• Why do my rotary phones not ring?

    From smoserx1@gmail.com@21:1/5 to george on Wed Dec 5 06:05:08 2018
    On Wednesday, October 30, 2002 at 2:52:57 AM UTC-5, george wrote:
    I have two old rotary phones that I purchased because I wanted that nice distinctive ring.
    But they don't. They work fine. Even nice that teh telco still accepts pulse dialing... but they don't ring. I've tried multiple lines at
    multiple places. NO RING.
    This morning I stopped at a thrift store and bought a touchtone with real bells. It rings. So why don't the rotaries?

    George this is a little late but many of the old rotary phones were set to ring on party lines. If you have a 500 rotary look at the connections to the network block inside the phone. On the back side of the network there should be 5 connectors labeled
    L2, G, L1, K, and A, respectively. The older ringers had 4 wires, red, black, gray and red/gray. The newer ringers had 2 wires, red and black. The other two were for the capacitor inside the network. The 2 wire ringers simply have the capacitor built
    into the ringer itself. Anyway, if the black wire from the ringer is connected to the G terminal of the network the ringer is set for party line operation and will not work in today's private lines. Move the black ringer wire from the G terminal to the
    L1 terminal and the ringer should operate. Back in the old days before the modular connections the technician could make a party line phone operate on a private line simply by wiring the green and yellow wires together at the connecting block on the
    wall. Electrically it is the same as moving the black ringer wire from G to L1. Give it a try.

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