Strange Tape Loop Machines - DIVERT A CALL

THE DIVERT A CALL
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#museum #tapeloop #telephone

[@g4vft]

"Jonathan off the forum" here... I installed dozens of these in the late 1980s. The majority were used by car windscreen and drain clearance franchises etc. The franchisee could advertise a local phone number that actually went to the call diverter and was forwarded to the company's national call centre. To a lesser extent, they were used by doctors' practices for out of hours cover. (In the days when Doctors did house calls). The unit would be set to divert to the appropriate doctor on call.

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

hi Jonathan cheers! I never know how to address and credit people in videos. always a sticky one. pinned comment! cheers

[@barrieshepherd7694]

Any hint to the forum? - for those of us interested.

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

@@barrieshepherd7694 strowger days on Facebook. Full of very knowledgeable people

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

@@barrieshepherd7694 having bounced in between different interests and technical groups I have found there is a different attitude towards privacy, synth stuff is all quite comfortable to share documents and such but having jumped into different groups it’s always a bit different so I never know how much people are happy to share. Regarding telecommunications I have found it quite mixed I have received messages asking not to share certain things and such. So I’m not quite sure of how to approach covering videos. As I try to do videos from the perspective I am which is a layman’s trying to figure stuff out. So I’m not trying to be purposefully woolly about the matter I’m just trying to figure it out. I’m happy to answer questions based on what I’m figuring out though.

[@barrieshepherd7694]

@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER Yeah - I understand a few of my old colleagues are pretty sensitive about what info they may still have in their possession. You are doing quite well sorting out wonders of Strowger! 😎😄

[@CuriousMarc]

Giving us useless insider information about making useless things with useless hardware which is uselessly overcomplicated and uselessly clunky, and making deviant engineering art. This is totally awesome!

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

heyyy cheers Marc!!!! :D likewise to you!±!!

[@Hainbach]

This is wild. Can you divert to a divert to a divert to a divert, each with its own musical tape loop?

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

haha lets give it a go! that could definitely work I recon, I thought about getting one to call another but figured id run out of switches but! yeah maybe they can spin around in a loop. ill see if I get a moment and wire it up before end of March!

[@xliquidflames]

I was just wondering that same thing. What would happen if you diverted to the diverter number? Would it get into a loop endlessly diverting to itself?

[@loopinnerthe]

I immediately had absolutely the same idea. At the point you divert to the first machine it will be engaged so you would need to hang up and redial...but I'm sure there must be a way perhaps to hit an answer machine at the end whilst the whole thing redials itself. Brilliant bits of kit don't be down on their banality. If they excite Hainbach they must be valid... love you guys so much

[@pamdemonia]

I love you guys going back and forth on this stuff!

[@loopinnerthe]

@@pamdemonia it's all diversionary tactics

[@usvalve]

I spent a couple of years 1984-1986 working on the DVC (Divert-A-Call) for the manufacturer, Dynamic Logic. Among other things I did a complete redesign on the audio board (hybrids/AGC/direction switching etc.). I see you have the manual for it, but I'm happy to help with any other info if I can.

[@mullydoesmusic-ishstuff5506]

One of the reasons you’d want this back in the day is to appear local in areas you aren’t. I worked for a wrecker company (tow truck.. sorry tow lorry?) and we had forwarded numbers in the towns around us. Back in the day before cell phones local exchanges were well known to the people local to them. Here in the US a number is 3 digit area code 3 digit local exchange 4 digit number. So this company would get numbers in the towns around it and forward them to their main office to increase the number of calls they get from those towns. It did create some confusion over where we actually were but we did get calls from those towns. Cell phones and portable phone numbers came along and kinda messed up the organization of all that so it’s less of a thing now. But that company still to this day has forwarded numbers. Kind of a hold over.

[@shaunbatterton2288]

It wasn't too long ago that you would omit the area code. I suppose you could advertise 777-7777 cab company in any area code and buy a diverter to the local cab dispatcher. It also makes me wonder if it was used for long distance calls.

[@radioflyingman1]

This just brought back a whole chapter of my life in the 80's. Installed a load of these at Tottenham and Palmers Green telephone exchanges - London North area. Great stuff, thanks!

