atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems Interesting service call today.

Received a call from a new customer who said that they have a "really old" phone system in his house (er: mansion) that needed some repairs. The guy really couldn't elaborate much on what kind of system they have, and none of the numbers he gave made any sense, so I decided to go check it out.

Here's one phone in the kitchen that was having problems:



So I opened it up and took a look inside. No lamp on line one and no transmit:



Here's one that they had as a spare in case I needed parts:



Here's a transfer key, a ringer box and the original screw-terminal block where the phone connects:



Needed to trace out the lamp leads for one of the lines:



No lamp battery for that line on any of the phones apparently. Where is the KSU for the system, sir?





After an hour or two, everything is now working. I tried to convince the customer that they need to upgrade to a new system and they said that they aren't about to part with it. The system, along with most of the phones are original from when the house was built in 1951. This one was certainly a first for me. I guess the fact that the system is 60 years old speaks volumes for the good old Western Electric quality.

Thanks for the memories. :toast:

What is it 1A Key?

Wow, a 750 crossbar PBX with 460 sets! Amazing. It is without doubt the only one left in original service. There are a few in museums, but this has to be the last one on a subscriber's premises. I wonder if AT&T is still collecting rent on it.

I'm astonished. I haven't seen a X-Bar in service - anywhere- in 25 years.

Kudos to you Ed for getting it working! :toast:


You know, if ATT is still collecting rent, then I would think that they're liable for repairs. Try to find someone in the "new ATT" who would know what to do with that. The customer might be able to get a sizable rebate.


Sam

Wow! I have never seen anything like it! I would not know where to start on that crossbar stuff!

Oh, I wouldn't even accept payment for my time. I was just so honored to be the only fool in Washington, DC who was willing to attack it. It really wasn't so bad, in fact the repairs needed were quite simple to me. What impressed me the most was the lead-sheathed house cable with perfectly-wiped splice sleeves. Man, they made it look like artwork back then. The perfectly-stenciled maple fanning strips on the blocks was an added compliment to the craftsmanship.

To hear that bad-boy fire up when a call came in was truly amazing. Even going off-hook for an internal call sounded like a mechanical symphony. The very idea that so many thousands of flat-spring relay contacts with minimal maintenance still perform perfectly is beyond comprehension to me.

I think I'm going to try to get my hands on this thing. The couple that owns the house is 93 years old, original owners, so I need to make friends with them now.

Inquiring minds have to know, what was the problem and what caused it?

I am ashamed to admit to the simplicity of the repair, Jeff. The kitchen phone's handset cord was bad. A jumper was broken for the lamp on line one. If I were to venture a guess, that jumper would have lasted another 60 years had Verizon not come in there trying to install FIOS. The customer promptly kicked them off of the premises once they broke it and they demanded that they get the system fixed.

There were a few other things, like the failure of common audible ringing. That was traced down to a pitted relay contact. Static here and there was pretty much just dirty contacts within the sets. Ironically, the phone with the most trouble was a modified 564 set that was added in 1984. I spent more time on that one than any of the others that were much older.

This service call trickled down to me through Verizon people calling all over town and through many of my former employees who are also former Bell guys, they funneled it over to me. I'm honored.

Truly amazing! I am sure you are their new hero!

Ed, what can you tell us about the location. (Once super upper class area of DC, or Alexandria, or?) Sounds like it might make a excellent candidate for a 'remote' of the Smithsonian!

Man, I'd like to have seen the look on the FIOS tech when they showed him to the equipment room. Probably something along the line of "What the F*** is that" :rofl:

Actually it shouldn't have been that hard to trace the CO pairs from the demark and flip them over to the FIOS ONT without disturbing any of the inside wiring.

Along with the question of equipment rental, are they getting ripped off for inside wire maintenance?

John, it is installed in a posh residence in Upper Northwest, DC.

In the picture of the MDF, the white wires that you see flying all over the place were pieces of four-pair that the FIOS genius ran in his effort to send in the dial tone.

I seriously doubt if the customer is still paying any form of equipment rental. I remember about 18 years ago, AT&T sent out notices that they were abandoning billing and support for all mechanical PBX/key equipment. We were hired by many apartment and condo management companies to rip out the cord boards and secretarial answering equipment. I sure wish that I had held onto some of that stuff.

