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Millennium Payphones for sale

Started by wds, January 15, 2013, 08:18:53 PM

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Dugan

#30
I know the stuff. I just had my headlights done and they are like new. I'll look for that exact product. It sounds like handy stuff to have around.

Pete
Pete

Fan of phones old and new, old flashlights, radioactive household items, Geiger Counters, cameras including IR, cult computers and GPS's dating back to the beginning of the technology.

Dan F

I just picked up one of these. Mine doesn't have any locks. The coin validator is completely electronic. Any information would be helpful. Mine has no locks and looks like the card reader supports the newer cards with the chips. Are there any manuals for this phone?

-df


poplar1

Quote from: Dan F on May 21, 2017, 03:58:16 AM
I just picked up one of these. Mine doesn't have any locks. The coin validator is completely electronic. Any information would be helpful. Mine has no locks and looks like the card reader supports the newer cards with the chips. Are there any manuals for this phone?

-df



Dave provided a link to payphone411 for manuals in Reply #5.

http://payphone411.com/millenniummanuals.html

"C'est pas une restauration, c'est une rénovation."--François Martin.

Payphone installer

As I sit and read these post I see a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to smart payphones. A smart payphone is a downloadable device. 
Some smart payphones do have a default mode they will run in. All smart payphone require the download of a RATE FILE a rate file which determines how much a call cost from the location to the dialed number.
In order for the payphone to determine that it must use its programed telephone number location and match it up in a data base to the number called.

So the phone has to know each and every area code and exchange in the country at any given time.
So that means that the rate file in the phone in order to accomplish this must be loaded at the very least on a monthly basis.

These files are purchased files from a rate file provider.
It addition to that the payphone must know the areas that are 7-digit dialing and the areas that are 10-digit dialing.
In addition to the rate file a payphone must have a OPTIONS FILE which is a file that tells it the routing of the calls what carrier will be used for certain types of calls.
The next thing the payphone needs is a software version. There are many versions that correct problems with different types of Central Office conditions.
If you have not already figured this out then you may not be able to understand, every smart phone is a miniature central office. It must interact with other CO's in order to function.

For instance if a payphone somehow ends up on a line with 3 way calling then a option must be turned on to not allow a switch hook flash to be delivered to the CO more then once every 3 seconds.
If the payphone is on a coin line then there are a series of options to read the reverse battery as it occurs on the line in order to understand where it is in the setup of a telephone call.

There are options to detect a answer by way of reverse battery or instead a voice answer.
It also must understand ring no answer,busy and SIC tones. It also has the ability to dial out rotary or touch tone.
AT&T developed some of the first smartphones that were deployed as the 30 A private payphone,the DMC set and the Private payphone plus.

All this stuff along with Ernest, Elcotel, Protel and Intelicall also one of the first all required transformers in the beginning then many became  line powered. The reason the AT&T Eagle 1,2 and 3 went away was because it was not able to handle 10 digit local dialing in its rate file software.

So now we get to the Nortel Millennium (NM). When I was the operating manager at the public telephone department one of my tasks was to select what smart payphones we would use.
The NM was the pits as far as I was concerned ,it required constant interaction with a special  Nortel payphone switch to work.

The rates,options all the stuff were in the Nortel switch very little resided in the telephone. and every process had a charge had a cost that you paid to Nortel.

So guys here is the deal this is not a guessing game it is a fact. THERE IS NO WAY AROUND IT,IT IS A KNOW AND UNDERSTOOD FACT.
A NM will not work unless it is in contact with a Nortel payphone switch. What you have in a NM is a car without a motor and it will not run. When I see comments like some guy says or I have been told by someone,the someone or the Guy is trying to sell you something. The phones won't work. If you want something that will work that looks just like the NM it is a Protel Ascension and its a better phone.

That said there were NM display  models carried by sales people that were taken to the various telephone companies and airports to demo the product.
These phones did function but had limited ability I had one demoed to me once a long time ago. I would say they are few and far between.

So to define it clearly a smart is a device that contains everything necessary to deliver a phone call at the proper rate anywhere with the proper dialing sequence.
A dumb set is a phone that functions solely on commands from the CO(central 0ffice).
A hybrid smart set is a phone that works off both the CO and the smarts such as a NM.

This is a science guys there are no if ands or buts, manuals mean nothing beyond understanding if you do not have the software. Dial pad commands are limited at best.

