Have you ever...

[aimaz@mstdn.social]

@neil I am curious what it means to dial from one exchange to another.

I probably only called local numbers as a kid and dialing other areas when I was older was always just preceding the number with a 4 or 5 digit area code, did it work differently before?

[ceciliabell@mastodon.social]

@neil Yes to all, plus for a summer I actually was a (human) telephone operator. Those overnight shifts were something else.

[ska@social.treehouse.systems]

@neil this is just an age test. No need to be cruel.

[paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange]

@neil

if you said yes to more than two of these, you're overdue to schedule your next colonoscopy...

(which reminds me...)

[jessamyn@glammr.us]

@neil Most I'm not sure what "Dialled from one exchange to another" means specifically, maybe a UK thing?

I did buy this bad boy new in box from my local thrift store last week. I have a Bluetooth dongle in my house so that I can make calls with it. Fake dialtone and everything!

[theonedoc@tech.lgbt]

@neil are you under 46?

[extelec@mstdn.social]

@neil and made free international calls, by a number of methods.

[slaettaratindur@piaille.fr]

@neil "Were you alive 40 years ago?"

[dpnash@c.im]

@gsuberland @neil I’m not sure if there’s a UK vs elsewhere distinction here but: in the US a “phone card” often meant something kind of like a phone company-account specific access card. It was also called a “calling card”. You’d dial a number (with an extra code/digit string to enable “calling card” mode), wait for the phone to make a “ka-BONG” sound, then dial the phone card ID number, and your call would go through and be billed to the account associated with the card. My parents gave me the phone card number for their account when I was in college in the 1990s so I wouldn’t have to worry about phone charges calling them.

[mmiasma@mastodon.sdf.org]

@neil

7 out of 8 boxes ticked. <sigh>

[courtcan@mastodon.social]

@neil I've done all but two (reversed charges & dialed from one exchange to another).

I am an old.

[_hic_haec_hoc@fosstodon.org]

@neil @gsuberland the standard prepaid magnetic cards or the international cards with a secret number to input?

[girlonthenet@mastodon.social]

@neil when I was a teenager, we all used to hang around at a park on a corner by a phone box. Our mums all had the phone number of that phone box so they could ring us and let us know when it was time to come home for tea.

[galacticstone@mastodon.social]

@argv_minus_one @neil Mastodon is a just a seperate interwebs for elder Millennials, Gen-X'ers, and Boomers. Sometimes we let the kids hang out with us because we're cool like that. And oh yeah, rumor has it that John Mastodon is like 68 or something.

[andrewt@mathstodon.xyz]

@neil I've received a call on a pay phone exactly once. It wasn't for me, the box was just ringing so I answered it. The caller asked for Sarah. I said "sorry, nobody carried Sarah lives here" and they rather surprised me by asking "are you sure?"

[neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk]

@TheOneDoc Yes

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@ColinTheMathmo @neil 100% on all of them. I also remember the loud "cuckoo" tone on inbound calls to a payphone (to prevent reverse charge calls being made via the operator), also during late 1980a if you tried some calls on level 1 such as 16 (Dial a disc) and another one (it was some number like 159) you would just hear a loud cuckoo sound from *inside* the phone box and the call would be abruptly cleared down (presumably this is because a metering pulse had come down the line but you hadn't put any money in)

[silvermoon82@wandering.shop]

@girlonthenet @neil
So that really worked, eh? I've only ever seen on TV or movies when calls come in to a phone booth, never in real life.

When I was a kid I was 100% unreachable out of the yard; I'd just end up eating leftovers if I happened to be out late and missed supper.

[wollman@mastodon.social]

@neil I still have the last phone book that was delivered here, maybe 15 years ago now. Probably not much good for anything other than holding up a potted plant.

[jlapoutre@mastodon.online]

@neil Yes I know, I'm feeling old!