It's Works!.. UAX13 Strowger Telephone Exchange Repair
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- Опубликовано: 20 авг 2021
- Its Been A journey! #telephoneexchange #restoration #repair
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Visited the museum today with the kids! What a great museum. Sooooo much fun and fascinating stuff. Seeing the Gameboy Mega Machine in the flesh is something else. Also, Scart lead? Who needs a scart lead? Witnessed Sam sticking 2 wires into the back of the VHS tape player so the signal could go to the little TV. :) The bodge worked! Amazing. He said it was simple and flashed me a diagram on his phone he was using. You're too damn talented.
glad you and your family enjoyed it David!!! haha yeah composite to scart lead converter is on the shopping list :D haha
I'm so addicted to your telephone exchange videos
I am too! My favorite content of his currently honestly, I enjoy the museum vids more than the main channel ones.
Good to know both of you! It was quite the risk getting hold of this and taking People on the journey as I didn't know if people would find it of interest haha. Good to know !
I'm absolutely loving this too. I used to um not hack these things for free phone calls when I was a kid, but I never actually saw one. There were still a bunch of exchanges using step-by-step for local exchanges and crossbar to connect them all. But if you mapped out all the routing you could skip the crossbar switches and keep chaining local exchanges for hundreds of miles, never getting billed for long distance. I had no idea they were invented in the 1800's!
Geeking out on hardware, so we don't have to (get it ourselves) :)
Phreaker's wet dream right there, yep
This video is like an exercise in Rubber Ducking. The act of telling us what he's doing allows Sam to figure out where he's gone wrong.
Love the phone stuff. My dad worked with old Strowger switches from time to time, usually replacing them with Northern Telecom DMS switches.
Edit: He says when the users would pick up the phone using a new DMS switch, they would often panic and hang up. They weren't used to hearing the dial tone instantly unless there was a problem, as the line finder on the old Strowger switches take a moment to connect the line to the tone generator.
Ha nice!
Me too
One day I hope to visit this wonderful museum of yours but until then I'll keep pushing like buttons of all your videos!
Cheers! One day! 👍
phreaker's paradise.
add couple 56k modems and have them call each other and stream midi music and whatnot
Respect to this young man. He has enthusiasm and will go far. Brilliant stuff!
It's a trip down memory lane for some of us who worked on Strowger systems for the best part of 40 years.
On crowded older tag frames in dank basements it was always 'fun' when you got a ringing current when your sweaty arm is deep in amongst the jumpers and tags.
Ha yep I got that a few times. To be honest that was the way I figured it was working first off just wasn't making sense why the phones weren't ringing but I was getting the buzz through me fingers 🤣
Sam I've been a fan of your channel since back from the synthesizer/music days. The fact that you've gone down the antique phone exchange route makes me even MORE of a fan! It's a dream come true! You have very similar interests as myself but are way better at music!!
Oh and... "That's it for the moment and Thanks for watchin'" :-)
Amazing piece of work to bring this back to life. Total respect for your work....
It’s amazing not only to preserve these obsolete machines but also the knowledge of how they work and how to operate and maintain them too! I’ve learn a lot about telecommunications history with this channel, thank you!
I dunno if anybody ever mentioned but the handset rotary dial works by momentarily hanging up the line the number of times as had been dialed. Which means that with a land-line telephone you don’t need a working keypad or rotary dial at all. You could easily tap out each digit with the hangup switch.
I grew up in a small town and it must have had a similar interchange because if you were dialing inside the town you weren’t required to dial all 7 digits, you could instead simply dial only the last 4 digits and it recognized a call that was strictly within town.
Amongst all the levels of how awesome this is it’s also an exercise in preserving a key piece of technological history and for that sir I commend you! 😎
watching your videos makes me happy.
Loving it. I still remember clearly visiting a museum where a setup similar to yours was set up, three number system, two phones, ant the whole machinery behind glass. Tech museum in Hengelo Netherlands. All working… Not sure if its still there, been a few years…
The museum still exists, but it has moved to a new location.
i like that contraption...its very historical these electromechinal things that have been shrunk to mysterious unkowns these days
It's cool ain't it!
I still remember those "beats" rattling all day when I worked as an installation technician for the digital upgrade in my country...
Was the end of the electromechanical era in the early 90's...
Really impressive! Congrats on getting the beast to work! I've always been intrigued by these things, a local museum has a similar model (Dutch variant) in its collection and I could spend a long time playing with it as a boy. I revisited it multiple times since and it still fascinates me. Especially since I get the basic principles of it now. Really interesting to see you dive deep into it. The people who invented them were geniuses
Wired many a fuse panel in the 70’s. Forgot nearly about Grasshopper Fuses, happy days
Great to see and hear this gear in operation - the uni-selectors remind me of the old films where the police used to trace the call! I recognise a few bits that I used to have in my junk box back in the 60s - the counter units and the carpenter relays. Keep up the good work.
