[Telecom] RFD-TV, the Skokie Swift, and Don Imus

Several months ago, I posted a message on this digest about RFD-TV, a non-broadcast cable/satellite video network that claims to be "Rural America's Most Important Network." My post mentioned an upcoming program in the "Trains and Locomotives" series about the Skokie Swift. The subsequent thread is at

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RFD-TV and Comcast have concluded a carriage deal that will bring RFD-TV to several larger cities, including Philadelphia.
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So, Lisa: watch for an announcement about RFD-TV coming to a TV set near you!

FWIW (and I dont think it's worth much), you'll also get to watch the reincarnated Don Imus show.

Neal McLain

Reply to
Neal McLain
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Thanks for the heads-up.

I used enjoy Imus about 20 years ago when he was on WNBC-AM. He was a disc jockey back then, playing good music, as well as having radio comedy skits that were very funny. When WNBC shut down, he went to WFAN and it was a completely different show. (A lot more commercials, for one thing.)

WNBC-AM was a great station. It had a good choice of music and fun to listen to, but not over the top like some AM stations. I don't understand why it was shut down; it had something to do with licensing and outlets problems that arose after GE bought RCA, the parent company. Apparently what RCA was allowed to do GE could not; made no sense to me. In Philadelphia, another odd change was two TV stations swapping networks; KYW-3 switched from NBC to CBS, and WCAU-10 switched from CBS to NBC. Why that I don't know either. After so many years I still have trouble remembering that 10 is now NBC and 3 is now CBS.

Telecom reference: They did a special on the early years of Saturday Night Live, and showed numerous scenes of the SNL working offices. Prominent all over the place were black rotary keysets; it seemed they had more phones that desks. I've heard people in the entertainment business use the phone a lot. I think this was around 1975, by then I'd figure a large TV network would want to be modern and have Touch Tone, but no. (Or But NOOOOOOOOOO, as Belushi would say.) I wonder if they were served by a Centrex or plain PBX.

(In thinking about this, I don't think telephones were very promient in "Animal House"; maybe one pay phone scene.)

Reply to
hancock4

One character uses a Princess phone to set up geting a Delta beaten up. The scene you might be thinking of is another Delta calling his girlfriend, complete with the vintage 420x40 ringback tone so prevalent on panel and #1XB and probably my most very favorite telecom sound of them all.

Reply to
Curtis R Anderson

A few years ago I had to call Brooklyn, NY. I thought everything was ESS by that point, but the phone rang with the oldstyle ringing signal that you describe. It was kind of a grrrrrrrrrrr-ahhhhhhhhhh sound, not silent between ringing. When I first used a dial PBX and phones on an SxS office, I was shocked at the horrid irritating ringing signal. When the #5 XBARs came out, we noticed they were silent between rings as of course was ESS.

We also noticed the later versions of ESS that didn't make the chunka- clunk sounds when call-waiting was activated.

Reply to
hancock4

I knew this phone phreak-type guy from New York who somewhat reminded me of "Joybubbles". I called him one night in late 1991, and with his three-way calling, gave me the grand tour of curious NY telecom sounds, including, perhaps, that same switch you describe. The one he let me hear was an old Ericcson crossbar.

I remember the "click-beep-click" of #1AESS signaling the call waiting. The other caller got to hear a few clicks as well.

Reply to
Curtis R Anderson

Some people have some great collections of telephone sounds, including the sounds of various signaling tones, announcements, and sounds of different central offices (especially step). For example, there's a nice collection at

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.

Harold

Reply to
harold

That's because the #1ESS was a computer controlled mechanical switch. The #5ESS is s truly digital switch.

Now of course I hear the little FSK burst as the Caller-ID Call Waiting comes through.

What's interesting is that Bell pretty much had CLID perfected by 1970-

1972. It took several years to get the FCC and the local regulatory bodies on board.
Reply to
T

Maybe it was a DID PBX. In that case you would hear the customer's ring tone.

Like digital instead of analog.

Reply to
Sam Spade

Space division instead of time division. -)

But, the 1ESS and especially the 1AESS were a major advancement. And, even though those two still had mechanical switching matrixes, they were almost silent when in the C.O. compared to a No 5 XBAR.