[@Basement-Science]

For the metering stuff, maybe you could set up some displays that count the "costs" accumulated each day of the museum. The pricing per unit could be the historical inflation-adjusted rates to give a sense of how expensive it used to be in the day.

[@PantsMan13]

Hello from the US. Phone company employee here. This is quite interesting stuff. The current way of adding remote call forward fixed/variable is more or less the exact same thing, just larger, and with more computers. Keep up the good work!

[@db9827]

I can remember installing these in exchanges, taking a guess at late 70's. You may know already the racking system is called "62 type", used for all sorts of analogue kit and the early digital transmission stuff, PCM, pulse code modulation. 30 voice channels over a single pair.....

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

👍👍snazzy! 62type interesting. It’s nice wracking very modular!

[@malfattio2894]

At this point, you pretty much own a telephone museum. Maybe you should get hold of one of those 1920s telephone operator boards with all the plugs, you could turn it into something like a Moog modular.

[@Phunker1]

That's where TT got its name from.

[@usvalve]

Re the "non-lubricated" tape: the DVC used a basic car-type mechanism, and because it was permanently engaged but stationary much of the time, the pinch roller got a dent, which caused playback problems. So we replaced it with a white silicone rubber roller that didn't dent.. but we discovered that the surface degraded with the constant "squidging" of playback, and the tape slipped. The solution was to get a tape with a bit more grip, hence without the graphite lubrication usually present in endless loop tapes. Oh, the hours I spent doing life tests!

[@stephandubas]

@ 8.41 ... Another brick in the wall (part 2) !!

[@firenado4295]

damn I knew they had speech synthesizers in them but never knew what they where for so that pretty cool, whats cool about the non tape version is that the digital modal is interchangeable with the tape mechanism running of the motor power cable and the tape head cable as the only inputs. also they are reprogrammable using a cf card thing (or at least that's what the plug on the board looks like ). considering that the blue ones can work off 2 wires they theoretically dont need to be in an exchange, knowing this i have debated wiring one of these into my landline and record a rickrole ofer the tape so that all the scammers that call get trolled lol

[@ffirstllast3328]

Hacking these & the phonemail systems, autodial modem on my C64 with a short program to hack 5 digit MCI codes for free long distance calls, blowing 2600hz tones or pink noises, black & blue boxes - played with many loops & diverters. Was really fun to get teleconferences going and do emergency breakthroughs on friends telephone phone lines. Would spend many nights trying to figure out all of the strange kerchunks, clicks, whines & tones...All of this when I was 12 in the 80s --- Phreaking was so much fun!

[@soundguydon]

I remember when I was in 5th grade in the early 80's, and we went on a field trip to our local CO, and I was fascinated from the start. The guy walked us through stacks and aisles of switches all clicking and whirring. It was a huge place and the sound was almost deafening --- and I was hooked (pun totally intended.) There's something absolutely magical about the old analog way of doing things. I've always been fascinated by the mechanical process of everything before the digital age made everything better but boring ;-) Thanks for the vid !!

[@jantonkens9820]

Lovely: the electro mechanical version of *21 ... Love those old phone systems. On my 2nd job in my life I worked for the Dutch telecom but by then these systems were mainly gone already. Except our own office had a PABX like this because in our building we also had the international telex exchange for NL in a nuclear bunker and the electro mechanical PABX was expected to better survive outages due to nuclear weapons.... Never been able to test that functionality thankfully 🙏😃

[@barrieshepherd7694]

The 62 type racking tales me back to my early work days. My first exposure to 62 was aligning point to point VFT (Voice Frequency Telegraph) cards which ran on more 62 type 4 MHz (960 Voice Channel) transmission equipment. The build standard of kit in those days was superb - now of course the whole set up you have, and more, can be handled by a Raspberry Pi running Asterisk.

[@db9827]

Me too... Datel racks for banks 300 bits/s, VFT, 4 and 12MHz transmission and the first 24 ch PCM system in the uk (installed partly beside an electric railway as a test for ground current interference!)

[@barrieshepherd7694]

@@db9827 We clearly come from the same industry I was ER guess you were LMR

[@davidpiper3652]

If a business moved and it was outside the exchange area of their current number then a 1505 could be installed to send the calls to the new number on the exchange that was local to the new business address. That can be easily done in software on a modern digital exchange but it looked like magic in 1980!

