atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems curious about 1A2

I worked Step and GTD-5 switchrooms from 81-88ish, and most of the cable used inside had a spare pair. They needed every pair of every cable to work, when you hook up a 100-line linefinder or connector group you want all 100 lines good, so that spare came in handy.

And when I went outside to OSP Construction Splicing from 88-93 all the old paper cable had a spare pair for every 100-pair binder - the one red-blue pair. And we had Pulp and Single-wrap "Firecracker Paper" to deal with - just breathe on it wrong, and it would unravel and make a shiner.

On PIC cables it varied, but you'd get one spare pair for every 300 to 600 pair, depending on what they felt like tossing in. They didn't give you one per hundred group, because the incidence of bad pairs went down a lot with plastic insulation.

When you got into customer premises wiring, that's where they stopped supplying spare pairs. - it was never loaded 100% and always easy enough to just swing the line to an extra pair, and tag the bad pair at each end.

--<< Bruce >>--

I never thought I would ever hear someone bring up a diode matrix again. I cut my teeth on 1A2 just before it became obsolete and we started installing the Tie Econkey TCX 128 systems like crazy. Remember the old silent 700 with the thermal paper?

The journeyman I worked with the most taught me a great way to set up a diode matrix on 66 blocks that was easily customized. Unfortunately I only had a couple instances to use it before it became obsolete. Man, did I think I was hot stuff once I mastered that!! I think that was around 1982-1984 time frame. Oh for the old days when all you had to ask the customer was how many phone do you want to ring.

Re confidencers. It wasn't Walker, which most would assume, I found an UNOPENED kit at work. I forget the name, Roanwell? Something like that. I never could commit the 'flyer' leads for 10-button phones to memory so, to this day I have several ITT 501 and 512 Practices. For you young'uns, the translation for 'Practice' is 'Installtion manual'. Speaking of Practices, when are the doctors and lawyers gonna get it right. (I know, that's an OOLLDD joke)

OOPs, forgot to define confidencer. You unscrewed the transmitter cover on the hanset and discarded it and the transmitter. Then you dropped this special little assembly into/onto the handset in place of the transmitter and screwed down the supplied retaining ring. WALA, transmitted noise was greatly reduced and you could talk veerryy quietly and still be heard easily at the other end, hence the term 'confidencer'. If you can imagine the pick-up field arond the mouthpiece of a handset, a standard field is a cone about 160 degrees, coming straight out of moutpiece. Confidencer tightened the cone to about 70 degrees. Handset transmitter became very directional. Could not let handset slip below mouth or you could not be heard.

Somebody asked what was put between CPE and Telco in the early days. The generic term was 'coupler', supposed to protect Telco from the strange and wonderous voltages that CPE worked on. One common unit was an STCQX that put out grounded ring. Without the ringer card, you could 'option' it for a dry contact closure, I think that was an RDMZR. There were also coupler 'racks that could slot 10 or 20 coupler cards. And then there were the 'recorder couplers' RDL, B/S # KS19522, if I remember correctly. And if you were building and selling telephone answering machines,(Code-A-Phone, Phone Mate, etc) you could sell it with an APCM installed, then the customer did'nt have to have a coupler. APCM translated as Authorized Protective Connecting Module, Or, Almost Perfect Control Of Manufacturers. (Yes, there were some HARD feelings in the early '80's)
Now the BIG question! What was the CARTER DECISION and what did it cause, in the long run?
John C
Are we having fun yet?

Ah, John. You must be referring to the Carterphone. This was a speakerphone unit that was self-contained but it connected to the network through a cradle that held the telco-owned phone handset. It wasn't legal to physically wire CPE to the network, so this speakerphone was acoustically-coupled to the standard phone.

Bell companies tried to argue that this was an unauthorized attachment, just like the old vinyl covers for the phone books full of funeral home, gas station and fuel oil company ads, but the court threw it out. This led to a ruling that allowed customers to physically wire privately-owned equipment to the network (through a registered jack and appropriate coupler). Am I on the right track?

Am I right? What do I win? I'll take one of those nice Sundance Communications shirts.

On the other subject about the couplers to "protect the network", they were a true PIA since they were chock full of fuses with plain stupid ratings. A simple slip with a butt set resulted in a call to the telco's repair service. God forbid we go into their coupler (I think it was called a registered coupler) to replace a fuse. To make matters worse, I swear that the monthly rental for these things made it difficult to justify customers buying their own systems.

The telcos protected themselves by using 74- type fuses so they could tell if "the enemy" replaced them. Back then, you couldn't buy these fuses on the private market. They were Bell-controlled and only made by Western Electric. The truly weird ones had colored-tips like red/white that represented some crazy amperage, like .0075 amps! (No corrections needed; it's just an exaggeration).

I will never forget when I was a Jeff Moss type of guy, helping out at my dad's real estate office and trying to learn. I decided to clean up some of the sloppy workmanship in the telco's building entrance terminal. I was using simple scrap pieces of jumper wire off the floor to lace up the mess a little bit. I went to cut the ends from my tie wire and accidentally clipped the T/R of the company's second line. I quickly twisted the pairs back together (and learned about ringing voltage), but by then, I had blown the talk battery fuse in the "coupler". For two days, the busiest real estate office in town operated on one line since NJ Bell wasn't about to come running for one of "those" customers!

I hate to think of how these things did after thunderstorms with sensitivity like that.

Well Ed, I can't say I did anything like that...
but thanks for using me in your post

Ed, you win! Let's see, how about a Bronx cheer? Nah, that's not cool, how about an ATTA BOY. Seriously, I wonder, If the Carter decision had never happened, would this web site exhist, and what would all of the participants be doing?

Who is Judge Green, and what did he do for us?

John C
Are we having fun yet?

John, I recall that there was also some controversy over an articulating arm that attached to candlestick phones. It was designed to permit it to be used without having to hold both the base and receiver. I think that Bell tried to fight that as well, and I think they actually won. OH, and NO, I wasn't alive when this was happening!

There's no doubt that the Carter decision had a dramatic impact on this industry.

As far as Judge Greene goes, he approved the decree that rusulted in the 1984 divestiture of AT&T and The Bell System. I think his intentions were good, and they helped a lot of us, but the decree that he signed was a little too open-ended for it to truly benefit the general public.

The only thing I can say about the breakup of AT&T is. The government had a clause that basically said, everyone but us. So that right there tells me they knew it wasn't the best idea. I do believe technology has gone farther faster due to the breakup though. That opinion and a buck won't get ya much. I'd forgotten all about the Carterphone, sure glad these "old" guys keep us informed as to what went on.
Bill