[tkmunzwa]

> You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly.

This brings back memories, this is a trick people my age group mastered as teenagers in a 3rd world country. All calls were billed - including local ones, so parents would commonly get lockable cages that would cover the buttons/rotary dial to prevent unauthorised calls in their absence. The cages would leave the receiver accessible even when locked in order to be able to receive calls, so we would use the hook to do pulse tone dialing; dialing a number with many zeroes was always a challenge since it required 10 rapid taps as part of a longer sequence, but I built up muscle memory.

The practice was colloquially named 'tap-dialing' and it was handed down from generation to generation. Sadly it came to an end in the smartphone world.

[dublin]

The old GTE payphones up in Georgetown, Tx (suburb of Austin, now) when I was a kid would let you dial with the switchhook - no coins required. Agreed, zeroes were a pain, but this was partially compensated for by the fact that 5-digit dialing worked for any local number, e.g. 3-1234 got you 863-1234. Interestingly, most VoIP adapters support the pulse dialing of an old phone, but very few have the cojones to actually ring one that has a physical bell rather than an electronic ringer...

[pomatic]

Er, I'm not sure where you got this information from, but I can tell you categorically that ATAs that support pulse dialing are few and far between. Source: I have a vintage phone collection and wish bitterly the reality were different. (I use a Avaya PBX as a bridge to asterisk/IP telephony as a practical alternative)

[Someone]

That’s because the traditional physical bell needs a high voltage (relative to the digital circuits in modern hardware).

https://www.epanorama.net/circuits/telephone_ringer.html:

”The voltage at the subscribers end depends upon loop length and number of ringers attached to the line; it could be between 40 and 150 Volts.”

I think they also (relatively to the hardware in a VoIP adapter) need a large amount of power.

So, to ring that bell, you need to transform your 5V/3V/…, and you need a larger power circuit. That isn’t worth it for the few who still have an old-style telephone.

[kragen]

I think you need the high voltage anyway, even for a fake bell. The power is probably the problem.

[defnotarobot]

I've seen some grandstreams that'll run a ringer.

[therealidiot]

Second this, I've had no trouble ringing an old GPO 746 telephone (and very loudly) with a Grandstream HT802

[C1sc0cat]

It was also an old school way of phreaking and getting free calls in a phone box.