[VoIP] OT - Question about old touchtone phones

[Rusty Dekema]

Hi,

I have found that thrift stores (at least where I live) are an
excellent source of telephones of all varieties and vintages, at
extremely low cost. I don't have the model numbers here, but my
roommate recently bought several old touchtone phones that exhibit the
behavior you describe. He said he paid a buck each for them at the
Salvation Army.

I'll be out of town this weekend, but I will get you the model number
or any other identifying marks from some of these phones on Sunday
when I return. Although, at thrift store prices, you can probably just
grab a bunch of them if there are that many sitting around.

Rusty




On 3/9/07, Jayson Smith <ratguy at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm looking for an old touchtone phone. I just think it'd be cool to have
> one of these. I don't even know what to look for, though, so maybe some of
> you can help me. With modern phones, I don't know exactly when this started,
> the duration of the touch tones are controlled by programming, such that
> even on the phones that keep the tone on for as long as you hold down the
> button, there's always a preset minimum duration for the tones, and pressing
> two or more buttons together either doesn't do anything, or produces only
> one tone, etc. But on older phones, maybe 25/30 or more years ago, the tone
> was kept on for *exactly* as long as you held the button. You could hit
> buttons really quickly, and there wasn't any delay between tones. If you hit
> two buttons together, or more, if all of them had a common frequency, that
> frequency would be sounded. You could also do other interesting things like
> fade from one tone into another, etc. Afaik, most of Evan Doorbell's tapes
> were recorded on such a phone, at least the ones I've heard, when there was
> touchtone at all. I've noticed that even now, some cocots have that type of
> keypad. Maybe they took old payphones and cocotized them? Any and all help
> appreciated.
> Jayson.
>
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