On Tue, 29 Dec 2015, Ian S. King wrote: The '60s were too much for TV. The '90s were just roo boring.

On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote: But it is intriguing to see the computer as pop-culture artifact within a broader grouping of like artifacts. (You're welcome, Jay.) In my academic work, I use the term 'consumer computer' rather than 'personal computer' because the latter term is so overloaded and controversial. The Commodore was one of the earliest consumer computers, sold in department stores to families rather than in computer stores to cognoscenti. I do have to say, though, that in the '80s many if not most phones had transitioned to touch-tone 'dialing' (what a delightfully archaic term!). Nit picked. -- Ian -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> University of Washington There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."

On 29 December 2015 at 20:15, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: Those pulses depend on what kind of crossbar you were homing on, and where you were calling. On a Number 5 Crossbar, your DTMF was never converted to dial pulse for the switch itself. The Touch-Tone Register would connect to a digit translator that inputs the 2-of-5 binary code directly into the relays of the Originating Register (which can still receive dial pulse). On Number 1 Crossbar and Panel however your DTMF would be converted to 20 pulse per second dial pulsing. Only in Step-by-Step is your DTMF converted down to "normal" 10 pulse per second dial pulsing; though it should be noted that in step it either gets converted by a "dumb" Touch-Tone Reciever Converter (DTMF goes in, dial pulse goes out) in a direct control step, in a common control step (yes that was a thing) the DTMF actually ends up getting converted in the same way as on #5XB with the common control elements dial pulsing. However it should be noted: Crossbar switches make noise when connecting through the switch fabric; and depending on trunking and the kind of switch you're calling you might hear dial pulsing, panel call indicator pulsing, or revertive pulsing. RP would be sent on a direct connection between a crossbar to a Number 1 Crossbar or Panel switch (and to Number 5 Crossbar occasionally). PCI is something you'd *never* hear in the 80s, since the only tandems that required PCI (namely Panel Sender Tandem) were gone by the 70s, and the tandems that replaced them (Crossbar Tandem) while it can still "speak" PCI would be more likely to use MF tones; also end offices that would use PCI, namely manual offices, were also dead and gone by the 80s. Dial pulsing however... well that goes to step offices, and if you have a step tandem anywhere in the chain (you could have a #5XB to #5XB call which you'd think would be MF'd; but if you have a step tandem you get dial pulse). Cheers, Christian -- Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove STCKON08DS0 Contact information available upon request.

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 12:25 AM, Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com> wrote: To start, a document archive (the "Bitsavers of telephony") http://telephonecollectors.info and three mailing lists: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/singingwires/info https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/centraloffice/info http://lists.ckts.info/mailman/listinfo/voip

Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com> writes: In addition to the links already posted (Evan Doorbell's recordings are particularly good), can I also recommend Phil Lapsley's book "Exploding the Phone": http://explodingthephone.com/ The "Documents" archive on their has scans of most of his source material. -- Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> <http://offog.org/>

On 30 December 2015 at 01:34, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: #4/#4A crossbar is *not* a local switch. It's a four-wire toll switch. The only local crossbars were #1 (the replacement for panel), #5 (the one that really embraced the common control ideas), and #3 (about as close to a CDO as you can get with crossbar). Sounds like you had a #1 crossbar then, if only because #5 wouldn't dial pulse unless you had to deal with a step tandem (or were calling into a step office). The direct successor to the 4/4AXB was the 4ESS/4AESS. (Meanwhile the successor to the local crossbar offices was 1ESS/1AESS; save for the weird 3XB which was replaced by the small 3ESS.) And of course both local and toll ESS have been replaced by the 5ESS. Fun Facts about toll crossbars: There were three crossbars for toll switching. The Crossbar Tandem (based on #1XB technology), the Number 4/4A Crossbar (four wire dedicated toll switch), and the Number 5 Crossbar. One can setup a 5XB to do double duty as a tanem switch; in fact in the 1975 and 1977 Traffic Routing Guides you can see several places where this is the case (for example Moncton, New Brunswick). Interconnects between different networks: About as fun as IBM versus DEC. Cheers, Christian -- Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove STCKON08DS0 Contact information available upon request.

