[GreenKeys] O/T - 24v to 48v POTS Telco converter for added ring?

[E.]

Alright, so I was proud as all get-out the other day that I thought that I figured out this here thing and typed that long, useless email - glowing in the bask of victory, only to use the rotary a day or two later and while doing so, watched the call blocker repeatedly hang up on me while dialing ;o .  Did more tinkering… connect the red/green wires on the terminal block inside the telephone one way, the rotary works without bell; reverse the wires, the bell works without a functional rotary.  Ah well, I had something coming in the the mail anyways — a Viking RG-10A Ring Booster that I originally was going to return on RMA, since I thought I had figured out the problem.  Couldn’t hurt to try out my original theory so I went to FedEx and picked it up.

Viola - the booster fixed the rotary dialing problem.  I think what was happening was that not enough juice was flowing through the circuit when the pulses were being created by the rotary at 24v (the pulses are essentially disruptions in the telephone circuit and the phone has enough condensers/resistors the way it is on the inside at a higher voltage no less), that the call blocker figured that there was a bad to no connection and would cut the circuit on its end (it seems to also have a internal circuit surge suppressor/breaker)… guess there’s now enough parasitic voltage through the pulses at 48v, that the connection holds.  Problem solved ;p !

…and as an added bonus, I guess... if Windstream finally decides to ditch copper and go completely to fiber (oh that will not be the day), I can just hook this jack of a box up at the service line entrance and still use all of my old ringy dingy telephones ;) !


> On Jul 31, 2021, at 5:34 pm, E. <hanyou at xsmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hey guys,
> 
> Sorry for the late reply and all of the great responses back :) !  So yesterday I finally pinned down the problem.  Okay, so the bell on my Automatic Electric is a ground ring bell… seems like most rotaries were back then - at least on the independent lines, because of partly lines.  Ground ring also saved from draining voltage on the larger circuit, due to the many bells being on the circuit -- or at least back then it did.  Modern telephones no longer use ground - usually seen as three wires coming out of old telephones… instead now you see only two.  Prior to asking here, I had tried bypassing the call blocker with the ground circuit, but still no dice.
> 
> So a little background - bet most know here, but anywho… Big Ma Bell (AT&T) exclusively used Western Electric, which meant that most of the nation, back in the day, used Western Electric equipment.  The independent companies though, including my area in southeast Nebraska (again, back in the day, before all the stinkin’ mega-mergers via deregulation back in the ‘90s) -- Lincoln Telephone & Telegraph, used Automatic Electric equipment.  Somewhat the same, yet somewhat different.
> 
> Yesterday I came across a video on a Western Electric telephone that allowed the bell on it to ring on modern POTS circuits, on the “new” Big Ma Bell network, since most networks today have lowered the voltage on their lines, since bells are rare and high ringing voltage is no longer needed and whatnot... along with the fact that modern circuits on current day landline phones that don’t require as much voltage as the old ones did.  On the WE at least, fixing it was as simple as moving a wire to bypass the ground ring altogether.
> 
> Automatic Electric phones aren’t as simple though… they use frequency ringers, from what I can gather.  WE may too, but AE is apparently notorious for that (party lines, rural areas, etc.).  I couldn’t find any info about doing the same to my AE phone (as they are a bit rarer).  Most AE forums say that you have to change out the ringer for a straight line ringer on the AE’s.  Yikes!
> 
> Okay… well, last chance I had (yesterday) was to go downstairs, dig into my old rotary telephone collection and see if I could find an AE phone that had modified wiring ‘cause the all the previous phones I tried a couple of nights ago - including WE, ITT, etc., all did not ring on the call blocker.
> 
> Well, what do you know - the first AE I came across had an an 80’s-era modular plug converter at the end of the line.  Promising!  Opened it up and found it was wired for the 80’s network!  Nice ;D !  Plugged it into the call blocker and even though it had the same ringer as the other one I was trying to get working, it rang!
> 
> So comparing apples to apples on the wiring (opened them both up to compare), I found a modern solution on the rewired AE from downstairs... as simple as switching around three wires and eliminating the ground ring.
> 
> Did the same modification on my usual AE deck phone right beside me here and it finally works ——— yay ;D !!!!!
> 
> I may end up doing a video about it on YT, since it seems like no one knows about this wire-up… many independent bells were small - thus the knowledge may not be there anymore.  Milage may vary on this mod - but I have no other exchange on a different network to test it out :/ (Big Ma).  At least we still have callback and the ability to use rotaries here ;p .
> 
> Long story short - all fixed and working now :) .  Thanks again for all the help — this has always been an amazing group ^^ !  Elmers as you all would be in the ham radio world ^_^ .
> 
> A quick history on LT&T… they were one of the first companies to use the Strowger Dial, I believe the first to have a phone book — called the “Secret Service” and claims to be the first to have a 911 system, although there was one other company that may have beaten LT&T by a couple of days on that… there’s still debate ;p .  LT&T was quite ahead of its time, actually :) .
> 
> Here’s a short video about the company -- I may have had a hand in making it… maybe ;p :...
> 
> https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/series-media/nebraska-stories-video/season-10-video-15886/final-call-for-lincoln-telephone-50007854/
> 
> Ah how I miss the company — now we’re stuck with Windstream :( .
> 
> Anywho, thanks again for everyone ^_^ .   Cheers ^^ !!!
> 
> (the support line for this call blocker — the guy I was talking to over the period of two days was… erm, interesting… he was a bit argumentative on a lot of things - including on callback... basically almost called be a liar -- but as I had tried explaining to him multiple times, we here are on a former independent exchange, so yes - Big Ma may not have had it, but we still do….. his reply back after realizing was that we must be on some old equipment through the exchange… hahah - all the better for me then ;p ~)