the exceptions!

[@davida1hiwaaynet]

Very cool project! Thanks for explaining how it works and showing your code in action! It's very rewarding to develop something like this and have it work!

[@gregorymccoy6797]

Talk about jumping in with both feet! From zero to device driver is quite a feat. Great job.

[@frankrasmusson5052]

Your explanations of switching are always informative and interesting. Linux computers have passed through this hobby room now and then. Keep the videos coming👍 And thank You for what you’ve done Sara👍

[@sletler]

Oh and I just found those CDs and SDs / ESs. How did I miss those before? More to add to Telecom Archive 🙂

[@jarrodtanner1986]

This is so interesting, I can't believe that Linux supports it with only a kernel module. Love learning something new everyday. Love the channel, keep up the good work. You did an amazing job and you should be proud of yourself for accomplishing such a task.

[@esra_erimez]

This is most impressive. I am quite simply in awe of your talents.

[@the-bizzy-bee]

Im absolutely amazed the amount of backwards compatibility thats happening in this video! the fact that 1940's era equipment was effectively running what was emulation of the old way of signaling to keep the peace instead of fracturing the signal standard is flabbergasting.

[@HiVisionary1125]

This is immensely more work than my "fun project" with Asterisk, which involved using a 1990s German payphone as a self-service information kiosk. My biggest problem was satisfying the physical requirements of the phone, using an "analog telephony adapter", which then connects via SIP (and an Ethernet cable ten cm long) to a Raspberry Pi running Asterisk. The Asterisk configuration isn't anything special, but the ATA is a bit unusual, because it has to provide German Post Office standard off-hook voltage and loop current, which are both higher than the Western Electric standard most ATAs, PBXs, and so on are designed for. Finding one that would work was less difficult (a tip from a German telephone hobbyist put me on the right track) than figuring out how to convince it to send metering tones to activate the charging function.

[@nullify.]

Damn, I got recommended this video. No idea older phone switching gear was mechanical. That's wild. Def would love to see this in person.

[@sampofilms]

❤This is amazing. I had the pleasure of visiting your museum 2 years ago and I am always amazed by the devotion to preserve such beautiful "antiquated" tech. Thank you for showcasing and explaining such incredible feats of technology.

[@johnathanstevens8436]

Oh man, I was hoping they would include it in a merge as an optional feature .. not everyone has this knowledge so it's cool that you can contribute!

[@barryyoung6159]

Thanks Sarah, you and the other Volunteers at the Communications Museum are achieving awesome things and sharing information in the engaging way you do is next level 😎

[@Sonex1542]

Hoping to someday visit the museum. All of you up there with your vast knowledge is amazing. Im still lost after watching many videos on how that stuff works even at the mist basic level other than its magic.

[@cincodenada]

This is SO COOL, hot dang!! I love integrating things from such wildly different eras like this. You're a brave soul for diving head-first into kernel drivers and learning C as you go - I'm very impressed you not only survived, but emerged victorious! And the diagrams in this video are next-level. "D4 -> 4 wires, 5 feet -> computer!" put a huge smile on my face 😄

[@MartinPiper6502]

Outstanding. Relying on returned pulses to the sender and telling it to only start or stop seems rather prone to return signal noise and latency.

[@kehawk2]

Amazing and congratulations! Even for modern peripherals, writing kernel drivers is not for the faint of heart! I love your enthusiasm and hope to visit your museum someday!

[@maxheadrom3088]

Awesome! There's a great scene on the film "The Boston Strangler" that shows a switch working when they are trying to catch the killer. It's an awesome film and Tony Curtis plays the main character.

[@artpeary7358]

Nice work on how to make a panel switch work with other switches. Appreciate your efforts! An old bell switch man.

[@LarixusSnydes]

Wow, what an achievement! You have every reason to be proud of yourself. You might want to get in touch with Sam from "This museum is not obsolete" who is a maintainer (among various other things) on an ancient British Telephone exchange within his museum. You probably would have a lot of fun sparring with each other. Sam is a bit of a Homo Universalis, since he is proficient in so many different subjects and he stays humble and social.

[@ShayBlez]

Happy noises quietly in the background :} Kickass, Sara. Thank you for sharing everything you do.

[@johnrickard8512]

This was also a great example of how one can apply the principles of electrical engineering to computer code. The two domains can be quite interconnected if you allow them to be!

[@BSDKllr]

now you need to connect 2 asterisk servers using the Sarah driver and place calls over it! 1920's trunk style!

[@danjenkins88]

This is such an amazing addition to Asterisk & DAHDI. Huge congratulations on getting this to work!

[@anonymouse-f4z]

Great job. It is always great to learn a new skill and understand how things work at a detailed enough level to write something like this.

[@CoffeeOnRails]

Super interesting. I'm setting up a phone system at work (currently trying to get h323 and sip to dance) and it was cool to see someone doing cool stuff with old and new tech. Earned a sub!