Completely? I expect that to be a fairly long time - decades, at least. Most of my phone service is VoI (everything but my cell). My opinion: the major upsides are cost and flexibility; the major downsides are (a) the quality and security implications of using the open Internet and (b) additional points of failure, many of which usually don't have anything like three nines of reliability. In my case the cost and flexibility benefits are enhanced because I am the primary geek behind the system my phones connect to - I work for that provider. But even if I had to set up a tiny little PBX and pay normal uplink rates it'd still be cheaper and more flexible than POTS. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 12/30/2015 12:39 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote: We need the landline phone to call when the cable is out. We need the VOIP phone to call when the copper line is out (which is more often). I can't get DSL here anymore, the lines are WAY too bad for that. I used to have DSL way back when. I wish I could get symmetric cable speeds here, 30/30 would be FANTASTIC, as I run a web server here. I live with 60/5, but rumors are that we will get upgraded to 100/10 sometime fairly soon. Jon

On 12/30/2015 10:51 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote: We're in a similar boat. We're too far away for DSL, microwave can't reach us due to the treeline, and Cable isn't available here. I took a page from FullTime RV folks, and bought a commercial grade router/AP that uses cellular modems for uplink, and then found a business cellular package that has unlimited use. We burn through 400GB every month here. Jim

On Thursday (12/31/2015 at 12:02AM -0600), Jim Brain wrote: I build those kinds of routers for my day job. It's pretty much routine now to see 50Mbps up and down on a 4G LTE link. CAT4 will do even better. I have a little box running OpenWRT (totally open source) with the cellular modem inside and ethernet out the back. Does what a cable modem+router or DSL modem+router does but does it over cellular. As you have discovered though, finding an affordable package is the trick. My world is IoT/M2M and so there is a lot of bundling and pooling of plans going on to reduce the per user costs in that space. Chris -- Chris Elmquist

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Brain" <brain at jbrain.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 2:24 PM Interesting; what exactly are you paying that $10.00 for? m

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 1:24 PM, Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com> wrote: Probably the FCC's Connect America Fund. This is meant to do for broadband what the REA did for electrical power.

It doesn't much matter who the telco is for CAF money to be awarded... you can see who has been awarded what money on the FCC's website, and CenturyLink has definitely gotten a large sum for it ($500M/yr for 6 years). Here's a press release on Clink's own website: http://news.centurylink.com/news/centurylink-to-bring-broadband-to-1-2-mill… Poke around on FCC for CAF and you're sure to find deployment maps.It is a sizable chunk of money up for grabs. On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 3:02 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 4:40 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: I can't speak for the whole Telco segment, but I work on DSLAMs for a living and have done so for the past 15 years. Our earliest generation DSLAMs were ATM based (T1 IMA fed), but within a couple of years transitioned to Ethernet. Almost all of the equipment that I come in contact with is Ethernet at this point, but I'm not on the front-lines and I don't have a lot of exposure to voice services though, but I think it is safe to say that telcos are vested pretty heavily in Ethernet these days. I'll have to ask a co-worker about the makeup of the networks he's seen in the field, but pretty much all the talk I hear about these days is all Ethernet. I occasionally hear about GR303, SIP and pseudowire ( a tech that allows for timely delivery of packetized TDM streams primarily for POTS services).

Sent from my iPhone Not saying they don't know what they are talking about, but if it's brand new equipment, particularly vdsl then I find that hard to believe from what I've been exposed to. Vdsl does fallback to adsl mode for adsl modems in which case the dslam has to have an ATM interworking function, but the uplink to the dslam would still be Ethernet, fiber or copper. Did you happen to get a peek in the cabinet?

On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: There's a lot of pressure to reuse old copper. As you indicate, there's a ton of it still in the ground and it's not easy in a lot of cases to dig it up or replace, plus it's already invested in, wholesale replacement costs money, and if you don't have to, why bother? In multi-unit housing, it may not be economically feasible or practical to retrofit the building to use anything but the existing wiring. As a result, you see a lot of fiber-to-the-node installations or fiber-to-the-distribution-point, particularly in established rural applications. The death of copper has been preached since I started into this business. Back then copper's savior was HDSL, and ever since there's been some other xDSL technology improvements to squeeze more out of the existing copper plant. So, I'd say realistically you're likely to see copper for a good while longer, but it is getting pushed farther and farther to the edges of the networks. I'm happy for it to stick around for as long as possible. :) Eventually xPON will supplant it, and the Cable company and Telco networks will look virtually identical.