There were also on site PBX type devices like the ONMIPHONE coin pro that could manage dumb sets at a location  way of simulated CO commands. A advanced version of Stan's controller. 
Today I am the owner of a Inmate telephone switch that services 160 county jails in 10 states to 22,00 inmates by way of a customized VOIP switch. I also still maintain 250 payphones in correction institutions. The technology is astounding. But it is still RATE FILES and OPTION FILES in that sense nothing has changed.

martin

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 21, 2017, 11:58:31 AM
So guys here is the deal this is not a guessing game it is a fact. THERE IS NO WAY AROUND IT,IT IS A KNOW AND UNDERSTOOD FACT.
A NM will not work unless it is in contact with a Nortel payphone switch.
I would like to object to this - sorry...

The Millennium does not really need a special Nortel switch. In fact, the only thing "special" that the Millennium needs is answer supervision (polarity reversal) upon answering. Even the 20$ Linksys PAPT2 can do that. (Of course the quality of those are horrible and not really fit for production use... But most of us, who want to run a Millennium are probably looking into home/museum-use). And even if the line/switch cannot do answer supervision, Quortech even sold an interfered answer supervision module (IAS) that takes care of that...

That being said: I mentioned it on another thread: There are at least 3 parties I know of, that are working on building a backend for the Millennium-phones, so collectors and museums can put them back into service without getting their hands on a demo-code ROM. As for the feasibility: I know it is possible to provision the phones without the Millennium Manager, because I've done it ;-) (Obligatory disclaimer, that this is not yet ready for public usage and public beta-testing will commence some time later this year).

Payphone installer

Answer supervision is still available on a cocot line today in some areas,so based on your statement the ordering of this line should allow this phone to work. But it does not.  Office supervision was used for two things on a payphone, on a smart set to detect a answer, on a dumb set to identify and collect or return a coin. You state they are building the back end to make it work. Back end is a broad term do you mean a CO based program to emulate the function of the Nortel system? Or a small compact unit to simulate the CO?
Below is the link to a Nortel in demo mode you hear  the dialing and the attempt of the phone with a data burst to talk to its data base. It fails and cannot complete the call.  First the switch did not answer the number dialed by the payphone second since the phone did not reach the switch it can't rate the call . It has no on board rate file.  The coin still returns as a result of a office supervision line which it would do on SIC tones which you can here.

The phone has no rating program without the Nortel switch contact,so it does not know what to charge and the call fails plus the switch or program number did not answer.  So if  this  back end would be answering the data stream with the proper credentials and then defining the rate based on the dialed number passed by data stream it would work.
But you would still have to have a office supervision line that reversed the battery on a answer,and or maybe collect return voltage I have no clue if the line produced that voltage or the transformer.
I believe the phone dialed the data base sent the data downloaded the info hung up and redialed the dialed number in very fast succession but I have no way of knowing that for sure without standing there with a butt set during the call.
I welcome anybody to challenge me if I am wrong I would love to know more about how they worked but I think I am close to the call process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUsqiUFiBTs

This link someone trying to get around the credentials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW5_OZahsGE

https://www.hackcanada.com/canadian/payphones/millenium.txt

martin

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 21, 2017, 01:52:49 PM
Answer supervision is still available on a cocot line today in some areas,so based on your statement the ordering of this line should allow this phone to work. But it does not.  Office supervision was used for two things on a payphone, on a smart set to detect a answer, on a dumb set to identify and collect or return a coin. You state they are building the back end to make it work. Back end is a broad term do you mean a CO based program to emulate the function of the Nortel system? Or a small compact unit to simulate the CO?

Oh, okay... Seems like we are talking about the same/similiar things, but using different terms...

When I say "backend", I mean the computer-system that connects with its modem-pool to the network and provides the configuration for the phones. While Nortel/Quortech used a Tandem/HP Nonstop, I am using off-the-shelf computer-hardware with a 5$ USB-modem. I am not 100% sure anymore what the "Millennium Manager" was written in (I remember COBOL being in the mix) - I am using python.

So yes, you are right: just connecting the phone to a line with AS is not enough. But the data for the phones was not stored in the switching-hardware but rather in some data-center run by either Nortel/Quortech or (in a few select instances) directly at the Telco.

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 21, 2017, 01:52:49 PM
Below is the link to a Nortel in demo mode you hear  the dialing and the attempt of the phone with a data burst to talk to its data base. It fails and cannot complete the call.  First the switch did not answer the number dialed by the payphone second since the phone did not reach the switch it can't rate the call . It has no on board rate file.  The coin still returns as a result of a office supervision line which it would do on SIC tones which you can here.

Thanks for the video - I didn't know about that one yet :-)

I would like to correct you about the data-burst that you can hear, though: That data-burst is not from the Millennium but from the called party. While you can hear the DTMF-tones during dialing in the handset, the data-bursts are not played back to the user. The first call (starting at around 1:29) seems to be supervised as the coin gets collected and the 1 minute counter starts to count down...

