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GPO 722 (aka the TRIMPHONE!)

Started by gpo706, November 11, 2010, 12:12:12 PM

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Tom B

The trimphone really takes me back to the late 70s.... ;)
Tom

AE_Collector

Quote from: gpo706 on April 06, 2011, 10:56:07 AM
Try dialling on one Willie, unless you lick the feet and stick it down it slithers about on your desk/worktop !

Similar complaint when the AE 80E came out. The phone base was so light that when you picked up the handset the spring cord caused the phone to follow you across the desk. I went to remove one from a desk once and discovered that someone had opened it up and screwed it down to the desk. The desk was "no loss" putting a screw into it and I think they just left the rear housing screw out so the case could be lifted off of the baseplate.

Terry

Willytx

Quote from: gpo706 on April 06, 2011, 10:56:07 AM
Try dialling on one Willie, unless you lick the feet and stick it down it slithers about on your desk/worktop !

I will definitely be needing that wall mount kit! :D

gpo706

#33
I stuck one down with your ordinary bog-standard Bluetak on the feet, when it came to removing it one of the feet came off the base!

Bluetak -  easy way to remove them stubborn rubber feet.

Then you have warm it up under the hot tap to make it malliable enough to put back on...

I think my most immovable yet roaming set - you can't whack a 554 with a 12ft handset cord  ;)
"now this should take five minutes, where's me screwdriver went now..?"

GG


Re. slidey phones, try this: park the phone on a mousepad of the kind that has a high-friction rubberised underside and a kind of fuzzy clothlike material on the topside. 

Years ago I found a roll of dark gray material (I think it was at Orchard Supply Hardware in the "shelf paper" section) that is high friction on both sides.  This can be applied to the underside of restored "round base" US phones (WE B1 and AE 1A) to make them less slidely.  Or for an original phone you don't want to mess with, just cut out a circle or square of the material and use it as a "mousepad" or "coaster" for the phone.  You can probably find this stuff at any decent hardware store. 

AE_Collector: Eeeyow, I never saw one screwed down to a desk.  We didn't use too many 80Es in my day (did you work for GTE?), but we did use a decent number of refurbed 80s when rotary was still common.  I still have a small batch of brown 80Es with "modern" touchtone dials that went dead and we replaced with 2500 sets, God knows how AE managed to produce a dial that died so easily. 

OK, so here's a slightly funny story:

A couple of decades ago AT&T had a key system called Merlin that used a handset very much like that on the Trimphone, which is to say, shorter than a G-type handset and virtually impossible to balance on one's shoulder.  These were the primary competition to the Panasonic systems (308, 616, 123211-D) that we were selling.  Here's what we did about that:

I'd go to the prospective client's site with a Merlin set, a Panasonic set, a 2500, a Trimphone, and a banana.  I'd lay out the phones in front of them and say something like the following:

"Here's the AT&T Merlin phone you told us you're also considering.  Notice that the handset bears a unique resemblance to this English Trimphone handset, and both of them are almost impossible to balance on your shoulder.  The K-type handset on our Panasonic phone has the same ergonomics as the G-type on the standard touchtone phone (2500) you probably have at home: easy to balance on your shoulder. That matters if you're going to be having long phone calls or need both your hands free to type or something."

Then I'd pull out the banana and lay it down next to the Merlin handset and say "I'm willing to bet that you'll have an easier time balancing this banana on your shoulder, than that Merlin handset." 

The prospective client would typically try out the handsets and discover that they couldn't get the Merlin handset on their shoulder; and that little demo won us those sales almost every time.  (The fact that Merlin required 4-pair jacks also helped: we got two Panasonic jacks on a 4-pair drop compared to only one for Merlin, thus cutting the cabling costs substantially.) 

Apologies to our UK members here for exploiting the situation; in fact I quite like the 772 and would like to find an MF version in any reasonable color. 

AE_Collector

Quote from: GG on April 07, 2011, 05:53:31 AM

AE_Collector: Eeeyow, I never saw one screwed down to a desk.  We didn't use too many 80Es in my day (did you work for GTE?), but we did use a decent number of refurbed 80s when rotary was still common.  I still have a small batch of brown 80Es with "modern" touchtone dials that went dead and we replaced with 2500 sets, God knows how AE managed to produce a dial that died so easily. 

Yes I have worked for BC Tel since 1975 which has been called Telus since the year 2000. GTE's ownerhip was cut from 50.1% to 26.x% in 2000 and a couple of years later the remaining 26.x% was bought out.

We had a large "shops" department and part of that department refurbished all of our phones. We went from 80's to 80E's in 1975 and beagn to have hugh problems with the AE touchpads. Eventually we switched to a different brand of touchpad on all phones being refurbished. I'm not sure who made them now but the buttons were brighter white than the AE buttons which are an Ivory color.

I spoke with the manager in the refurb shop at that time and I recall him saying that they had determined that the buttons on AE pads scraped the sides each time they were pushed and the plastic dust wound up in the bottom of the touchpad fouling the contacts of the newer AE IC based touchpads.

