Re: Distros specifically designed for children

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-05-30, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
 

On 5/30/25 1:39 AM, rbowman wrote:
 

GE sent a friend and I to the fair, trying to groom potential engineers in
promising high school students. GE isn't what it was then, and one of the
few things that did happen was touch tone dialing. Kennedy opened the fair
with a TT phone and there was a booth where you could see how much faster
it was than a rotary dial. Of course Ma Bell owned the whole shebang.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4zjEwqdJQ

 
I remember seeing an exhibit like that somewhere at about the same time.
 

   "Touch-tone" WAS do-able ...

 
But you had to pay for it.  A friend and I hacked relays into our modems'
phone connection, activated by the DTR line.  A suitable driver enabled
us to pulse dial at whatever speed we wanted.  Maybe it was just the COs
updating their equipment for Touch-Tone, but we found that we could pulse
dial at 20 pps.  It was almost as fast as Touch-Tone.

At first you did have to "pay for the privlidge".  But at some point
(at least with my local CO) I discovered touch tone worked even though
there was no bill line item paying for the privlidge.

So I used touch tone from then on, without ever having paid for
something that made the phone companies job easier.