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

Yeah it’s mad how much it took to do that job!

[@AMOKIAN]

Amazing machines! Fantastic presentations! Thanks for your work!

[@pamdemonia]

That double ringer on British phones still gives me a little thrill. All foreign and stuff, reminding my teenaged American self there were places that weren't the USA. Thanks!

[@Stache987]

We had repair service for the phone company have after hours answering at a centralized location. As for remote call forwarding, this was useful for a business who wanted a presence or convenience of a local number in another community, where they paid the final connection charge, such as reservation lines at a lake resort.. I used to be a service representative at the phone company and sold it to customers who wanted a out of state number adjacent to their calling area, it was not allowed to circumvent the toll rates, but I still sold it, we had like 4 different rate tables, and it put the call on the cheapest vs the most expensive.

[@Colin_Ames]

The kind of information I didn’t need but am glad I have it 😀. Thanks for showcasing another piece of interesting technology.

[@niklaswejedal463]

A great example of things that typically would be tossed in a dumpster after their active life was over and no-one would have remembered that they even had existed in the first place - good thing there are people like you to save this tech for the future.

[@john_smith1471]

I remember seeing shelves of these in exchanges during the 80s, I think the idea was to give subscribers on analogue exchanges a system x/ divert facility, the new smaller digital part of exchanges had a star services option for only a few digital exchange customers and this in a clunky analogue way gave the facility to all subscribers on the old exchanges.

[@ocsrc]

Call forwarding I worked for a huge answering service and we had 10,000 lines and the offices would send their line to us at the end of business day of the office.

[@davidyates748]

1HAM 00100 AAK! I used to know that coding scheme off by heart when I worked for a certain telecommunications manufacturer. The first four digits tell you what sort of part it is - in this case an equipment shelf. The last three digits are a check for the rest of the code and I used to be able to tell whether the check agreed with the code or not! Age and alcohol have erased all that now, of course 😀

[@highpath4776]

When is the museum getting dial-a-disc / dial-a-recipe in ?

[@highpath4776]

We used to have a mix of bill types with BT. One was an 'out of area line' where we would advertise a local number, but it would route to one of our regional call centres (all three operators in it - we were not mass market). The other was calling line diversion did much the same thing but sort of could be switched in at weekends (might have that round the wrong way as I only paid the bills).

[@permanentmagnet]

So idea.... Set up a "Divertion loop from hell" divert call to 1, from 1 to 2 from 2 to 3 and then back to 1. Would be like tryng to call your local municipal authorities for a building permit.

[@usvalve]

Unit 3 would dial Unit 1 but find it engaged by the initiating call. If the initiating call cleared down, I think it would also clear down the output line, and the cleardown would ripple through. Only one way to be sure, though!

[@stephencacioppo5998]

That sounds like the machine from Pink Floyd’s Brick in the Wall

[@johnclement5903]

The Wall. End of "Young Lust"

[@darkstatehk]

9:01 half expecting “Money” by Pink Floyd to start playing…

[@sven]

As telecom beeing my main job, i fricking love that you picked up on that. hope i can visit your museum someday.

[@willdatsun]

those old phones sound great don't they? the ringing tone on the receiver and also the real bells.

[@sawyerlightsey3709]

8:45 pretty sure that’s the exact dial tone that’s heard on The Wall

[@rutgerjonaker5422]

Cool stuff

[@jantonkens9820]

And for sure hope to be able to visit your museum one day. Mainly for what to find there and partially to check out on you... You'd been exactly my type if you'd be older or me younger; but someone can have fantasies 😜😛😘

[@user-zo8ve2xh5z]

Very creative!

[@hanssundkvist]

Cool old gadgets!!! :-)

[@dedicatedspuddler7641]

Always interesting and a bit crazy! Love it.

[@dcallan812]

I workd at NTL for a while that was all digital with huge server rooms. Nothing like a diverta-call.

[@usvalve]

I think the Divert-A-Call was made because of the need to provide call diversion in old-technology exchanges until digital was fully rolled out across the UK. So its days were always numbered. As were my days working for its manufacturer!

[@keithmarlow143]

you should knock up a 2 digit pulse decoder, and use that, via an Arduino (of course) to generate Notes and CV's; ending up with a phone controlled synth.

