LGR - Unboxing a 1982 Answering Machine

It's hard to explain it, but $300 then was not directly equivalent to $900 per the inflation calculator. Maybe a direct inflation calculation, but I remember car stereos being $300 and you worked and got one and you didn't react like you had just spent today's equivalent of $900.

Ralph Fontcuberta

I'm so excited to see more house update videos and hopefully a fully woodgrain room!!

An LGR dial-a-joke would be so awesome! Woz is a huge influence of mine, I've read his book iWoz probably a dozen times, and you better believe it was crammed full of pranks :)

BatteryPoweredBricks

I remember a scene from "Pirates of Silicon Valley" when Woz and Steve were working on what would become the Apple I, the phone rang and this home-made answering machine picked up and played a recording of Woz telling a joke. He had made a joke-a-day call in line. (The fact that Woz liked to play pranks and tell jokes was very oddly a point that movie really hammered in). Anyway, rather than letting the rubber belts just sit behind you and deteriorate as a prop, an LGR "This Day in Retro-Things" call in line could be a semi-legitimate use, maybe a limited time thing for Patrons? Just a thought! Thanks for the video!

Lucas J. Chumley

Hey Clint! :) It isn't specially made for it, but it will also do fax modem up to 14.4 so why not a 300, 1200, 2400, etc. baud modem. :D https://www.verizon.com/home-office-solutions/wireless-home-phone-lvp2/?CMP=afc_m_p_cj_na_ot_2022_99_affiliate-100357191_11365093_oc5A05L8E%2FcFrofF6SHThOo20I6qItB4tfZoyY3ao5Nxb%2BtWtFp%2Fca2jFZDadSoo&cjevent=ea87abd1e1eb11ec80f13dd40a82b82d&vendorid=CJM&AID=11365093&SID=oc5A05L8E/cFrofF6SHThOo20I6qItB4tfZoyY3ao5Nxb+tWtFp/ca2jFZDadSoo&PUBID=100357191&cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww

Daniel Cayea

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. It's specifically made for dial-up/fax? Happen to have any links to the kit?

LGR

Similar but not directly related, Verizon has these cellular home phone kits that will handle analog modem speeds up to 14.4, I've been thinking about getting one and connecting my vintage gear up to it so that I potentially can connect to other retro tuber's and some of my friends with retro gear... would that also fit into your retro communications technology plans? I'm thinking of getting one of these myself but the Duofone from Radio Shack dual cassette version.

Daniel Cayea

The video should have cut to credits as soon as the feedback peaked.

Asaf Sagi

Well the remote and the answering machine both have a sticker on them with 892.5Hz so I suspect they had different frequencies they could be tuned for.

Lennart Sorensen

VOX is derived from "voice-operated exchange". That also reflects that it often regulates not only the activation, but also the _direction_ of audio communication, like it did in the Apollo missions.

Rutger van Bergen

haha i want your recording as my message for my cell. I lol'd. I've been recently working with a lot of phone systems and the way I test for analog phones and fax machines (as well as deploy for clients) is with a Grandstream HT802 ATA and service from voip.ms or flowroute. You can pick up a local number for like $1/month and doing service by minute is very inexpensive for just messing around. The ATA also supports pulse dialing for extra weirdness. I thought about picking up weird analog phones just to connect into VoIP systems, just to be that guy. I appreciate the telecom stuff, keep it coming!

Dale Riley

Neat machine! I found our old dual tape one from when I was a kid on recent trip back to NZ, however it used an endless loop for OGM so not as cool as these early ones with the dual-sided head mechanism. I believe those remotes were "coded" by way of frequency, yours has "892.5" on the bottom (which seems particularly precise for such early tech) Ours used 3 buttons, two were just DTMF keys, but one was actually a single tone to "interrupt" the machine initally. DTMF also had ABCD in addition to the keys on the phone, and the chips could decode / encode any of the 32 single tones available IIRC as well as the 16 dual tones. I do have a couple of special test phones and some very old decoder chipa there so will test next time. 123A 456B 789C *0#D

Anton

I’ve been wanting to make one of these 80’s rooms. Something I’ve been wanting to find for it as an old school cable hot box.

So amazed the belts inside have survived. Fantastic trip back to the days of answering machines. I wish I had old tapes from our answering machines back in the late 80's

Mat Cooper

This is great. Wonderful video topic! Do you have a phone line simulator? We just moved as well and if I find mine I would love to send to you.

Seth C