We also had a 20ft springy cord on ours to talk around the house lol
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there is no greater demonstration of the universe’s movement from order to entropy and chaos than those phone cords
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AFAIK still fully functional, but not connected to anything. It worked fine before becoming obsolete and eventually being restored.
During floods this could somehow connect to the other two farmhouses on the same ridge in some kind of open system, no cranks just pick up and talk. I’ve only seen it used connected to model rail signalling circuits.
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These old phones you cranked a handle and this rang the operator. You told the operator where you needed connected and they connected you. 
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Well I know that much, I’m just curious how it would operate today without the ability to specify a dial-out
You could get dial tone on it but that’s about all. The systems to operate that sort of phone were removed decades ago. 
That’s what I kinda figured. I’m assuming it could receive calls, though?
You could actually receive calls and talk on it. I also imagine the ringer was quite effective. 
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I imagine it could be hooked up to a dedicated line. More or less a very fancy two cans connected by wire situation
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The building I work in has a hilarious patchwork of legacy tech, this probably would have received calls up until about a year ago.
Federal government is disabling all networks that can’t guarantee access to emergency service numbers.
But yeah, in a private network (eg model railroad) it’s still good. And I know a few people who have them in their shed/workshop hooked up to the front doorbell.
When this eventually hangs on my wall I’ll be taking advantage of the huge amount of real estate inside to house a router, hard drive and power distribution hub alongside the original hardware
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Be pretty dope to set it up with PBX (or a more lightweight alternative). Idk if it’s doable or if you can keep the internals original, but I can only imagine having friends over and seeing their faces when that phone rings. Especially the ones that do know that I’d be pretty weird for it to do that.
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I never considered adding on to the original hardware. Maybe a wifi switch that could connect to my android home automation setup, wired up to the ringer.
My router and HD are solely for UPnP media share and wouldn’t physically connect to anything, just make use of the space inside.
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9v battery and a speaker wire ran to another floor of the house and you could use it as an intercom system. Annoy your kids to no end.
Picks up phone. - speaker in kids room “yellow, operator speaking collect call from ‘kids dinner is ready’ will you accept the charges?”
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I love this idea!
@Nic_from_Adelaide Sorry, bit confused here, What exactly is the end goal?
No end goal. I have no use for any home automation or extra buzzers or lights going off, I’ve tried a few things and eventually packed them back in their boxes.
I did get heavily into building my own minimalist home theatre / game emulation setup though. It would be nice to give part of it a very fancy cabinet to live in
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Ah, that’s cool! I’m biggly into home automation (Home Assistant represent!). My ideas far outweigh my wallet. Fwiw, home automation is far more than just extra buzzers and lights.
Do share. I’d love to build my own home theatre but it was either that or an office and my wife and I opted for an office.
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Home automation is great except when you have a whole bunch of variables in the form of kids, wife and pets.
I don’t have it in me to play figure out what the end users did wrong with me one family.
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Movember relic sign up
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Your new Operators name is Alexa.
Pick up Reciever.
Hey Alexa, call Pun1sh3R.
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Thank you for helping make the event even more special! Very excited!