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote: Almost half a century ago, there were attempts to use aluminium instead of copper for house wiring. It did not go well. "After having dug to a depth of 1,000 meters last year, French scientists found traces of copper dating back 1,000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors had a telephone network all those centuries ago." "Not to be outdone by the French, English scientists dug to a depth of 2,000 meters and shortly after headlines in the U.K. newspapers read: "English archeologists have found traces of 2,000-year-old fiber-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the French." "One week later, Scottish newspapers reported the following: "After digging as deep as 5,000 meters, scientists had found absolutely nothing. They, therefore, concluded that 5,000 years ago Scots were already using wireless technology."

I haven't see aluminum-rated devices in hardware stores in many years. Be careful: typically they will be labeled either as "copper only" or as "CU/AL". But that doesn't mean "copper or aluminum" -- it means you're allowed to user copper-clad aluminum. That's a hack type of wire that was adopted for a while after the plain aluminum was discovered to be a Very Bad Idea. It's not quite as bad but there is really no justification for its existence, and indeed it is no longer the current practice. Copper-clad aluminum can be used with copper without much trouble, but the wire is thicker and it breaks more easily. Plain aluminum must only be used with devices specifically rated for plain aluminum. You may need to use anti-corrosion paste. "devices" includes wire nuts -- standard copper-only wire nuts are not approved for use with aluminum wire. My experience is that aluminum-rated devices and wire nuts can only be found at electric supply specialists, and they are vastly more expensive than regular devices. When I used up my box of aluminum-rated wire nuts (standard hardware store item in 1980) I found that trying to buy them now (2005 or so) was possible but I'd have to pay a dollar EACH, if not more. The only place where you're likely still to find aluminum-rated devices without a lot of effort is in high current stuff -- main breakers, 100 amp branch breakers, that sort of thing -- because aluminum cable is still used there at least by some people. Personally, I never use it; 2 gauge copper may cost more but I prefer the peace of mind it delivers. paul

It sure sounds like it. I'm impressed, especially at that price. paul

On 12/31/2015 09:40 AM, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote: I've long thought that will eventually be the case. It makes sense. One thing that aerial fiber doesn't appear to suffer from is theft. It's not unknown for a bunch of guys to steal a half-mile of telco copper on a quiet rural road where nobody's likely to ask what they're doing. The "stop and ask" is pretty prudent, as not all telco stuff around here is company-serviced--CL uses contractors extensively, so it's not always a company vehicle at the site. The copper theft seems to have abated around here. At its height, idiots were jumping the fences around 500KV substations to rip up the grounding grid. --Chuck

I've had CL in Seattle for years with minimal disruptions. Nothing compared to my friends/colleagues with ComCrap. On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> University of Washington There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."

On 01/01/2016 08:46 AM, Jason Howe wrote: I've been with CL since the USWest days (just missed the breakup when they were Pacific Northwest Bell). When Qwest picked up the company, I had high hopes, as Qwest's big business at the time was laying fiber along railroad rights-of-way. I'm just a few miles outside of Eugene, so it's not exactly like I'm in the boonies, but lot size minimum here is 5 or 10 acres, so even if you go with the minimum, folks are pretty spread out. I didn't get DSL until 2005, when it was finally installed as part of a service expansion on a bit of land I sold Qwest--only after I received assurances that DSL would be part of the deal. Otherwise, POTS modem service would have been 28.8-33.6K on a good day. There are still some folks up the road who are *closer* to town who don't have DSL. No cable here--if you wanted DSL-speed internet, Hughes satellite was about the only option. Sprint offered to bring T1 up the road for $1k per moth, but I'm not certain how serious they were about that. This summer, crews installed a fiber feed to the DSLAM and a bunch of new equipment went into the boxes. It took them from May well into September, with various contractors involved. (C2 to do the prep, like concrete cutting, Maverick to to the line stringing, and both C2 and CL to do the wire punching). In November CL sent me an Actiontec C1000A, free gratis to replace that M1000 which replaced the GT701-WG for my "new high-speed service". Nothing happened, and my M1000 still owrks just fine, but I've got the C1000A installed, hoping against hope. So maybe one of these days. I found out some interesting things along the way. CL provides free DSL to their employees, but dings them $10 per month for modem rental, which, in most cases, is an old Zyxel that hasn't been made in years. They were delighted to discover from me that you can get refurbed Qwest-branded C1000As from China for about $26 shipped. (I hate relying on a single modem, so I ordered an extra myself--works just fine). CL Technical support really doesn't know very much, other than "unplug the modem and plug it in again"--TS appears to come out of Omaha. Marketing knows even less than TS (appears to be out of Phoenix) and is not even aware of promotional deals. "Loyalty" or "Promotions" or "Retention" or "Pricing" (they're all the same thing) are the people to deal with. Not only do they seem to know what's happening (the guy I talked to identified the location of the DSLAM and its current status), but they can tinker with your bill. After hearing my tale of woe, they apologized for the fake service changes and tossed in a $15/month credit for a year for my trouble. AFAIK, any of the above can cut a service order. All three agreed that doing a service change online was a bad idea--one of the more common complaints seems to be that orders get lost. So maybe I'll get out of the 1.5/0.800 "Neanderthal" service one of these days. I hope my story helps out other CL customers. --Chuck

