Another Phoneitis Victim

[AE_Collector]

Where is the best section to post a few photos of my phones?

Right here of course!

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?board=68.0

Terry

[DentonRotary]

Thank you, photos have been posted! Sorry I'm not much of a photographer, and I know I have got to get nonfluorescing lights! The phones are not live at the moment and do not get taken out into the light until I get my lighting straight for their safety.

After reading some more on here, my wish list is growing exponentially larger (and larger, and larger, and....). I suppose I should start a new thread somewhere with more info and start asking newbie questions at some point too!

[Scotophor]

My friend helped me hook them up for a test. I believe what he had them on was VOIP but that part is still all greek to me. Neither phone has the pulse to tone switch on it (at least, I haven't readily found it if its there). We have a cheap, made in India, pulse to tone convertor box he added into the wall line.

With that setup, we were able to get the phones to reliably ring in when we used cell phones to dial the house line the rotaries were connected to (hooked them up one at a time). The bells didn't ring super loud but both worked; reception was crystal clear on the phone I've had the longest, bit of static on the junkstore unit but might have been from the coily-cord connections. [...] edited to add: However, when hooked up, neither phone would dial out. I am presuming something needs rewired somewhere in order for that function to work?

I'm not sure what you mean by "what he had them on was VOIP"... are you saying that they WERE connected on a VOIP line, but now they are not? And that you could not dial out on his VOIP line? That is likely because the VOIP equipment does not recognize pulse dialing. But then you wrote, "We have a cheap, made in India, pulse to tone convertor box he added into the wall line." Are you saying that even with this device in the circuit, your rotary phones could not dial out? If so, I would suspect either the device doesn't work properly, or your friend connected it improperly.

BTW, as far as I'm aware, only phones with buttons (a.k.a. Touch-Tone phones) can have a Pulse/Tone switch, unless someone has added a pulse-to-tone converter to a rotary phone and included such a switch to enable bypassing the converter. Anyway, for further help with these issues you should post on the Telephone Troubleshooting and Repair forum. If you do so, please let us know what kind of phone line you have. BTW, VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol -- in other words, your non-cellular telephone connects to your computer, or to a stand-alone device, then it goes to your router or directly to your broadband internet service, instead of to a traditional copper twisted-pair telephone line. MagicJack is probably the best-known example of a VOIP service.