Rotatone Installation - Western Electric Model 500

[Dennis Markham]

I had never done a Rotatone installation before today.  I thought I'd share some information and photos of how it went.  I have put together a short album with some photos.  There are descriptions under each.  Attached here will be a sound file of what you hear through the receiver when you dial.

The Rotatone came from Oldphoneworks with a three page document that was very technical in nature and difficult for my non-technical brain to comprehend.  It was made further difficult because it had been Xeroxed so many times that some of the writing was very hard to decipher...especially the electrical diagram.

I reached out to our friend Jorge Amely, the only electrical engineer that I know.  He was able to provide me with a link directly from Oldphoneworks site (duh) of an Adobe document that gave step-by-step directions for connecting the Rotatone to the phone.  Why they did not include these instructions with the unit is beyond me.  I didn't even need those three pages of technical information (mumbo-jumbo).  But if you want to read the them I'm also going to attach that document.  I tried to clean up the diagram by typing new words where the others were barely readable.  I had to use magnification to try and figure out some of the words.  I completely retyped the entire document.  It is in PDF form.

The Rotatone works very nice.  For this install I put it in a hard wired 1973 Red Western Electric Model 500.  The nice thing about this install is that one of the wires that must be removed from the network block is the brown wire attached to the "C" terminal.  That wire is soldered in place on pretty much every phone up into the early 1960's.  Because this was attached by a spade tipped end, it was much easier.

When dialing you can hear the pulses but it never breaks dial tone.  When the wheel stops you will hear a "beep" or tone for the number dialed.  This of course continues throughout the dialing process.  There is a slight HUM that disappears once the line begins to ring. 

This phone will be used in a VoIP environment, thus the need for a Rotatone.

The simple instructions for the Rotatone Installation can be found here:

http://www.wedidit.ca/Product%20Images/Oldphones/InstallingRotatone-WE500.pdf  ( dead link 1/31/2109 )

The Picasa Web Album with my photos can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/yf9vl7v  ( dead link 1/31/2109 )

The first attached document is the three page information from Oldphoneworks.  The second file attached is the sound (wav) file of what you hear through the ear piece during dialing.  You may have to turn up the speakers a bit to hear it.

Thank you again to Jorge for his help on this project.

[JorgeAmely]

Dennis:

The photo album looks excellent. I am sure another member of the forum will be inclined to get one once they see how easy it was to install.

The polarity guard is there so that the small computer in the black box always receives power in the right direction. You wouldn't like to connect your car battery backwards, right?

[Dennis Markham]

Thank you Jorge.  I'll double check my album and make sure I have that information there.  I think I mentioned that it was to ensure proper polarity, but to be honest with everyone, I didn't know how it did that.

[JorgeAmely]

Another interesting WE500 with built-in polarity guards is the 509 model. It came equipped with a small, one transistor amplifier that must have cost a lot of money back in the fifties. Usually, they had a 426A tube for superimposed ringing.

The 532, for people with hearing impediments, also used a bridge rectifier with germanium diodes and an amplifier with volume control.

You can see how technology has advanced; Dennis was able to fit the polarity guard and the Rotatone microcomputer in between the dial posts. In this picture, that entire space is taken by the polarity guard alone.

[bellsystemproperty]

For those not wanting to install the Rotatone inside their phone another company makes a similar device that plugs into the phone wire. The advantage to this is that it can be installed downstream, like at the network box, so that you don't have to install it in each phone. http://www.dialgizmo.com/
The Panasonic already converts to touch-tone for me, but not everyone wants to install a pbx in their house.

[Jim Stettler]

I beleive that rotatone also has a whole house device.
However, you can get more bang for your buck with a used panasonic hybrid KSU.
Jim

[JorgeAmely]

Jim:

Which is your favorite? I have the 616. One thing that I would like to change is to add a short pause between ringing stations.

[Jim Stettler]

Jim:

Which is your favorite? I have the 616. One thing that I would like to change is to add a short pause between ringing stations.

Hi Jorge,
I have never hooked up a ksu. I bought a Pansonic 616 a few years ago. It got a lot of packing peanuts inside.  I finally opened it up and cleaned it out. Things were pretty hectic at the time, so I stashed it in the shed. Access is blocked to it currently.


Once I started cleaning up the phone room, I decided I wanted to dig it out and play with it. About 15 minutes after this decision 1 showed up on the listserver for $45.00. So I bought it.
I got it about 2 weeks ago.
I still haven't played with it yet.

Regarding the ringing, I think you may be able to change it  with programming. You need a panisonic display phone for programming.

Jim

[Phonesrfun]

Jim:

So now you have 2?

I had a 308 and a 616 at one time, and I sold the 308 to someone on this forum a while back.  When I had them both here, just for fun, I hooked them up so that I picked up an extension on the 308 and dialed 9, to get an outside line which just happened to be connected to an extension on the 616, so I heard its dial tone and dialed a 9 again to get the real outside line.  There was no purpose in doing this, but I am prone to doing dumb things like that.

Someone once asked me how I learned about telephones.  My answer is that I had to break and totally ruin a bunch of them in the process.  But I guess that's how I got to know at least some of my phones!   

[Jim Stettler]

Jim:

So now you have 2?

I had a 308 and a 616 at one time, and I sold the 308 to someone on this forum a while back.  When I had them both here, just for fun, I hooked them up so that I picked up an extension on the 308 and dialed 9, to get an outside line which just happened to be connected to an extension on the 616, so I heard its dial tone and dialed a 9 again to get the real outside line.  There was no purpose in doing this, but I am prone to doing dumb things like that.

Someone once asked me how I learned about telephones.  My answer is that I had to break and totally ruin a bunch of them in the process.  But I guess that's how I got to know at least some of my phones!   

Dennis, You are a man after my own heart,
I fancied doing the same. I also have a 555 , a clear 557 and some other assorted switch gear. I have been afraid of being sucked into the switcher realm. I think Novack is waiting, licking his chops over fresh meat. I will eventually become a switcher, hopefully on my terms.
Jim

[Dennis Markham]

Jim, that was Bill's posting.  Did you mean Bill (not Dennis)??

[Jim Stettler]

Jim, that was Bill's posting.  Did you mean Bill (not Dennis)??

Yes I did, Sorry Mr./future Board guy. I suspect too many beers on my end.
Jim

[Phonesrfun]

Have one on me.

[djtownsend]

I have a WE model 500 series wall phone and just bought a 202 with subset.  I have VOIP coming into my house so I'm debating installing something for the whole house or installing a Rotatone piece in each piece.  I do have a Pulse to Tone Converter ordered from Oldphoneworks coming just to test with but since I'm a newbie, I'm still debating on which way to go.

Has anyone installed a Rotatone unit in a 202 phone/subset combo?

Dan

[Dennis Markham]

Dan, the rotary phones work on many VoIP systems.  You may not need a pulse to tone converter at all.