Feel the Nostalgia! Turn Rotary Phone into a VoIP Handset!

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Feel the Nostalgia! Turn Rotary Phone into a VoIP Handset!

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Now normally you wouldn't want to use a corded phone to make VoIP calls and be chained to a 6 foot corded talk distance. That is unless of course you want to feel the nostalgia of the early 1980s (and earlier) by using a rotary corded phone to make VoIP calls. Tyler Brainerd found an old Model 500 rotary phone at Goodwill, which he then turned into a handset for his computer.

He explained, "I am a rather heavy google voice user, and I was thrilled when google implemented calling through gmail, except for one thing. I use a desktop, which has only a token crap webcam, and not a decent microphone at all. Thus, I could rarely make use of a fantastic feature of being able to call without using my phone at all, and simply using a browser window in my regular work flow. I toyed around with using a headset, but it just didn’t do it for me."

The Model 500 rotary phone he modded was just what he needed to feel the nostalgic love. Old tech meets new tech and is reborn! Now he can use the rotary phone as a standard audio and microphone device which will work with any standard VoIP app, including Skype, Google Voice, etc.

It's still a work in progress. He still have to find a way to set up the hookflash button to kill the connection of the speaker and microphone. Currently, he has to deactivate it on the computer manually or unplug it manually.

Now, if he can revive this humongous 1980s cellphone (play video), I'll be really impressed!


Via LifeHacker


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