The reason the card call failed is indeed not that there is no backend-connection... Yes, on a normal, in-service, device, the call would fail for that reason. On this demo-code-device however all creditcards are accepted (and just not billed in the end). The reason why it failed here the first few times was the orientation of the card (magstripe down instead of up). And then there is the issue, that the card-table in the demo-code has quite some restrictions on what kind of cards to accept. Depending on the build of the demo-code, there are two possibilities: Either any card with a magstripe gets accepted or the canned table is checked. Basically it's a table with the attributes "Starting PAN", "Ending PAN", and acceptable service-codes. So for the Google Wallet-card to work, it would need to have it's PAN overlap with the Visa, Mastercard or Amex-PANs and have the appropriate service-code on it.

(Funny story on the side: the demo-code builds that actually check for the PAN and service-code are so old, they don't take into account cards that have obligatory Online-verification... For that reason, during initial development and testing, I could only use my Amex-card on the demo-code builds).

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 21, 2017, 01:52:49 PMThe phone has no rating program without the Nortel switch contact,so it does not know what to charge and the call fails plus the switch or program number did not answer.  So if  this  back end would be answering the data stream with the proper credentials and then defining the rate based on the dialed number passed by data stream it would work.

The demo-code never calls the backend - all calls to the NCC are replaced by static answers in the EEPROM. So if a call goes through or not and how it is rated is (on demo-code devices) determined uniquely by the phone itself.

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 21, 2017, 01:52:49 PM
I believe the phone dialed the data base sent the data downloaded the info hung up and redialed the dialed number in very fast succession but I have no way of knowing that for sure without standing there with a butt set during the call.

Yes, that's exactly how it is happening (on non demo-units) :-)

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 21, 2017, 01:52:49 PM
This link someone trying to get around the credentials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW5_OZahsGE
Yes - that is me - I did that video :)

That was very, very early in the process of writing my own backend... At the time, the only thing I did was answering the phones installation-request and request for the current time. Until here, nothing too fancy happening - there have been plenty of people who got to set the time on the phone correctly (It's like the "Hello World" of Millennium payphones ;-)).


Payphone installer

Not sure how the NM processed credit cards but the Protel sets processed them by way of sending then to validation data bases real time as a phone call.The validation database dialed was determined by digits in the card number.   Once validated the call was allowed and then batch billed later in the day. As for writing the software that is out of my realm I do think that acquiring the source code to another payphone software may be a faster way to get there since there are basic elements to all of them that are the same. That source code is available.

Payphone installer

Might find this interesting

Payphone installer

more

martin

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 21, 2017, 09:25:34 PM
Might find this interesting
Indeed, I do :-)

I'll comment on that in the other thread :)

Troy K

That Millennium with the keyboard is rather neat. Never seen one of those in person. Most of the payphones here in Western Canada are Telus Millenniums, though I've a seen a few Bell ones in downtown Victoria BC.

AE_Collector

Don't think I have seen the term Millenium Manager in this topic yet. It is the computer that the Millenium phones call daily (typically) to update any trouble codes, cash in the box and probably to check if there is any updated software files to download.

It us getting to be a long time ago now (1996-2003) when I worked on 120B's, Protels and Milleniums but I recall asking the guy who administered the Telus Millenium Manager if a phone could be programmed into a "StandAlone" mode and he said it was possible. Of course it needed to be set up and downloaded by the MM for the area it was installed in but could be instructed to not call in to the Millenium Manager on a regular basis. I was never involved with a phone set up that way but this is what I was told. Of course we had version 1.7, 1.9, 2.0 and 2.1 phones/chassis in use then and I am not certain if a particular version was required for this feature.

Someone mentioned the card reader and it being set up for chip cards. The blue bezzel card reader were just mag stripe readers and the yellow bezzel reader were mag strip / chip reader.

Terry


Troy K

One time when I used a Millennium I mistakenly thought the chip card reader could read the chips in credit cards, felt kind of stupid when I realized it was for smart calling cards. Interestingly enough, I don't think Telus even sells calling cards for the phones anymore, last time I used one was years ago now.

One question I do have, and it is silly.. I made my own information card for my phone, and as much as I like it, I'd love to get an authentic one (either Bell or Telus). Would anybody happen to have one they would be willing to part with. or know of a way I could obtain one?

martin

Quote from: Troy K on May 23, 2017, 09:31:55 PM
One time when I used a Millennium I mistakenly thought the chip card reader could read the chips in credit cards, felt kind of stupid when I realized it was for smart calling cards.

I can't say this with 100% certainty - but as far as I understood by looking at the card-table and screenshots of the "Telco Maximizer", the telco may also allow creditcard-ICs to be allowed for transactions... But I do have to agree, I have never seen usage of the creditcard-IC in the wild...