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Rotary Cellphone

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Re: Rotary Cellphone

#141

Post by pomatic »

dublin wrote: post #119
tkmunzwa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly. This brings back memories, this is a trick people my age group mastered as teenagers in a 3rd world country. All calls were billed - including local ones, so parents would commonly get lockable cages that would cover the buttons/rotary dial to prevent unauthorised calls in their absence. The cages would leave the receiver accessib…

The old GTE payphones up in Georgetown, Tx (suburb of Austin, now) when I was a kid would let you dial with the switchhook - no coins required. Agreed, zeroes were a pain, but this was partially compensated for by the fact that 5-digit dialing worked for any local number, e.g. 3-1234 got you 863-1234. Interestingly, most VoIP adapters support the pulse dialing of an old phone, but very few have the cojones to actuall…

Er, I'm not sure where you got this information from, but I can tell you categorically that ATAs that support pulse dialing are few and far between. Source: I have a vintage phone collection and wish bitterly the reality were different. (I use a Avaya PBX as a bridge to asterisk/IP telephony as a practical alternative)

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#142

Post by pomatic »

AKrumbach wrote: post #94
ObscureScience wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been awhile since I tried it, but isn't it n+1 presses to dial n? So you can dial 0 with one click.

No; if you look at an old rotary phone, you're counting the number of finger holes in order to determine pulses. To dial a 0, pulse the line 10 times.

Unless you are in New Zealand - the dial is numbered "backwards" there so 0 is 1 pulse etc.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#143

Post by Someone »

dublin wrote: post #119
tkmunzwa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly. This brings back memories, this is a trick people my age group mastered as teenagers in a 3rd world country. All calls were billed - including local ones, so parents would commonly get lockable cages that would cover the buttons/rotary dial to prevent unauthorised calls in their absence. The cages would leave the receiver accessib…

The old GTE payphones up in Georgetown, Tx (suburb of Austin, now) when I was a kid would let you dial with the switchhook - no coins required. Agreed, zeroes were a pain, but this was partially compensated for by the fact that 5-digit dialing worked for any local number, e.g. 3-1234 got you 863-1234. Interestingly, most VoIP adapters support the pulse dialing of an old phone, but very few have the cojones to actuall…

That’s because the traditional physical bell needs a high voltage (relative to the digital circuits in modern hardware).

https://www.epanorama.net/circuits/telephone_ringer.html:

”The voltage at the subscribers end depends upon loop length and number of ringers attached to the line; it could be between 40 and 150 Volts.”

I think they also (relatively to the hardware in a VoIP adapter) need a large amount of power.

So, to ring that bell, you need to transform your 5V/3V/…, and you need a larger power circuit. That isn’t worth it for the few who still have an old-style telephone.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#144

Post by saalweachter »

krilovsky wrote: post #17
fsh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This module is basically just a 3G baseband chip on a board. By your definition, no circuit that contains a chip would be open source.

Except it's not "just" a 3G baseband chip. That chip[0] runs a closed source software that even contains a Lua interpreter. That's a proprietary binary blob that I don't know what it does, so this is not something that I would call "open source" even if the controller is open source. [0] https://simcom.ee/modules/wcdma-hspa/sim5320/

Boy howdy, you are not going to like to hear what happens when those radio signals leave your cellular telephone.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#145

Post by scarejunba »

Waterluvian wrote: post #58
DonHopkins wrote: post #50

The problem with the "retro" telephone ring sound that so many modern phones have built in is that it just doesn't resonate and echo and slowly decay over time like a real phone ring. It would be cool to code up a physical ring simulator that reproduces that sound properly, and responds to the accelerometer, especially when you drop it or hang up on somebody by slamming it down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxXsIQ…

Not being able to slam hang up on someone is a critically missing feature and due to such, I believe the entire smartphone revolution is a failure.

When they bring a new Razr out you can snap it shut like a high powered executive looking out over Manhattan's skyline and maybe that will be cool enough.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#146

Post by brian_herman__ »

I want all of these features in a phone without the rotary part:

* Real, removable antenna with an SMA connector. Receptions is excellent, and if I really want to I could always attach a directional antenna.

* When I want a phone I don't have to navigate through menus to get to the phone "application". That's bullshit.

* If I want to call my husband, I can do so by pressing a single dedicated physical key which is dediated to him. No menus. The point isn't to use the rotary dial every single time I want to make a call, which would get tiresome for daily use. The people I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new number, or do something like set the volume, then I can use the fun and satisfying-to-use rotary dial.

* Nearlt instantaneous, high resolution of signal strength and battery level. No signal metering lag, and my LED bargraph gives 10 increments of resolution instead of just 4.

* The ePaper display is bistatic, meaning it doesn't take any energy to display a fixed message.

* When I want to change something about the phones behavior, I just do it.

* The power switch is an actual slide switch. No holding down a stupid button to make it turn off and not being sure it really is turning off or what.

edit:formatting

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#147

Post by [deleted] »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #111
tkmunzwa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly. This brings back memories, this is a trick people my age group mastered as teenagers in a 3rd world country. All calls were billed - including local ones, so parents would commonly get lockable cages that would cover the buttons/rotary dial to prevent unauthorised calls in their absence. The cages would leave the receiver accessib…

It was also an old school way of phreaking and getting free calls in a phone box.

[deleted]

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#148

Post by drfuchs »

kees99 wrote: post #67
timonoko wrote: post #62

European Union recommended emergency number is "112". Because you can morse it with the hook or even by short-circuitin the wires. This is also why the pulse-dialing receiver is operational in most EU countries.

Why not 111? That would have been even easier to manually-pulse dial.

Because in the US, an initial “1” unambiguously means “this is the start of a long-distance number; a 3-digit area code follows”.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#149

Post by fortran77 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #50

The problem with the "retro" telephone ring sound that so many modern phones have built in is that it just doesn't resonate and echo and slowly decay over time like a real phone ring. It would be cool to code up a physical ring simulator that reproduces that sound properly, and responds to the accelerometer, especially when you drop it or hang up on somebody by slamming it down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxXsIQ…

It needs a real bell.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#150

Post by toby »

pomatic wrote: post #142
AKrumbach wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No; if you look at an old rotary phone, you're counting the number of finger holes in order to determine pulses. To dial a 0, pulse the line 10 times.

Unless you are in New Zealand - the dial is numbered "backwards" there so 0 is 1 pulse etc.

Oh wow, thank you for the memories :) I grew up in New Zealand when everything was pulse dialing and had an American modem that my father got us, so in order to dial any phone number I had to rewrite it by subtracting every digit from 10.
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