Installed all of them. Uax12, 13, 14, non director, txe2, crossbar, txe4, system x and axe10.
Copper oxide rectifiers are generally reliable, though they can fail. Selenium rectifiers do wear out with age just like paper capacitors. They can go open or even short and explode. Best to replace them with silicon diodes, but if the circuit depends on the resitance of the recifier you can always add a big enough resistor in series to the silicon diode (not sure if it would be needed for something EM).
If you ever smell something foul and skunky around the machine (often occompanied by the magic smoke), a rectifer has shorted and blown, remove power immediately.
What a neat exhibit. Moving bits, clanky noises and functionality. What more do you want?
lasers
Awesome Sam. I will do my best to visit when I take my son to University in Canterbury. So close be rude not to. 😁
I love how you giggled when you dial that 3rd 6!
only just watched this first video by you and im already pretty interested in this project you got going it seems fun.
Nice job! I was always wondered how oldschool telephone exchange working. your video been the answer that I was searching for.👍👍👍👍👍🚀🚀
That Fallout Vibe is what I live for! I totally agree with you! ☢️🧟♂️☢️
amazing video :-) thanks!
Great video mate. I appreciate all the effort u have gone to. I’m in australia so can’t visit your museum but i would if i could. 👍
Modern day phone jacks don't have capacitors in them.
I think i heard that some of the early NIJs (network interface jacks, where phone co stopped and your personal wires started) had some sort of capacitor circuit that allowed the central office to run integrity tests on each line but i don't remember where i heard that!
Hey could you add in a speaker to each line at the exchange? This would be so those viewing the exchanges can kind of hear all the noise and chatter (the speakers do not have to be loud at all).
It would be cool to see what is going on for the callers relating to the exchange as part of the display. For example to hear people say goodbye to each other before the phones are hung up and the selectors rotate and fall.
Also, it could really show how impressive the exchanges can be if you have enough museum guests on the phones at once.
I wish I lived closer to be able to visit your museum. I am always impressed by how interactive and feature packed the museum truly is. A visitor definitely could not absorb everything in only one trip! Cheers from Ohio!
In the end it might just be easier to hire an operator to sit behind a switchboard with a couple of jack cables ;P
2:30 The exchange makes it's first music! Bing bong bing bong bong bong.
Congrats Sam! Great work
'D
I mean :D glad it's working. Come a long way this past month since you came to the museum this one! Hope all is good!
I think I used relays in a model railway design, certainly reed switches for points and signals, would be interesting to see if it could be done from phone dialing to set a route !.
Surely there's someone in the Telecom Heritage Group who could assist you with UAX fault finding.
You should have another tape loop announcer connected, so that when someone dials "666" you can hear Iron Maiden playing :-D
Damn straight ha
Nah, it dials the Furby organ.
wow that is actually really amazing!!! I have had the privelage of taking down a modern PBX system and still have the equipment but I dont have anything to really do with it. Also that text to speech machine I actually have one of those aswell, they are really cool! my brother wants to connect it to his computer to turn it into a physical TTY for his Linux OS.
very interesting! well if you ever want to get rid of any of it! let us know haha, there is always use in museums thanks for the comment. have a good one!
I'm thinking all kinds of interesting lighting tech, from the history of electric lighting would look amazing hanging from everywhere... And would really brighten up all future photography, and video, in all kinds of amazing coloring.... 😁 ...Also, I'm with you! I'm also into old motorcycles, and mopeds, and stuff is only original ONCE. I always prefer the machines that are still in a lot of respects, in their original patina.
Yeah definitely! One day I'll find some coool stuff
Awesome, you could hook up one of those google Alexa things to one of the phone lines so people could ask questions or request songs to be played.
The next time I go to the UK the museum will be the first place I will visit.
Cool;!
You mention it’s really confusing I.e earth being positive and “it’s all negatives” or something along those lines. There is good reason for that, by connection the + side of the 50v supply to earth, damage due to galvanic action is reduced. Similar to electroplating the anode looses material to the cathode, if phone lines develop an earth fault the negative conductors do not get eaten as away would happen if the polarity was reversed. This was especially important when underground cables were lead sheathed
A couple of the local preserved railways have telecoms departments, some have made the decision to change to digital rather than have correct period for their setting , as the need for working function outweighs keeping everything at a particular era.
It would be interesting to see if you can get any of the cold war HANDEL equipment that utilised strowger networks, there are some RUclips videos of this and I've seen some of the equipment in use at the preserved nuclear bunker at RAF Holmpton near Hull.
rectifiers can just stop working, but they can also slowly fail. heat/temperature can have an effect on them with the way they fail and can effect the reliability of them when they are in that half working/half failing state. best bet would be to replace. you could also try applying heat to them during operation to see if that changes their failure/reliability etc. happy to discuss further if need be.
