[Coco] I'm grilling in January in shorts and no shirt.....

[Arthur Flexser]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Roger Taylor wrote:

> A long time ago I remember dialing phone numbers using pulses from my 
> old 16k CoCo 2.  I can't remember what output signals I used but I'm 
> sure it wasn't safe for the CoCo.  Ofcourse, you can dial phone 
> numbers from any OLD phone that has a manual hook.  Lift it and lower 
> it back real quick for a pulse.  A 0 is 10 pulses, though.  Just like 
> morse code, you just need to put an extra delay in between the pulse sequences.
> 

This brought back a memory from when I was a kid.  A place I spent occasional
time at had a rotary phone with a lock on the dial.  Whenever I needed to use
the phone from there, I'd just dial the number "morse code" style.  (Being
ignorant of this method, they'd neglected to turn the rotary dial partway before
locking it, which would have prevented a dial tone.)  You can still do this type
of dialing with a modern touch-tone phone, since the telephone system still
recognizes pulse dialing.  You have to time the pulses right, though, to
approximate the rate at which a returning rotary dial would generate them.

Art