What was generating THE DIAL TONE on Pelia’s vintage phones? Seeking absurd explanations

[u/jindofox]

On ancient earth, in traditional landline systems, the dial tone is generated by the central office or PBX as a specific combination of frequencies. For example, in North America, it's a combination of 350 Hz and 440 Hz. What made Pelia’s phones sound like that?

[u/themastermatt]

She was shown wiring them all into some kind of clear central box on the bridge. I assume it contained an old Intel or AMD gaming computer with a multiport faxmodem card and was running FreePBX.

[u/jindofox → u/themastermatt]

LOL that's actually somewhat plausible, not absurd at all. I'll have to watch it again because I missed it the first time. The Atari 2600 cameo was fun, too.

[u/carymb → u/jindofox]

... But what starship game do we think she used to play with that Atari? :-P

[u/Shejidan → u/carymb]

Space invaders

[u/jindofox → u/carymb]

All of them!She’s like a thousand years old.

And by the Nineties, there was time for Klax.

[u/sf-keto → u/jindofox]

5,000 years old, I think, according to canon.

[u/Suckamanhwewhuuut → u/sf-keto]

You dont live to be 5,000 by getting shot a lot.

[u/sf-keto → u/Suckamanhwewhuuut]

It was hilarious how she said that.

[u/texanhick20 → u/carymb]

Galaxy Quest, obviously.

[u/Colmado_Bacano → u/carymb]

Galaga

[u/amglasgow → u/Colmado_Bacano]

"That man is playing Galaga. Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did."

[u/PawsButton → u/carymb]

Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator, naturally

[u/jindofox → u/PawsButton]

I’ll never forgive ENTER Magazine for this savage review of a home version. The little overlay for the Atari joystick to explain the controls was brilliant.

[u/carymb → u/PawsButton]

Omg, now I need an Atari 2600 X-P

[u/sf-keto → u/themastermatt]

We saw her pull the gaming console out of the trunk….I don’t c recall seeing a fax machine but…. It was a big trunk!

[u/BananaRepublic_BR]

I will never not laugh at Star Trek characters calling the 20th century ancient.

[u/Chesh531 → u/BananaRepublic_BR]

My nephew calls the 20th century ancient

[u/BananaRepublic_BR → u/Chesh531]

I saw a video from the NBA recently. Some of these damn rookies were calling anyone born before 2000 an "unc". My nephew calls me "unc" and I'm 29!

They aren't wrong, but at least humor me a little. xD

[u/foolishle → u/BananaRepublic_BR]

I saw someone refer to “the late 1900s” recently and immediately crumbled into dust

[u/briank3387]

Ortegas's "personal massager"

[u/S3simulation → u/briank3387]

I love how tickled Ortegas was by all of it

[u/skredditt → u/briank3387]

Still have those in the future!

[u/WoodyManic]

A wizard did it.

[u/Wild-subnet]

Space magic!

[u/Sosumi_rogue]

Who else wanted the old modem screeching with the: You've Got Mail message. LMAO

[u/Grease2310]

A race of highly evolved sound wave based entities that Enterprise has yet to discover has been parasitically living aboard enterprise

[u/thetiberiuskhan]

That tone came from the candle passed down to Pelia from all the women in her family before her. It doubles as a personal massager.

[u/MBSMD]

Clearly she had a portable control system handy.

[u/JohnSmallBerries]

That was feedback from the big thick cable of intertwined, uninsulated copper being forced to serve as the two-conductor connection normally associated with an RJ-11 jack.

[u/ticonderoge]

you can run a small telephone system like the one shown just off the GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi or something like that, it's a logical thing to store in the same box as the handsets.

the real question is, how frequently has she been replacing the electrolytic capacitors in that old tech, or did she just pull them out and go full solid-state around our time now?

[u/BobRoonee]

Bell Atlantic called. it was the ghost of James Earl Jones looking to save them up to 25% on long distance calling.

[u/GreatBarrier86 → u/BobRoonee]

NYNEX.

[u/jindofox → u/BobRoonee]

It’s a bit of a shame we never got JEJ in Trek. We got Brock Peters though.

[u/MightyMusgrave]

It's kinda like when you do a rush job hooking up a car stereo, and you can hear the engine whine and turn signals through the speakers, except the engine is a warp core.

[u/BarfQueen]

They played a 45 of Jim Croce’s “Operator” backwards really slowly. 

[u/Magnospider]

It was the massaging properties.

[u/Commodore8750]

Dial 9, Merlin

[u/berdiesan]

I don't have landline service on my house, but I have a plug-in box that routes my cellphone signal to my landline phone, which is plugged into the box. I get a dial tone and the phone rings just as if it was hooked up via the phone company.

[u/sup3rs0n1c2110]

Well /obviously/ it’s because Pelia is such a nerd and stickler on historical accuracy that she programmed the Enterprise computer with the ability to generate a dial tone in the event something like this happened.

Alternatively, Una’s Illyrian immune system generated a resonance in her handset, Spock having Vulcan telepathic abilities generates a low-level frequency that can be picked up by analog communication systems, the EPS grid induced a signal in the wires, the quantum probability field left one little trace of music in the form of a latent frequency in the computer system, or Q Junior decided to have fun in such a subtle way that nobody would ever find out.

[u/Arodri51]

The Red Angel