[@SOCALJOE-x9s]

enjoyed video also enjoyed my visit to the museum a few years ago. Before promoted into Engineering, I was a tech (COEM) in SXS and #5XB.- 1964=1969

[@JoeHamelin]

OMG! I just found that my favorite museum has a channel!

[@Pistoletjes]

What an interesting video, and thumbs up for the result! I didn't realize Asterisk was still a thing. I used to run it, briefly, at home for a few months, connecting some analog phones to an analog line using digital equipment. I had some fun with incoming caller ID, looking it up in realtime and having that information displayed on my computer or terminal. Unfortunately, it wasn't a really 'family friendly' setup and I had to discontinue because my wife wasn't able to make ordinary calls anymore... Seeing Asterisk alive and your effort to create your own module really makes me happy. Keep up the good work, and I hope to visit some day when I can fly over to the other side of the big water.

[@yvr2002rtw]

I just create dial plan that allows regular PSTN calls to be dialed as normal without any prefix to get out of the Asterisk system and hardly anyone at home notices!

[@theantipope4354]

Awesome work, Sara! I'm a hardware person, so, faced with this problem, I'd likely go for a much less creative & interesting solution in hardware.

[@russellbryant]

Great job!! I spent years working on Asterisk. It still gets me excited to see such cool integration projects like this!

[@matthewdee6023]

"Fuck yes!" Oh I know that feeling when the code finally works 🙂

[@zperretta]

Great Video, I still wonder how you would even begin to build a museum on this scale?

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

The museum was founded and set up by former employees of Pacific Northwest Bell who donated their electromechanical equipment which was scheduled to be removed from service. It’s been worked on diligently by our museum’s many volunteers, hard work, and research in the decades since. Some of the older videos on our channel document the very early days!

[@aatheus]

Nicely done! Your nerdity and appreciation for this old tech always brings joy

[@APWaddington]

As someone that has a similar level of programing knowledge and almost none on C and the same level on the backroom knowledge of telephone switching this was an incredibly informative video of both current and okd technology and getting the two to play nicely together. With some humor thrown in as well, loves Sarah's reaction to the first successful call through here Franken switch system

[@lordmuntague]

Impressive! Good job Sarah. 👍

[@tomschmidt381]

Cool, great job and I love your enthusiasm on getting this feature to work. I wonder if the Guinness book of world records has an entry for the oldest Linux peripheral?

[@jeffdobkin9478]

Amazing presentation. I never really thought about how a non-panel office received a call from a panel office. Now I know that the non-panel office "emulates" another panel office but with relays instead of panel equipment. I've used dahdi for POTS lines but never thought it could be used for signaling and for a panel switch, I'll bet that was complicated.

[@HeffeJeffe78]

Happy for you! FYI: "f*** yes!" is actual programmer-to-programmer dialogue when something works properly.

[@cybermunk13]

Love the attitude, I will do it myself. Think I know now why I got hooked to this channel. PROBLEMSOLVING.

[@StreuPfeffer]

"Phew, finaly done, lets connect it to the internet and post the number on our friends numberboards" - Weeks go by - [Ringing during open hours] - "Connection museum, how can i help you?" - " Urm hi, finaly, we have been trying to reach you in reguard to your No. 5 Crossbars extended warranty" - [Connection releasing sounds] - [Cusring] - "Thats it, this thing is NEVER going back on the internet!!"

[@AemonAlgiz]

This is 10/10 content. This was a great view into the telephony system and made me remember my phreaking days. Thanks for the trip down memory lane :)

[@adairw]

Awesome work! As guy who appreciates all levels of telephony, this is insanely cool to see such old and new technology mashed together!

[@JohnBare747]

Great Job. I can relate to your excitement from developing a program that works correctly having done that myself when working for Ma Bell but I was in the computer environment talking to #4 X-bar machines through yet another computer pulling data daily from all the #4 switches. It was quite a task as the raw data was not consistent as they were from machines running various versions of their software and naturally they did not have a rigid protocol for data output as it was originally just expected to be read on a printout or screen by a person so an added space or a tab here and there did not matter but it sure did to my program as I had to allow for multiple instances of format on each and every data message that my program was parsing. I used the SpaceX approach, let it run and fix what breaks in the next version until I was able to output a report in the desired format that the users needed. Congratulations in getting up to speed in C language it is a satisfying thing to accomplish. A lot of the software I wrote was written in Perl, if you can do C Perl is very similar but does not need to be compiled and for applications that don't need the ultimate speed of C it's great, way faster than BASH but just write and run just like BASH/BOURNE Shell, great stuff.

[@junebug9320]

I'm settling into Portland these days but realizing all the coolest computer folks are three hours north.

[@blenderbuch]

This tech is so much out of my comfort zone but I watched it all, so interesting and well presented!

