#oldphoneworks

So, I started off with what phone did I want? It was pretty quick to decide for me, as I wanted a phone with ringing bells, that classic look, and a touch tone pad. I went with a Black Model 2500, refurbished, from OldPhoneWorks. This ended up being expensive, but I wanted to sure it was in good shape. I don't regret this purchase, and think it looks great on my desk!

Well, with the phone situation settled, it was time for the modem. I decided to go for a new in the box U.S. Robotics, to ensure I had working drivers and the correct Power Adapter. It does it's job, and is the sort of look I know Modems for. Though the construction isn't great, since I can lift the top back part of it easily, since it doesn't seem to be held down by snaps, or screws.

I then wanted to get something else to go alongside all of this! If you know anything about the history of Club Penguin, you'll know some of it's earliest music came from an Indie band, known as TAS 1000, named after an answering machine they sampled messages from, and made music around. I got a lucky break and managed to find a unit on eBay, which I was so excited about. Keyword being was, but I'll go into that, later. (Too lazy to get it out of the closet for a fresh pic. Cry about it)

To make this all work I needed a way to connect all of it. No service in my area offers standard POTS Copper lines anymore, so I had to look into a VoIP ATA. After talking with someone in a Preservation Discord, they said they had good experience with a Cisco SPA112 VoIP ATA, saying it worked good for faxing, which is similar to internet via a modem. I bought one brand new, to ensure it was unlocked

With the hardware in-place, it was time to select a VoIP service provider. The best one hands down, price and feature wise, is VoIP_MS. They even have a super helpful Wiki with specific instructions on how to setup the SPA112 I chose, which I found super useful!

It was time to assemble it all, and in theory, all was good! But wait! No it wasn't my first snag with with the damn Modem. It would just not install for some reason, and that was down to me being stupid. I had bought this Serial cable because it was cheap. But I failed to notice the part that says Null Modem. This allows computers to talk to each other, but cannot be used to have a computer talk to a serial modem. D'oh.

OK, no problem, buy a new cable, and all is well! And, it was! ...Until it wasn't. I quickly learned that the SPA112 was not at all good for Dial Up, being super unstable. I was kinda warned of this before I had it in, too, but I bought the SPA112 AFTER that was all sent. So, that was one part of the package I wasted my time on, which bummed me out greatly. Sadly, the problems don't end here. The next problem was that the phone would not ring. It can receive calls and make calls fine, but it just won't ring. It turns out those bells demand a ton of power to work right, and the SPA112 just doesn't send enough juice. To fix this problem, I need a Ring Voltage Booster II, which sadly costs 125$, which is super expensive. I will get one eventually, but the cost of this component, and failures outlined so far has driven me to put this on hold for a long time.

And finally, there was the Answering Machine, the part I was most excited about. It was listed as used but working on the listing, which is partially right, but not entirely. You're supposed to be able to record an outgoing message, but do you see how this button is caved in? Sure, I can press it, but it doesn't do anything, strongly indicating it's broken. I can playback tapes, but what use is that if it can't record the outgoing message?

All of these failures broke me, and just made me depressed, tbh. As a result, this setup has gone more or less unused, with the TAS 1000 going into the closest, and me sometimes only calling my mobile phone with the Model 2500 phone, out of boredom. The modem has gone unused, since I don't trust the flaky connection the SPA112 has with it. What am I going to do from here? Well, down the line, I want to replace the SPA112 with a Obihai OBI302. I've been told this unit is a lot more stable for Fax, so it might be what I need to get for a stable modem experience.

I already mentioned the Ring Voltage booster of course, but in terms of the TAS 1000, if I can find another one, I'll jump on it, but chances are, I'll probably jump on a TAS 3000, since those units seem to be a bit more common, and not as much of a pain to find.