[@thomasamsterdam]

Thanks for the video. I became very curious about these things, when I saw them in one of your last videos. Downloaded the instruction manual, but did not get much wiser from it.

[@MrMoon1ight]

куча старых крутых вещей 👍

[@xliquidflames]

This is _so cool._ I wish I could see this stuff in person but I'm in the US. I wonder if there are any museums around here. Anyway, I appreciate all the effort to put this stuff in a video. I've learned so much watching this channel. It's endlessly fascinating.

[@rbauer961]

Look up the connections museum in Seattle

[@pamdemonia]

I'll second that. Very cool.

[@xliquidflames]

@@rbauer961 Long drive from Florida but Seattle is on my travel list so I'll add it to the must see list.

[@studioxxswe]

would love to see this analog pbx meet the SIP world so we could all call it, at least having a time window during the day/week. Another use case would be to make regional calls free by providing a local number. Also If you move between area codes and can't keep your existing number these would forward your call. For example if a business with a support line moved they could offer to re-direc the call for some period of time just like you could do with your mail.

[@brianspenst1374]

Can we get the "no extra cost to you" used as a sample in one of you songs?

[@usvalve]

I loved that announcement. The lady expressed such total joy and satisfaction that this diversion would be carried out 'at no extra cost to you'. :-)

[@DISCOTECHS]

The Black Type needs a P-Wire on its lines. The Blue Type does not, so therefore will work on some electronic exchanges with no P Wire

[@EclipseAtDusk]

I recognize the sound of the *beep beep* from a song somewhere. Maybe Pink Floyd?

[@EclipseAtDusk]

YUP - Young Lust, off the Wall

[@professionalhater2809]

Connect it to an answering machine so we can leave you guys messages!!

[@ChadBillAnderson]

As useless as this knowledge is, I'm still happy to watch and learn about it haha. This shit is fascinating

[@Gunstick]

You can configure the 4 divert-a-call in series so each one calls the next one. If you have enough capacity on your exchange 😁

[@MobCat_]

I wonder if you could use a divert-a-call to make a 1800 number.. soo you set up / rent a 1800 number and that would get diverted to the actual real number inside the exchange.

[@john_smith1471]

0800 in Britain

[@nrdesign1991]

That sounds like the same speech synth as used in "Impossible Mission" on the C64!

[@johnclement5903]

Ah, then it must have used the Telesensory Inc (TSI) voice synthesizer chip. The algorithm used in that chip was developed by Dr. Forrest Mozer, originally for a talking calculator in 1975(!), and the chip was later used in "talking" pinball machines in the late 70s/early 80s, as well as many early 80s arcade games such as Berzerk and Gorf. The algorithm was later licensed for use in several C64 games like Ghostbusters and Impossible Mission. The chip was contemporaneous with the LPC algorithm chips from TI and GI, used in the Speak&Spell and Intellivoice respectively.

[@nrdesign1991]

@@johnclement5903 Fascinating stuff!

[@usvalve]

@@johnclement5903 It was a Digitalker, which I believe was licensed to National Semiconductor by Mozer et al. Whether it used the 4-chip set DT1050 or just the speech synth MM54104 could easily be seen from the PCB.

[@vincea3037]

Cool video! I'm always saying to myself "Gee wiz how cool is this guy!?" I wish I was closer to visit! Well I can say, it's on my bucket list, Hehe

[@laserspaceninja]

Daisy chain them! Have one call the next one and so on until you run out.

[@HamiltonMechanical]

someone please buy this guy a wire wrap tool!!!!!!!!!

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

That was wire wrap 😂

[@PantsMan13]

@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER the screw driver shaped type or the pistol shaped type?

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

@@PantsMan13 handcrank

[@HamiltonMechanical]

where's Bill Herd when you need him. That dude is a wire wrapping legend! Love the videos bro! Love this channel!

[@douro20]

I think it might actually work to blow a whistle into the phone...

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

I tried 😂

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER Does it maybe want an MF STOP tone rather than "STOP"? Though rudimentary voice recognition existed at the time I'd have expected tone-based signalling to be a more likely approach, since the control line wouldn't be being called by an 'average person'. Might also be worth trying DTMF tones for A, B, C and D.

