Fitting RotaTone

Decided that I would fit the RotaTone module that I bought the other day for my rotary telephone.

It is a small module that converts the phone from pulse to DTMF, as my PABX does not do pulse it is useless and I have to resort to using a normal touch tone phone to dial.

To start with I had to dismantle the phone, the BT 746 has a nice single screw which is spring loaded on the back. You undo this and it pops out but is still attached to the casing.

Now you push down the handset cradle and the top of the dial and the top slides off.

I then undid all of the parts such as the handset and cable to the phone, these are all spade connectors inside the phone so are easy to remove.
The dial is held in place with a screw on the chassis. Once removed I could undo the small screws on the bottom of the dial which connect the cable to the main phone, these were replaced with the once to the RotaTone.

Now removed the main circuit board and soldered the link wire onto the back.
Added the components that came with the RotaTone and adjusted the links on the connectors.

Re-assembled the phone and attached the RotaTone module to the circuit board.
Tested it and its works great.

Put the top back on, there is a great little engineering bit inside the phone which is a small metal catch that holds the cradle down while you put the case back on.
You then just tap the receiver and it pops back as normal.

Now I can dispose of the nasty push button phone and use my nice new retro phone to dial the BBS.

Not really been able to do much this week but got the new keyboard for my old laptop through from ebay so spent a few minutes swapping the old one out and getting the machine running.

Firstly removed the old keyboard, its luckily only held in with three spring loaded clips at the top so had it removed in a few seconds.

The new keyboard.

Attaching keyboard ribbon cable.

Completed machine.

Testing the keys all work in Notepad.

Should be getting the Acorn machines wired up tomorrow and Tuesday ready for RONWUG (Risc OS North West User Group) on Wednesday where we are trying out some of the old and new games for the Acorn platform.