I figured what you say would be the case I just wanted to hear it from someone else also! good to know. I just need to find a suitable replacement item that is maybe modern, do you have any suggestions? for a metal rectifier replacement? the ones in it currently look like this www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144166589729?hash=item2190ff9521:g:jDcAAOSwI5Feo0hC
awesome video
Cheers!
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTERima huge fan of yours keep it up, you got me in2 diy building a eurorack, Love the Content you Drop!
YAY IT WORKS!
A couple things that might be informative. Caveat: my experience is in the US originally workng with analog PBXs.
The two copper wires for most phone are known as tip and ring (usually green and red), that comes from the early days of live operators using the 1/4in jacks on a switchboard where each jack had a "tip" and a "ring". (TRS, tip, ring, sleeve, still used in audio).
What was confusing to me, too, was that the red wire was negative (i was used to low voltage where red was usually positive and black was negative vdc).
I learned a nemonic to help keep it straight in my head-
TIP= "T tip I is P positive"
RING= "R ring I is NG negative" - also Ring is Red (both begin with R)
cheers charles. i havent heard the termimnoligy called tip and ring in telecommunications in the UK. A B and + - , tip and ring however still used a lot in the audio world like you said, i spend half mmy life making momno and stereo jack cables hahah. cheers!!!!! have a goodf one. thanks
The other terminology i love is "flash" or "hook-flash". You still find a lot of cordless phones with a "flash" button.
Again going way back to the early operator days when the farmer would flick his hook switch (no dial) and Ernestine the operator would see the lamp flash on her switchboard. She could answer and connect him to his desired party.
The hook-flash became a standard time period to signal a pbx for a call transfers or other features. I think it was too be 300ms. If over 500ms it was considered a hangup, but less than 300ms it could just be a pulse for dialing.
This should make a great percussion instrument. I used to spend a little time in telephone exchanges working on test equipment. Imagine 40 or 50 of these things all going full out in one room. Now you just need an office battery to keep it running. They were about the size of a small tractor trailer.
where they not powered off the grid?
@@invetegon4596 Ma Bell tried to maintain an up time of five nines - that is, you could pull a dial tone and place a call 99.999 percent of the time. There was too much down time on the power grid to meet this requirement. Central offices included these monster batteries so customers could place calls even when local power was out.
@@steveowens398 where the batterys back up, Or where they the primary source?
@@invetegon4596 They were the primary source initially, then were replaced by what was called the Common Battery - power converted directly from the grid or generators.
@@steveowens398 how long did these batterys last?
I might have some old GPO domestic connectors, will possibly be pulling some in the not too distant future
it's a phreakers wet dream, dude. if it can accept tones sell it to those kids as a call in jukebox. put you songs up, they're perfect for this. and can play from the loop tape machine. just a thought from the gallery
Those machines are so cool! do they also exist with only a view conections like 20 numbers. I want to have a small thelephone network in a model train park.
The cheat code as being a way to hold up all of the phones and block the system, nice.
Haha yeah I know but shhhj not everyone knows haha
What made that do can stay I just need what in those boxes
I worked on Step by step for years. Don't ask me to help now!!!
New sub
Every time I see a rotary phone prop I think of the phone exchange stuff for this museum.
Ha woop!
I think you should build a nother sever rack and leave that alone
Main Distribution Frame
what about using a bit of Microbore pipe with a slot cut to facilitate Wire Wrapping, What about in investing in a Video Camera that uses SATA drives called Big Red.
Wouldnt it make more sense for people to call into the thing via an actual landline phone number instead than over the internet?
I imagine this could work something like so:
If the museum is called a computer/arduino/something picks up the call
Then you can dial further by typing numbers, this should be transmitted as audio dial tones even today and no matter with what equipment somebody calles
Some system would need to analyze the dial tone frequency and generate the approptiate pulses for the exchange, should be doable
When the line inside the museum is ready the actual audio of the called phone needs to be injected into the original call from outside
I also imagine it would be fun to have a webcam filming the exchange while i am calling it
What if you use the test mode for your drum machine
Hell fuckin yeah right man!!!
Internal switchboards tended to have Level 9 access, which gave a route to the public network - extensions could be physically (now software) banned from getting an outside line). On the public network 9 is just the first digit of a subscriber number. Dialing a 0 would indicate this was some kind of non-local call commencing
Is there a way you could have a VoIP line hooked up to it somehow, and then gave the queueing done by the VoIP system, before transferring it to the Strowger system?
tharts the plan
So what are those moving parts that move up & down when you dial a number (around the 30:15-18 mark) called?
I'm not what the proper name would be in English, in the Netherlands it was called hefdraaikiezer (lift and rotate selector) made probably by Siemens. In my country mechanical exchanges in the seventies were either Siemens, Philips or Ericsson.
