The 10-button sets were the most fun, because you had tons of room. True, most of the surgery involved adding things like bells, buzzers, flash buttons and speakers, and removing screws from the keystrips for signal buttons, but sometimes you had to field replace a keystrip, tone pad/dial, or a network module. Or in the case of the last Comdials, whole circuit boards.
I still may have some of those items in the corner of my warehouse :-).
Carl Navaro
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For a good time, try adapting a six- button/five-line phone to use the little twist knob up in the left corner of the dial plate for something or another. You know, the little twist knob which (on a two line phone with mechanical hold) would switch between lines when you lifted the plunger on the left side of the switchhook. Many folks had those in their homes for two lines, but they did not realize the twist knob actually had a _third_ position as well: turn it sideways or up and down to select the desired line, but depress it as well (it was spring loaded and only would stay down if you held it). On those phones, where red/green in the cable was line one, and yellow/black was line two, the blue/ white was the third position output. Pressing down on that twist knob was often times used to (a) ring an intercom buzzer manually, or (b) apply ground as needed on a ground-start line.Those little plungers built into the left side of the switchhook had various jobs also. On two line phones with mechanical hold, they were used to short the pair _not_ being used, to keep it on 'hold' while you were talking on the other line. When the little plunger was used as an 'exclusion key', lifting it up would disconnect all the other instruments which were in series behind it. To make that happen you came from the demarc in to that phone _first_, wired it up, _then_ took the wire back out to the demarc and went to the other phones on the line. I also sometimes saw the little twist knob used to feed (or not) the operator headset jack built into the back of the six button phones, and sometimes the little plastic plunger in the switchhook was used to activate a monitoring line to a speaker (or a combination speakerphone/monitoring unit). The switchhooks of course are spring loaded also to make them pop up and down, but the ones used in connection with twist knobs could additionally be pulled up a bit further as needed.
And here is a good project with a two-line twist button phone: Take a little neon bulb, the kind that only flashes when it gets
90 volts of current. Open the two line phone plastic case and mount that neon bulb inside right next to the plastic twist/turn knob. Attach the wires to one of the pairs. Now put the phone back together and dial the number associated. Watch the neon bulb flash in cadence with the ringing signal. If you get really cagey, you can attach the neon in a way that when you are on one line or the other, the _alternate_ line will feed the neon bulb, so that if you get a second call in the midst of it, instead of a loud ring to disturb you, all you will see is that twist knob blinking at you as the _alternate, not currently in use_ line is 'ringing'. Sort of an elegant 'beehive lamp' IMO.I haven't had one of those two-line or five-line phones around for many years. They can be such fun projects to work on, at least the two-line phones. I wish I could find one around somewhere.
Trying to work inside the six-button phone itself was enough to make any sane person go crazy, so you can imagine what it did to me. How in the hell I got all the way to 1999 in my life without my head exploding is beyond me. I was due for it years before it happened when I contemplate some of the phones I messed around with. On the other hand, at the inside terminal block, if you could say to yourself 'line, light, hold' over and over as you counted by threes down the block in there, you had it made. PAT]