sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Payphones

Jeff, there are no extensions on 1A2. A separate line key can be set up for intercom, but certainly not on a pay phone.

Shows how much I know :p

Ed, couldn't he use a 6050(?) keystrip. John C. (Not Garand)

John -

I guess he could set up a 6040/6050 keystrip (with a 6B relay or Melco A lead adapter). If so it might just be the first ever.

Jeff -

You could probably set up the payphone to pick up one of the CO lines and have it light the indicator lamp on the 1A2 system when it went off hook.

Ed -

Why couldn't you pick up the intercom on the payphone? (with an external signal, of course)

Sam

First ever? I like the sound of that.

What is a 6050 Keystrip?

Also, Ed gave me a potential source for the A lead adapters... I thought it was in my PM box, but it seems to have gone AWOL. Can anyone point me to a source? Ed - if you could resend or post here the place you had sent previously, I'd greatly appreciate it. I need 2, one for each CO line.

Also, not that it matters or has anything to do with anything... but I gotta say the guts of a payphone are very impressive. I'm sure I'm not using 99.9% of it, but still... always wondered what was in there.

Maybe one question: Would AT&T provision a payphone line for residential use? I'd never actually do it, just curious. I'm guessing they wouldn't care where the phone is located. Might be fun to call cust. service and ask for it though... I'm sure they don't get that type of request very often.

Oh yeah - one more question -

What's to keep any disgruntled ex telco emplyee from stealing the coinboxes out of any payphone he/she drives by? It would be stupid, I know, to risk prosecution for what... maybe $5 in quarters, but was just curious about this.

Thanks...!
Matt

Matt, a 6040/6050 is an external key strip. It is basically a standard key strip from a 6/10 button set in a plastic enclosure. Basically a 2564/2830 without the phone. The source for A-Lead adapters is Mike Sandman ( www.sandman.com ).

In general, of the telcos that still provide pay phones, they do a traffic study and won't install one if they don't see it generating at least $250.00 per month is coin revenue. That's hard to do these days.

As for stealing coin boxes, every phone has a unique key for the coin box compartment. The upper keys are the same. The keys for a particular route are kept together and carefully guarded, so it's not like someone with a single key can get into any coin box. Besides, you would probably stand a better chance of robbing a bank than stealing a coin box.

Keystrip: Imagine a 2565 row of buttons freestanding in a little box. T & R and A & A1 come from phone. (Or an A-lead relay operated by current flow in T & R.) And there is a place to plug in your AMP connector that comes from the MDF.
Used to be the telco would put a Payphone anywhere. They'd do a preliminary survey and estimate the income. If it wasn't going to be enough, then you had to "front" some amount monthly. And they would pay a cut if the phone did a lot of business. And I always wondered how they determined that they were making enough that you could get a cut. It wasn't like they gave you a ledger sheet each month.
Matt, you have to remember that a job with the phone co. used to be a very prestigious position. And honesty used to be a lot more important. And they had a pretty good idea what kind of income a location would generate, if it didn't happen, they had ways to figure out who and when. Think about it. First, you actually 'load' the cashbox, with marked coins. Then...........
Finally, and not in any particular order, you may have hookswitch contacts in the phone you can 'liberate' to control the "A" lead.
John C. (Not Garand)

Thanks Ed -

I guess my phone must not have the locks that would be on a standard public phone, I remember seeing some of them for sale that had a different lockset. On mine, the T key opens the coin vault as well as the upper, so I was like.. umm... this doesn't seem good from a security perspective.

Thanks for the answers.

- Matt

When we had to do a coin box collection the coin box key was sent to us from security and you had to sign for it in blood. We only had to do this when the box was full and the regular collector wasn't going to make it. Security also used to "salt" the pay phones to see if you were honest.

Sorry lightning, didn't see you response - I may be inquiring more about the liberation, I sent an email to the sandman and he doesn't have any a lead adapters, but does have a "High Sensitivity Loop Sensing Relay" that appears to acheive the same goal.

More fun things to play with.

Thanks for all the comments on the old pay phone collection stories Bill & Ed - I know of only 1 pay phone in my area.... I'm sure it will be gone soon.

All you guys are too cool.