hello guys, so for a video a clip a needed some retro/obsolete things from my grand ma and grand pa !
i am now the owner of 2 old phones and 2 minitel
(it’s a french invention, it was internet using the same plug as the phones, a the scale of france just some years before the internet we all use, it became obsolete very quickly but at one point in france everybody owned one, they were free if I remeber well what i eared, the point wat that people were paying at the minute to use it )
i’m probably about to transform minitels into oscilloscope. but it’s sad because they work. i wonder if you guys have things about “minitel”
i’d also like to make work my 2 phones together but i can’t find anything about how that kind of phone works
I remember Minitel all right. It was favourably compared to its nearest British equivalent, Prestel, for a variety of reasons including its near-universal adoption and the fact you could get the terminal free with your landline. It provided directory information free of charge, but there were many premium services. And yes, you can hack them easily.
Can’t help you with your “old phones” without more details. Landline or mobile? The more detail you give (brand and model name in particular) the more help we can give.
The Minitel comprises two distinct PCB: the “head”, a green PCB with all its (little) intelligence and functionalities, and a yellowish PCB, that drives the screen. If you remove the green PCB, the Minitel will work as a screen with a Peritel/SCART input, no other tweak needed ! If you want a composite input, you can add a little circuit, shown here: Adaptation d'un minitel en moniteur TV
That’s really simple, too! If you just want to talk through it, you just have to put them in series with a 12V supply. In you want to be able to ring them or to decode the dialed number, it’s a little harder, put still doable.
I remember in the '90s there was a telephone switch in some electronic magazine, where you could plug up to 9 impulse telephones (no DTMF) and dial from one to another with a one digit number…
But I don’t remember which magazine, it may even have been a french one…
Should be quite simple to make with an Arduino or the like to decode the impulse stream and some relays…
So I guess @essan you’ll have to learn french
These Radio Plans magazines are what I remembered (it’s from '86 not the '90s…), and, good news, they are available for download here :