Fine your self in the country on some hilltop installing antenna
Hi there, I am trying to find a Telephone Line Simulator for an upcomming Dial Up Networking Retro Project. I am after something like a Chesilvale Electronics Simulator or Teltone Simulator if you happen to have one? Many Thanks Mike
Do you know _why_ the power is -50VDC, though? I don't. IIRC, over here in the US, it is (or was) -48VDC, which is 4 12V lead-acid batteries in series. That doesn't explain why it's negative, though.
Exchange batteries are float charged across the exchange power supply, that used to run at around 50 volts. With modern systems, it's typically 54 volts. I think the -ve supply is down to cathodic protection and causes less corrosion to the line plant.
What is up with the cable management
so then, could one line occupy all of the group selectors and effectively DOS attack your exchange?
yes people doo it all the time its part of the fun, it times outaftehr 30seconds tho
Nice, but you're missing the C-unit (outside cable termination and tone generators) and a B-unit (trunk relay sets, etc) to go with that 50 line A-unit you have there.
As installed in New Zealand, each of theses frames would be fitted into a cabinet with two heavy door panels front and rear. Each door panel was held in place by two rotating clips on each edge (8 in total). Usually to get the door panel back in place all 8 clips had to be released, the panel installed and then the clips tightened. Unfortunately, some of my lazier colleagues wouldn't bother to tighten the clips on the bottom of the lower panel, which meant it would tend to slip out of the frame and onto your toes when you released the other clips.
This was a very painful experience and one I am happy to say only happened to me the once - after that I checked the lower clips before releasing any of the others.
yep I didn't have a c unit at this point, but you don't really need one for a setup like this. all of the functions that it offered I have on other racks. as for all of the inbound outbound connections they are just wired direct, since know where its going no real need for the fuses etc. saying that I got hold of a c unit the other day it was a damn heavy thingy, whilst its gunna look cool ! not sure whether actually gunna wire it in or not ha. but lets see.
as for the B unit, same thing, no need in this setup. however same as the C unit I got hold of an empty B rack when I got the C unit the other day, and I have some Call meter relay boxes so using them, however the rest of whats was in a b rack was also not needed in this setup.
@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE Yes, you can certainly make it work without the B & C units, but from a museum point if view it's good that you've managed to get the complete set.
In NZ we didn't make much use of meter type call charging and metering relay sets - in fact I only encountered it in two exchanges, Cambridge (CB) and a UAX at Roto-o-rangi (ROO). ROO was the only UAX I ever saw that had a master clock unit - to provide metering pulses - and it was different to every other one I've seen in that it was half height, with a 1/2 second pendulum.
Later in the life of UAXs in the part of NZ where I worked they were significantly modified. As you will be aware there is a direct connection between line finders and group selectors in the UAX. In parts of NZ this connection was intercepted and a Local Register made by NEC was inserted into the gap. The LR provided dial tone, stored the dialed digits and then, based on what digits were dialed would drop 3, connect you via a crossbar switch to a group selector and then out step the remaining three digits into the UAX for a local call. If you were making a call to the local free call area it would connect via the XBar to an outgoing trunk and send all 6 dialed digits and, finally, if you were dialing a chargeable (toll) call it would connect to trunk, send all digits and then, when requested, send the calling number for billing purposes.
Anyway, it's good to know that people are actively collecting this sort of thing and preserving it. One thing I would say (and you may have already been told this) is to take any opportunity that arises to acquire spare selector parts and a set of the tools need to adjust them.
🥰👍🏻
I'm thinking about that you said that you may want to build it that you can call it from anywhere(in the world) before.
I would be more than happy to help you out setting that up !
Since this stuff is my job i'm way familiar with Phone systems that could have a queue system ans so on.
Just message me, i'm happy to help !
thanks Chris!!! got a mate giving us a hand at the minute! but if we get stumped ill hit you up!! thanks a lot
How does the final sector know you’ve finishing dialing all the digits you want? 😅😊
it doesnt, it just knows when it has dialed 2 digits
@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE can you extend this to more selectors when telephone area codes got longer?
You tell phone is 200 million server hahaf
!!!!
I want to call the googol counter
The satellites is Tesla model
Make a bombe out of it!
... mad ...
You are clearly nuts....in a good way.
Haha it's a fine line
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER and it's got wires running through it.! lol
I don't know what it is what's the fugs
What's the fugs all that just one antenna you make be saw those things in the air while you running around zzzzzzzzzz,it modified to be that hahahaha
Are go a seniors
Whats that flag at the back?
Both coastguard
Well I mean 1 coastguard 1 rnli lifeboat
The cross one looks like the faroes flag
@@Manemlp aaah yeah I see it sort of does!
Main Distribution Frame
That's the one. Tip of the tongue moment right there