Using a 1965 Dutch Rotary Phone via VoIP (T65) in 2024 | Hacker News Reader

Using a 1965 Dutch Rotary Phone via VoIP (T65) in 2024

raymii.org

47 pointsel_duderino20 comments

I think that type of phone was everywhere because the national telecom provider (PTT at the time) handed them out with a subscription plan? I remember seeing "property of PTT" stickers on them.

Those were not handed out, you paid 1,50 guilders per month to rent them. Also, you didn't have a lot of choice: until the end of the 80s it was officially forbidden to connect any non-PTT sanctioned telephone to your line.

Same in Canada! There was a big fight over this, when people stared using consumer modems on things such as the Vic-20 and C-64 in the late 70s.

I still remember how painful 300 or 110 baud was to type on.

(Sometimes 110 was all I could connect at)

> This old device should support pulse tone dialing, but it did not work with mine. Might be the custom firmware, might be AVM dropping support in later versions, I'm not sure.

The timings of the phone's rotaty dial might be off. Allegedly FritzBoxes are rather conservative when it comes to these timings.

I just had the same problem with an old Tischfernsprecher W 48 which neither worked on a FritzBox 7560 nor a 7590. Adding a pulse to tone converter solved the problem.

Btw, in case pulse dialing works with a FritzBox one can dial # via hook flash. This allows to dial the internal numbers [0].

[0] (in German) https://www.wasser.de/telefon-alt/forum/index.pl?job=thema&t...

In the US, whatever was interpreting the pulse dialling was very lenient; some people tried to create "incoming-only" phones by locking a metal plate over the rotary dial, but other people would make outgoing call pulses manually via hook flash.

From personal experience: in the UK also.

Same in Canada. Did this as a kid all the time, just because.

I'm so happy the article opts for reusing the original equipment, as opposed to recycling it (i.e., refilling the original case with different innards)

Legacy POTS is still well supported via modern ATA/FXS. I feel the heritage value is much better served via this path.

Interesting, that is a nice looking phone. At the same time here in the US, AT&T Phones were ugly in comparison. But they were indestructible at least, even when you wanted to break them :)

These were also indestructible :) Probably has been a murder weapon at one point too

If you pick up a very old fritz box. Pulse dialing support is included.

Source: I hooked up an old Dutch coin operated payphone to a fritz box 7170 (2007) without problems.

Newer ones also support it. Here's a list (if the green column says "ja" it's supported):

http://www.ptt-apparate.ch/IWV-Router/IWV-Router.html

The footnote mentions that the rotary dial's timing must be correct.

In addition to the HT5xx ATA mentioned in the article, the newer Grandstream ATAs (at least the HT7/8xx models) also support pulse dialing.

One issue that can come up though is that they effectively have tighter tolerances than old mechanical exchanges did for timings, so sometimes an older rotary phone can have timings which are within the official tolerances of the time for the local market but outside tolerances for US standards (digital pulse dialing phones are usually within spec for both because the tolerance ranges overlap).

That's very cool, but a lot of effort; I just want one of those with a 3.5mm jack plug, so I can do video calls by speaking into a 70 year old bakelite earpiece, haha

I don't know if something got lost in translation, but there is pulse dialing, and there is tone dialing. There is no "pulse tone dialing".

Thanks for mentioning, fixed now. That seems to be a translation error on my part.

The T65 was a formidable phone. Very good audio too.

It's hard to drive with modern electronics because the bell is pretty heavy, and the speakers was well. But it's worth doing it.

The other approach is to make the phone do voip stuff by itself, as in put a linux board in, connect speaker and mic to it and setup baresip with some button ui.

Man, that image brings back some memories I didn't know I had

We had the Ericofoon at home. It's a nice phone

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