On 01/01/2016 11:24 AM, js at cimmeri.com wrote: Now you've done it. For my phone and internet bundle, I pay $83/month--and that's with a $15 "lifetime" package discount from 2005 tossed in. I was amazed that were I to change to the lowest tier of POTS service and add "Caller ID" ($10/month) and lowest level DSL, my bill would be roughly the same after taxes. I'm amazed that "caller ID" costs CL anything, but it's one of the highest-priced add-ons. BTW, I'm also paying $2/month for long-distance service to Mexico, even though I've never called nor received a call from there. Sigh. Chuck

I had 7/5 here in Seattle, until I made the mistake of trusting the CL sales turkeys. I ended up with 20Mb down, but 896Kb up. The sales turkey flat-out lied to me, but they wouldn't revert me - something about my former plan being an "out of date" class of service. On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 12:25 PM, js at cimmeri.com <js at cimmeri.com> wrote: -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> University of Washington There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."

On 01/01/2016 01:56 PM, Jon Elson wrote: ...and thanks to VoIP, junk calls cost the callers nothing--and the FCC claims that they're powerless to halt it. Call blocking from the telco, which probably also costs them nothing, has a low limit on the number of blocked numbers. So it's left to the subscriber to handle the crap like "This is Windows Security--we've noticed suspicious activity from your Windows computer...." or "This is Rachel from cardholder services". And of course, Caller ID is necessary for that. I'm looking forward to VoIP. Right now, I run an old modem and an Windows 98 thin client to handle blocking. It works pretty well--at least it's something that can be done with those high-priced USR Courier modems lingering around from the BBS days. --Chuck

On 30/12/2015 05:30, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: In the late 1960's I was what was then called a student apprentice. This ment you did two weeks at work and one week at college. I worked at at local cable manufacturing company and my desk was in the high voltage lab. The building had been part of the Great Western Railways wartime installation. It was a concrete blockhouse. Walls three feet thick and blast shutters over the windows. It had the advantage of being warm in winter and cool in summer. We had a high votage test lab (up to 500,000 volts) , RF lab and the internal telephone exchange. You could not dial out. There was a manual switch board with its own operators for that. (dial 0 and ask) The internal exchange was a standard GPO Strowger type exchange. It would have been 25-30 years old at that time but built under wartime conditions. One monday I arrived back at work from college to find a box on my desk containing many reels of PVC hook up wire and a set of tatty wiring diagrams. There was a note from my boss saying "insulation in phone exchange cracking up - please rewire the lot" First job stick the blueprints on the glass partition between my lab and the exchange with a light behind them. Then to the exchange, take all the covers off the relay banks and sitting on my tall lab stool watch what happened. Boss goes past and nods his approval and I went from there. Took a couple of months but it worked when I'd none. Rod We were right on the London main line.

Dave wrote... ------- (how do you display a thumbs-up sign in ASCII?) ------- In this case: IanSKing++;

Great terminology. Can I have permission to use it too :-) Not in Australia where the article was written. Government regulations meant that phones still had dials and modems were both hard to get and very expensive. Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"

Then again, as Robert A. Heinlein put it, "The sincerest form of praise starts with the phrase 'Pay to the order of...'." paul

Not as archaic as 'to ring off' (which dates back to magneto-ringing telephones where you gave the magneto a little crank at the end of the call to indicate to the operator to disconnect you) or 'to hang up' which refers to the wall and candlestick telephones with a receiver hanging on the hookswtich on the side. Both those terms are in common use in the UK. -tony

On 12/29/2015 2:08 PM, Jules Richardson wrote: I still have mine, circa 1979. Amazingly still works -- with no caps replacement yet -- except for tape deck -- rubber bands have dried up. - J.

On Tue, Dec 29, 2015, Jay West wrote: Too bad they didn't make it look like a 3D projection of a hypercube... they came SO close! -- Eric Christopherson