Correction, it is a 755A PBX. 4 trunks, 20 stations.

I have finally found what I need for my home! To heck with 1A2 lunchbox. THAT is what people should start demanding from their phone companies!

Joe

When I worked for GTE we had some oddball accounts. One of them was at (one of) the home(s) of Adnan Kashoggi the (in)famous Saudi Arabian arms dealer (implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal).

Mr. Kashoggi had a LARGE duplex apartment in Manhattan that he was only at occasionally. It was fully staffed - butlers, maids, chauffeurs, and a switchboard operator.

He had a GTD-60 (with a console!) there that we maintained.

Sam

Arthur I tought it was a 755 but it's been so long since I've seen one I forgot what they looked like. By the way just before I left Los Angeles I worked on an old wooden cordless board, tried to make a deal with owner to remove it when ever; but some Salesman got it. Oh well.

Ed,

I am in complete awe. It must have been mindblowing when you got to the customer's home and saw this.

Again it is a reminder of what our country was once capable of from a manufacturing perspective. I'll bet this thing could keep running for another 60+ years without skipping a beat.

Lou

Ed, I hope you left your business card by the equipment in case it goes into their estate when they pass on.

Just out of curiosity, are those plug-in relays or are they directly soldered in place?

Joe

Joe, everything appeared to be soldered but I didn't explore it too much on the back side.

Joe -

As I recall, everything was either soldered or wirewrapped.

Sam

Wow, the craftsmanship of that thing is amazing. I doubt that even if someone was willing to pay what something like that would be worth, that it could not be done anymore (outside of collectors and enthusiasts, of course).

I wish that we as a nation/society could manufacture things of that nature again.

Joe

Any of you that remember the USS New Jersey that blew a Turret up in the '80's(?)? You know why they replaced the turret with a missile emplacement? The U.S. can no longer make the Ring Gear that allowed the turret to turn! The old one was damaged beyond repair. It was poured as 1 piece of Steel and then final-machined on some sort of lathe. I've never seen a Missouri-Class battleship up close, but I'd guess that turret is bigger than a small house. Making that gear 40(?) feet in diameter! Heck, the place they made those ring gears is a housing development now, I'm told.

Joe -

When I worked Transmission (during the dot-comm era) every T-3 Mux had to be wirewrapped. That's two 28 pair 22 AWG cables. We did nice work with it, if I do say so myself.

As far as soldering - that's one of the classes I teach at the IBEW apprentice school - because no one knows how to do it anymore. It's just a damn shame.

As far as the loss of manufacturing.....Don't get me started. I'm sick over it. I had hoped that maybe the earthquakes in China and the tsunamis in Japan might convince some our corporations to move some of the manufacturing back home, but apparently not.

Sam

That system must consume quite a bit of electricity. Did the owner work for the Bell System :confused:

More to the point, did he/she work for the serving power company!

They use very little power when idle, unlike modern systems, which are always "on."

Exactly, Arthur. This machine was powered by a fairly small power supply that was similar to one that would power a typical 1A2 system. When idle, as in no calls in progress, there really isn't any power consumption to speak of with such system architecture.

Hi Sam

Soldering is one thing that I can do really well. When I was a kid, I cut my teeth on heathkit, then when I was in my 30's, I hand built AM bcb receivers with point to point soldered connections, using NOS IF coils and vacuum tubes. When the IF coils became unobtainable, I spent way too much money on an old NOS coil winder by some cash register company (forget the name), had to improve it by having a machinist install bearings and make me a truly straight winding shaft, and made hand wound IF coils on lucite dowel stock. I lost interest when I could no longer buy the nitrocellulose lacqure candyapple paint for the chassis, and the tubes became a small investment unto themselves. (I used "G" style tubes.)

Now as far as wirewrapping, I am terrible at that. I have had nobody to teach me the correct methods of making a decent wire wrap connection.

Joe

Joe -

One (of the many) old timers I worked with was a WWII vet named Joe Seidel. He had been a foreman for NY Tel and was extremely knowledgeable.

