2 soup cans and a couple hundred feet of piano wire...........hope I'm not intruding on some market schemes.....

-- Jay Urban (jayho99@aol.com), October 19, 1999

Answers

NO ... but seriously I have purchased two old black rotary telephones [NO BRAND NAMES, PLEASE] from flea markets and junk dealers, just in case the telephone systems foul-up FIRST because of computer problems in processing the "touch-tones". I have hearsay reports of a few instances locally where touch-tone phones were out while rotary dial phones were functional within the same system ... so until the Grid fails utterly, it may not be a bad gamble to liberate those old black phones from the junkbins and carboard boxes at the local fleamarket. Mine were $5 and under. I think this idea must have come from Gary North's newsletter. Credit where due.

-- Roch Steinbach (rochsteinbach@excite.com), October 19, 1999.

Not to mention, the old rotary phones are EMP proof. Like it makes any diff, but they are!

MFU (ex 17 year AT&T survivor)

-- Man From Uncle 1999 (mfu1999@hotmail.com), October 19, 1999.

Valuable point. Taken.

-- emp (emp@emp.emp), October 19, 1999.

There's a switch on my phone for tone/pulse.

-- Sandwich (anon@anon.anon), October 19, 1999.

During Hurricane Hugo, and our extended power outages, we used a rotary phone at work (touch tone phones didn't work at all) --- the rotary phone would not ring with an incoming call,,,,,you had to pick up the phone every so often and see if someone was on the line calling in.......but it was better than nothing....

-- mmmm (mmmm@mmmm.com), October 19, 1999.