Terry

GG

#36


Hi Terry - Looks like we were all having problems with those pesky dialpads.  What you said there is interesting & the basis for another ongoing conversation.   I sense a digress alert coming along momentarily, so if you want to start a BCTel Misc topic in the appropriate section of the site, we can pick this up there. 

AE_Collector

Okay, for housekeeping reasons lets move the BC Telephone / Automatic Electric discussion here:

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=4661.new#new

Terry

gpo706

#38
Mr. Green came a-calling today, few twists in the handset, but fairly tight.

He has a list to starboard as one of his front feet has gone walkies, no "opal" over the now ubiquitous sticker dial card (these are really annoying as you have to destroy them to get the fingerwheels off) it proudly reads: "Fareham 287179".

Dial is fine, and has been converted with a straight white PST cord.

2/722 GEN 77/2 gives us its birthplace and date.

The green is more olive green it's quite a pleasing colour, very 70's decor-wise.

Something rattling in the handset, oh no!

Test it later...

Later, back at the ranch...

This was a total botch job, bare wires, odd bits of spaded wire terminating to one strand of wire, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, where to start?

Mr Grey II donates its repro Trimphone line cord.

Ripped it apart and rewired per one of my working ones, good - all OK dials out, rings in.

Now to replace the missing foot, I took one off Mr. Grey II (spares for now), comes out easy enough, but mein Gott what a wrestling match to get it on the base, in the end I sliced the retaining ring in half to the base of foot, warmed it in hot water to soften it up a bit, and got the rubber flange through with the aid of a small flat bladed screwdriver, this took about an hour of grunting and cursing, I have absolutely no idea how they got these darn things on at manufacture.

Then a light clean and re-assembly, I took the cap off the handset to clean and still has that rattling noise coming from it, during the course of cleaning it a tiny (1mm diameter) shard of silver metal pole drops out, - absolutely no idea where it sheared off but screwed the handset up again and it works fine sans the annoying rattle.

Time to put all the bits back together but now the back circuit board doesn't want to slip under the retaining lugs, nope, nope, nope.

Takes the board out and has a good look at it - the board had warped on the right hand side and so wasn't wanting to go back, so a bit of brute force and some persuasion with a flat screwdriver and it flexed enough back to mate - this was racking my brains and took about 2 hours.

(A word of advice - the back circuit board goes in first engages the locating lugs on the base, then the bottom board has a flange to slip underneath it to hold it tight, you then screw the bottom board tight then the top board sits on top and secures your two boards nice and snug on the base).

What a nightmare, ever had that "I wish I'd never taken it apart" feeling?

So gets it all put together again and fitted a new dial opal and a spare card and its very presentable, still worked up a fair sweat for what I thought was straightforward job.

Roll on the Compact!

"now this should take five minutes, where's me screwdriver went now..?"

gpo706

Now Mr. Grey, Green and Blue are all fit for parade, I took them all up in the laboratory (my bedroom) and hooked them to Pana 616.

Then I made them all ring at once, now the strange thing is they all rang in sequence, and the "chirps" from each of them have a slightly and identifiable differing "warble".

Is this the 616 again being a very entertaining gadget or have all three phones differing warblers?

They are connected to 32, 33, 34 on the Pana UK extensions, so how do they ring one after the other and at different warbles?

It's an amazing sound -  I must make a video for you folks, like an infestation of grasshoppers or crickets  :)
"now this should take five minutes, where's me screwdriver went now..?"

Tom B

I look forward to the video, mate!
Tom

Adam

Quote from: gpo706 on April 15, 2011, 03:24:46 PM
Then I made them all ring at once, now the strange thing is they all rang in sequence, and the "chirps" from each of them have a slightly and identifiable differing "warble".

Can't speak to why they warbled differently, but I believe ringing the extensions in sequence rather than all at exactly the same time is normal for the Panasonic PBX.  It saves power that way (less power to ring one ringer at a time than all of them at the same time) so the PBX can have a smaller ringing power supply.
Adam Forrest
Los Angeles Telephone - A proud part of the global C*Net System
C*Net 1-383-4820

Owain

Quote from: gpo706 on April 15, 2011, 03:24:46 PM
have all three phones differing warblers?

Back then components like resistors would have had 10% or even 20% tolerances, so it's not surprising that the warbles would vary.

Not like proper bells machined to a thou of an inch, no no no.

Must confess I have never had a gallery of trimphones ringing; I've only got two and they live in the Display Cabinette so don't get played with.

gpo706

It's like a trio singing!

Thats a succinct answer about the 616, sounds reasonable to me.

Owain - get 'em Trims wired up to a 616!
"now this should take five minutes, where's me screwdriver went now..?"

Owain

Quote from: gpo706 on April 15, 2011, 05:51:52 PM
It's like a trio singing!

Thats a succinct answer about the 616, sounds reasonable to me.

Owain - get 'em Trims wired up to a 616!

I'm more a Plan 107A off a Minimaster 3 sort of chap ...