[@usvalve]

@@SomeMorganSomewhere No, it was definitely intended that the user should say "STOP". I'm guessing that the three sounds "ST", "O" and "P" pretty much guaranteed that you got a high frequency, mid frequency and low frequency sound, and one of them would be recognised from any speaker on any line. Detection was pretty basic!

[@martinhogan4274]

Yep, now I know it.

[@Romantyk_Zagrebelski]

Maybe it interesting machine for making music in recording studio.

[@emolatur]

I want to see this, the other museum in the comments, and the connections museum over in wa, all connected together, full simulated trunk style with voip between you. I want dial-in numbers from the pstn. For these things, I want their numbers distributed/advertised randomly so different people have different numbers. Each one is programmed with several valid destinations (either live phones or clever recordings, maybe facts about telecom history?). Catch is after that call it transfers to one of the programming lines so each caller gets to blindly pick which one some other caller hears...

[@nonsuch]

"...this is a collect call for Mrs. Floyd from Mr. Floyd, will you accept the charges?"

[@Luchoedge]

oh man, the sound of the dial tone is so.. how do I put it... it's tasty! hahaha 😅 it has that analog flavour.. 😋

[@imark7777777]

So it works exactly the same way the voice assistant on my 2022 phone does in other words it doesn't.

[@LostInTech3D]

you have my phone table!!!! 😂

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

The corner thingy???

[@LostInTech3D]

Yes! With the green padding! 😂👍

[@highpath4776]

Does the museum want a reel of telephone (internal office) cable ? (not 1308 I dont think)

[@gman83090]

My pop has his Business land line diverted to his mobile something like this in the 80s could be also be used to divert land line phones to mobile phones it works in the same way as the digital systems now days it was more at the extange

[@martinwinther6013]

Algorythm-jazz

[@richfost2000tube]

A is for asterisk..

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

And for asbestos!!!!

[@djmindmelt]

Sorry Sam I posted on another thread but will you be at the museum on the 26th March?

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

Hey yep I replied and yeah I’ll be about

[@breakalegfpv9532]

pink Floyd phone sound

[@NicStage]

I thought you were saying "divertical" at first. IT feels like that should be a word.

[@DISCOTECHS]

So Sam. Whats this here "forum" called, and what media system is it on ? Am I missing something here ?

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

hey up stronger days on facebook :)

[@DISCOTECHS]

@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE Reply Test

[@usvalve]

@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE Would that be "Strowger Days"? I think so. Unless there's an Almon B Stronger who was an undertalker and the rest is history, hahahaha! You do a great job with the channel and the museum, keep going!

[@professionalhater2809]

Then you can sample the messages!

[@smetankorzevic6647]

Stay on brickwall

[@mikebeatstsb7030]

Have you tried saying the number..?

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

Ofcourse haha. Tried the whole Shabang

[@maxmaier5243]

it's pretty cool but at the same time not pretty cool 🤣🤣🤣

[@ocsrc]

I worked in media and Telco and I would have our automated control systems call me and the computer voice would tell me SITE NUMBER XXXX , EMERGENCY, ALARM XX, ALARM XX, and I would have to look up the site book and the alarm codes and deal with the problem and clear the alarms and take the site down Very stressful

[@TheCCTVman]

Ooow look vere exciting. Love your vids

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

I think exciting is stretching it 😂😂😂😂 but yeahhhhh!

[@CashMattock]

Can I please use the bit just before you said it wasn’t that interesting? I can totally hear something there…

[@imark7777777]

I'm so disappointed I have not been able to stay on top of this channel I love telephone stuff, when I saw the starting to come about last year I was (because speech to text won't give me the word that means ) super excited! That's probably a good thing the phone line is an open yet because my long-distance bills would be insane.

[@netautorisationnetautorisa545]

*!! ...(**8:36** + -) ..... IS THE SOUND IN "MONEY.. PINK FLOYD" ... (THINK IT IS CALLED "MONEY)...!!* *I AM 100% SURE ABOUT THE "SOUND"*

[@johnclement5903]

The end of "Young Lust" from The Wall album

[@rustblade5021]

have you got yourself a Datsun phonograph yet? kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJmtc56laJKijJY