How did they do that without out-of-band intelligent signalling, such as SS7?

In the early 70s it was all still in band, mostly MF, and some DP. No smarts there at all.

Reply to
Sam Spade

Caller ID in 1970? I'm not sure about that. To have caller ID you need Automatic Number Identification (ANI) which still was far from universal in 1970. A great many people, including us in businesses with Centrex downtown, still had ONI. That meant when you dialed a station long distance call, a Bell operator would ask you for your phone number. She would key it into the AMA. (What a lousy job, keying in all day long). Note that message registers did not store a number, rather they had a line wire that was energized by the switch when a call was answered which incremented the counter. ANI got particularly tricky with 2 and 4 party lines, which were still numerous in 1970.

They could hang on an ANI to SxS but it was cumbersome and costly, and desirable only if the exchange initiated many toll calls.

Even the modern #4ESS Toll switcher had provision for ONI input if needed or ANI failed for whatever reason.

The second requirement for CLID is to pass it from one exchange to another. That capability did not exist into the network was upgraded with a more modern inter-exchange trunking protocol ("SS7" I think). Remember in the early days of CLID service many numbers would come up as 'unknown'.

Reply to
hancock4

The book I saw it in didn't delve into the technical side, just that they'd managed to get it to work with the #1ESS platform.

Reply to
T

I'm aware of ONI. But here in RI there aren't many party lines, and they did upgrade ther steppers to do ANI. I know this because there was a trick you could use, if you flashed the hook at the third click it would scramble the ANI info and pass to an operator for ONI.

CCIS is trhe precursor to SS7 and has been around since the 70's. Bell took it's time converting everything over and even at divestiture work still needed to be done. Now I don't think there are any mechanical switches left in the U.S., they're all either stored program mechanicals, or digital switches.

As to the Unknown on CLID, I still get those occasionally, mostly from cell carriers.

Reply to
T

When you said 1970 I thought you meant caller ID on #5 crossbar.

Doing it on ESS was easy. ESS was new and designed with ANI. Since everything about a call was stored in computer memory (as opposed to being stored on relays), it was easily accessed by the control program. Electro-mechanical switches had "Rube Goldberg" polarity reverals and the like to do various functions.

There WERE some advanced functions developed for #5 Crossbar (call waiting, I think). However, they found the revenue gained did not justify the cost of hardware to implement and it was not expanded. I don't know if any real customers in the prototype switch had use of the service.

Reply to
hancock4

Actually the #5Xbar was quite a platform, it was a third generation common control switch, following #1Xbar and Panel.

Granted, it used relays to simulate logic circuits but it did quite well. It's just that the crossbar by nature is a blocking architecture and crossbar was critical to Direct Distance Dialing.

Step offices got full ANI too as I said in a prior post, but they'd route all their LD traffic to either a #5 tandem, or a #4 toll machine.

Reply to
T

Please explain what "blocking architecture" means.

I didn't know there was a "#5 tandem". What company made it? Where were they deployed?

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne

It seemed that every Bell System article about switching extolled yet another virtue of the #5 crossbar, ignoring the fact that there was a #1 crossbar.

I never could understand the differences between #1 and #5 crossbar, though obviously the #5 represented a big improvement. I don't know how many #1 crossbars were implemented in service. Apparently they continued to implement Panel even after #1 came out (I forgot the last Panel dates, but apparently extensions to existing switches went on pretty late.)

Reply to
hancock4

The #5 tandem was nothing but a #5 Crossbar that would server as both a Class 5 office and then as a higher class tandem for steppers in it's areas.

As to blocking architecture, because a mechanical switch has hard limits it could potentially block call attempts.

Reply to
T

The key differences between #1 and #5 Crossbar switches were that common control was a lot more advanced on the #5Xbar. There were more classes of service on that switch too.

The crossbar units on the #1Xbar were big and bulky. They were scaled down quite a bit for the #5Xbar.

And the upgrade for the #1ESS was the #1AESS which reduced the total amount of floorspace necessary for the switch frames as well as add features.

Reply to
T

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