On one job we had to solder some connections (GTE specs for signal wiring in the power frame called for them to be wire wrapped AND THEN soldered!).

Joe confessed that he never soldered anything at home because his wife would always mock his abilities and take the iron away from him.

She had worked during the war assembling radios for the military and was so good at it that he never even bothered trying anymore - he just gave her the job and let her do it.

Sam

Hi Sam,

The all time best soldering (point to point) that I have ever seen was in a Collins R-390 receiver. That is (in my opinion) the mother of all tube receivers, and possibly of ALL receivers, both solid state and hollow state. I would give my eye-tooth to have one of those! Alas, a beat up old unit that needs to have its gears cleaned and lubed will run in the thousands. They were a monster to service, but when they were aligned, nothing could beat them.

Joe

Joe, personally I think wire wrap is easier than soldering and was easier to learn. Went to Radio Shack and bought a wrap/unwrap set and the right size wire and went to work. Of course it was nice that there were factory wraps right next to me as examples. Fortunately, I suspect, I never had so many wraps to do that I even considered an electric or air powered tool. I probably would have screwed up the job big time!

Sam,

Don't know if you ever got to see the Frame we put in for Merill Lynch at World Financial Center but this was in the D building where they had a ESS5 as their PBX. The frame was made up of 89B Blocks, each block was 100 pair with Wire wraps on the back and a punch down on the front for x-connects. All the riser house count for the entire building came to it so it was 10's of thousands of pairs feeding the 42 story building and also has a very large pair count feeding the B building as well.

Joe - I saw it, and it was beautiful work. Huge!

Lenox Hill Hospital, the GTD-4600's frame was all (as per GTE spec) wire wrap. We used the old fashioned Bakelite blocks and they worked beautifully. Later on at the Bank of NY we used some more modern looking Telzon wire wrap blocks, but I'll be honest, I thought the Bakelite was just fine.

I think GTEs engineers said that wire wrap was 99.99% as good as solder, with a lot less accidents from being burned, so they switched to it for all CO MDFs. They also spec'd that the connect wire had to be one size larger then the house/switch cables. (The house & switch cables were 24 gauge while all the cross connects had to be 22.

Sam

Dear Ed, If they decide to replace the 755 crossbar unit, don't trash it. It may sell on e-bay for a considerable sum. I have one working in my collection, as do a handful of other switch collectors. See The website 'telephonecollectors.org', and the announcement of the antique telephone show in Lancaster, PA the weekend of June 11th. I am also looking for electro-mechanical systems I already don't have.

Chris Mattingly

Sam, I think I already mentioned it, but the main switchroom at UT still uses wire wrap frames...
The building itself is from 1932, there is abandoned original wire throughout the steam tunnels, but the actual wiring used now is probably 30-40 years old.

Yesterday, I had a rare flash of insight as I was working on my 555 board (I decided to go the 555 rout with it rather than the 556, as I doubt that I would ever be fortunate enough to come into possession of a 750A PBX). I went and had a can of grey enamel color matched to the frame, and have been touching up the rusty areas. I remounted the first piece on it in its reconstruction (the iron part that holds the work surface). I have also cleaned and re-darkened the bakelite buzzer/battery and shaft through buzzer covers with black shoepolish, and cleaned/chemicaly plated the little metal doo-dads that connect them to the frame.

Anyway, I thought to myself, "SELF!"... wouldn't it be nice if things could be made like this again... no solid state anything (well, excepting the thermistors), when people had to operate them, thus there would be a human element to the phone service, etc and etc. Well, then my intellectual side told me that with computers, fiber optics, the internet, more computers, that everything is much faster, more efficient, less labor costly, and in all ways better.

Then, it dawned on me. (here is the beer induced insight) In a society that is at the technological stage where people are needed for the technosphere to function, (such as in the communication business say from the dawn of telegraphy to the end of operator assisted calls), that the people who operated the system are valued. They are needed to make the system work, as well as to consume what the system offers. However, when the automation (in this communications case, computers, internet, packet, etc) takes over the need for people, then people are no longer valued, and exist only in the eyes of the "machine" to consume what the system produces.

