POTD: Western Model 500 Rotary Telephone

a picture of a Western Electric 500 Rotary set

Today, out of nostalgia, here is a recently acquired Model 500 telephone taken this past month but acquired in April 2016.

In the fall of 2017, Hurricane Maria made her strong presence leveling out Puerto Rico. My hairdressers parents moved from New Hampshire to Georgia to then move from the state to a territory just about a year before. While their home wasn’t totaled like what was seen in the media, reaching out back to the mainland was difficult, as cellular service was completely knocked off.

Since I had many, and it was asked by her parents for an “old rotary” set, I had some extras. However, I had a few that were actually not working.   After constant swapping, and being a bit slow, I wasn’t able to sell it to her at a discount. So this stayed in the collection.

I ruled out the “network” on the other black colored 500 set, was the culprit. I discuss it here, and a Facebook Live from last fall as well.

I have been talking to long lost family on my paternal side for the first time in literally ever in my life. One of the members I had video chatted on Messenger, remembered this type of set; and her children (or my blood cousins) are not old enough to remember or even understand this antiquated technology. Of course as you know my household from 1987 (remember the world begins when you’re born right? ;)) to 1996, my maternal grandmother’s house (where I also lived till 2010 ) had a green colored wall mount Model 554 which was my first exposure to the technology.

Hence why this site has been running for the most part since 2012. 🙂

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POTD: AT&T/Avaya 26B DXS Module

More of part two than anything else, for the reason that this device came with the CallMaster I got a couple years ago. Despite the size and dimensions and other similarities, they cannot work together AT ALL.

This had not worked until I got a 302B in early 2017. Wether the 302B will work is still uncertain because it came in a sketchy condition when I received it in that same time.

These “lamps” lit up like a tree because I applied power before plugging them into the four wire DCP port.

This module is called the “Direct Extension Selector” or DXS. It also serves as a classic Direct Station Selector or DSS. What makes this module unique, is the Hundreds Selector. The row 20 buttons below the numbered buttons, is almost like pages. So if you have a 4 digit dialing plan, “31” would be the “3100” range, 32 would be “3200” range. (Ironically these were original to the module, 3100s have been the range for my museum wall for a while; actually the button at “31” is actually “2” because the dialing plan in the house is 3 digits, so for the handful of 200s would be labeled “2” If you have a five digit plan, the numbers would be 3 digits. For 52655, that label would have to be “526”.

Early on in the System 75 PBX era, there were only about 8 to 10 buttons, then later models had up to 20 HGS, short for the Hundreds Group Selector, since the port counts went up as the Definity G1 and G2 grew.

Other vendors have similar modules, and even in the Avaya world, since smaller ends are totally separate technologically than the larger PBX. In the ol Nortel world, they had DSS for their 2250 Attendant console, but it only had up to 100 stations. If you wanted to monitor a bunch of sets, there was this LCD screen that was very ahead of it’s time (the idea that is) but it really wasn’t that easy to manage.

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POTD: Avaya CallMaster IV

Today’s Phone of the Day is a retake of the CallMaster IV terminal for the use of Avaya enterprise grade PBX systems. These are not telephones, and they are not attendant consoles and while there is an apparent resembelence of the Call Director, these sets would not be used for “answering centers” since Voice mail had taken many of those roles anyways.

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