[@KHoos]

Congratulations on getting this connection working! Good to see Linux/Asterisk enabling old phone hardware to live on.

[@ducksauz]

Wow! What an awesome project. Congrats on all your learning and hacking to make it happen!

[@brettman273]

This is fantastically awesome. I got no other words. Well done!

[@DavoidJohnson]

Your a legend making legendary advances in legendary equipment.

[@0106johnny]

Sorry, in university about 20 years ago a friend and I built a simple expansion card and Linux driver for a 1878 Baudot keyboard we were restoring. At the time it was like 125 years old and pretty damn annoying to use (it features a "piano" style keyboard where you have to input 5 bit codes by pressing the right combination of keys all of which you have to memorize). But using it to input a console command and then punch the output on a paper tape (in Baudot-Murray code) to print out on a 1920s teleprinter.

[@rb032682]

Great info which is very well presented. Thank you!

[@maurvir3197]

As someone who does something similar professionally, putting comment references to documentation is pure gold. Great work on that, as you will no doubt thank yourself later when you have to fix something years later. As for Asterisk , I haven't played with that in ages, and honestly forgot it even existed. Still, I could see how it would be perfect for this application. All very cool!

[@AtreidaeChibiko]

As someone who has worked with Asterisk (among other VoIP Systems, some asterisk based, some not) I can really appreciate how much effort this all took. One day when I'm in the states, I'll get my butt down to the museum.

[@jonp92]

F*** yes were my thoughts exactly when that phone rang!

[@giefuser]

I like your approach to problem solving and recognise the satisfaction when complex things finally works. Also, whats up with the party hats?

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

The panel switch recently celebrated it’s 100th Birthday! Our particular panel switch began serving the Seattle area as “Rainier” in early March of 1923!

[@Tsaukpaetra]

What a brave soul, writing a module from the ground up...

[@nickfries4317]

This is awesome. Really enjoyed your explanation of how this all works.

[@ThomasGabrielsen]

I know that feeling at 16:32 so well. It's wonderful!

[@theaureliasys6362]

Oh the old honored tradition of "oh how hard could it possibly be." "Oh oof ouch ouw, this is actually hard"

[@davidwhite6440]

Absolutely brilliant :) I never thought I would be fascinated by old telephony, but you've opened my eyes to a whole incredible world I knew nothing about. The problem that the original engineers had to solve are massive, and their solutions have an exquisite elegance to them that makes me appreciate them and understand why you are so enthusiastic about this. Massive kudos for hooking the panel into asterix :)

[@kevinmonceaux2101]

WOW!! There are so many aspects of this accomplishment that pique my interest. I've had a love/hate relationship with C for decades. I dabble with it occasionally, but stay as far away from it as I can most of the time. My home phone system is currently using Cisco Call Manager Express running on a 3845 router as a phone controller. I am using Asterisk for voicemail. I have a few analog extensions connected to a Cisco FXS card, including a Western Electric 202 phone. I love phones from that era. I hope to eventually add more analog equipment to my system, though nothing as adventurous as connecting Asterisk to a panel switch. I'd love to have the means, and room, to collect some central office switching gear, but I think I'll have to set my sites a bit lower. I do have a Cisco VG2240 analog voice gateway and recently acquired an Adit 600. Your videos are dangerous. I'd been eyeing Adit 600s on eBay ever since watching your call simulator videos, even though I had absolutely no need for one.

[@junknspam3]

You are amazing. Bridging old with new. I'm at a loss for words. From an old phone guy.

[@markevans2294]

Definitely a case of "jumping in at the deep end". Especially something like the revertive pulse protocol originally intended for electro-mechanical devices. Given that panel switches seem only to have ever been used in the USA it's a little surprising that revertive pulse would be used elsewhere, possibly on crossbars. Though, since New Zealand uses a different mapping of dial pluses (N=10-P), their revertive pulsing might also be different.

[@andreass.3444]

Already heard about the Rotary 7A system? The panel system was developed as a sibling of the Rotary machine switching system. They shared a lot and it thus also used revertive pulse. The Rotary system was widely used outside the USA.

[@disgruntledgoat]

As a semi-professional joiner-togetherer of weird telco equipment, I have a "Mr. Hammond, the phones are working" sample for Asterisk that works wonders in such situations 🙂

[@automaton20]

I have no idea what's happening here. I'm just sitting here looking at all the buttons, knobs meters and lights. Such beautiful machines.

[@shaunbarton-collins1180]

Well done on accomplishing a unique task. Switch Witch strikes again....

[@FarrellMcGovern]

Wow, that is pretty impressive!! I know barely enough telephony to almost understand what you were doing, and know a little bit of C so that I can grasp the challenge, and that tells me you did something pretty freaking amazing! I have friends who worked for Bell Northern Research/Northern Telecom (later Nortel) who wrote some of the code that ran the switches Nortel sold. I am going to pass this video on to them as I am sure they will find it interesting!