In the days of old, the "phone man" was a respected craftsman who worked half a day on one install that would (as in this original post example) work for 60 years without a glitch. He made a decent wage, was able to take care of his family, and they lived the American dream. Sure, the phone system was a monopoly, there were few choices of phones, and long distance subsidized the locals. But it worked. It was built to withstand a nuclear attack. If you needed help, the operator was a "0" dial away.

Look at the "progress" that we made. One low yeild high altitude nuclear blast over central KS would destroy the entire communication system of the nation. No computers, no internet, no MP3 or iTunes, nothing! And it would not even take a nuke. One badly timed Xplus solar flare would do the same thing.

I am just saying that in our rush to make the next software upgrade in our lives, that it would be nice to know that somewhere, someone who actually wore a headset (in this country, not Bangaloor) would answer you when you were too tired to dial or didn't know the number to connect you to who you wanted to talk with.

Wouldn't that be nice? Oh well, one must wake up from their dream I suppose, now I got to finish this frame!

Joe

Chris:

Rest assured, I'm locked and loaded to pick this thing up from the owners when/if they are willing to part with it. The problem is that they love the antiquity of it and don't even want to discuss this at this point since the house is also in nearly-original 1951 decor. Sometimes, it is better to leave things untouched to preserve the value. I can assure you that even the carpets in this house are likely original. If I'm able to get my hands on this thing, I'll surely save it from the salvage yard and add it to my own personal collection.

I am surprised they can still get rotary service from the phone company. Is there a DTMF convertor on site somewhere? Would FIOS work with this system?

As a test, I switched the AT&T 962 telephone in our kitchen from tone to pulse and the Tellabs converter box used for FiOS service had no problems with it.

The customer bit the hook for FIOS and it didn't work. My assumption is that a true mechanical PBX that relies upon precise trunk voltages and supervision didn't like that silly 32 volt stuff.

They broke things in the process of trying to install it, hence the reason that I was there at all.

This customer came via a referral from Verizon in their desperate attempt to get things put back to the way they were before the FIOS thugs showed up.

I thought the Tellabs and Alcatel/Lucent ONT's provided a true 48 volt loop-start line.

But, I have yet to get my mitts on a technical manual for any of these units...

Does anybody feel like measuring the loop voltage and current on their FiOS ONT provided line? The results would be very interesting [this same subject keeps coming up on other forums as well].

Jim
**************************************************
Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

The Tellabs unit in the basement puts out 48.65V [idle] and has not presented any problems for my Partner ACS (yes....I know that the Partner is a different animal). I'll try to measure the current as time allows.

some clairifcation please: you say this was a 750 PBX with 20 stations. Does that mean there was no KSU but a switchboard instead? Are the multiline 3xx style phones designed for 1A2 or do they take 1A or 1A1? Do the ones with the lucite buttons light up light the ones on the 256x do? Does it have A leads etc.? thanks

I will offer some info, not to step on Ed's thread. I'm sure he'll weigh in with some good info and correct me if my memory is faulty.

The 750 PBX is a small (3 by 20) crossbar exchange that has relays to operate the stations. There is no separate KSU.

The stations are not wired like standard 1A or 1A1 sets. They have very skinny mounting cords, and use a control lead per button, and can have a button for 3 CO lines and 2 intercom lines. The originals had no lamps, and visual indicators were mounted on the wall or the desk near the phones, so that users could see what lines were ringing or in use.

The 6-button sets used were the 462 (no lamps) and the 466 (with lamps.)

Arthur, you never fail to impress me with your knowledge.

Sam

Thanks, but one unanswered question, is this a 1A or 1A1 or do these terms even apply to this set-up?

Here's how I answered the question:

So, the answers are "NO" "NO" and "NO."

Every time that I re-read this post, I start to drool.

To paraphrase my two year old nephew, I WANNA!

Best,

Joe

Reply to Arthur: THANKS, THANKS, THANKS. Here is one more question: Was the installation pictured typical for this style phone or not typical? OK, second question: what kind of phone was typically in a 1A or 1A1 set-up?

You can upgrade the sets to 566 types, from the 444's. I have all the BSP's for the system, if you need to see them.