Mid 90's I worked for a company that dealt with 911 systems. We have a bunch of spare parts in the office and one day lost power. The ups on the phone system started beeping after a couple hours so I wheeled one of the spare ups's back to it and plugged the phone ups into it. Then as that ups would run low it had charged the phones ups up to where it would run things long enough for me to swap in another. Kept the system up for several hours that way.

I still have and use a rotary phone in the basement. No power required.

I expect I have enough bits to rig something, but I'm not sure I'd need to. I keep mine charged over 50%, and in a long-lived powercut I'd turn it off to save power. Then I'd only be using the batteries when I needed to make a call, and that wouldn't be often. With voice mail and text messaging people can leave messages for me which I can pick up by, eg, switching the phone on for a few minutes a few times a day.

I have a cig lighter charger for my phone, plus a DC to AC converter, and a full tank of gas in my truck at all times. I also keep a second truck battery fully charged.

Currently I use a standard PSTN or POTS handset VOIP phone connected to a wireless VOIP cable router and DSL modem. These are all powered through a UPS. The UPS should maintain the DSL connectivity for around 5-6 Hrs continously. Internet connectivity can then be accessed using a wireless connection via an Archos hand held media player.




Additional devices such as SW radios, portable digital TVs, Desk lamps etc can be powered using the UPS, again for short periods. A mobile phone can also be powered using a conventional charger.

If the UPS dies then the phone will switch to a conventional PSTN or POTS line automatically.

The next addition will probably be a Network Attached Storage NAS (rather than having the desktop PC switched on) to store all my media such as DVD, MP3s etc as the Archos also make quite a nice media streamer for the main large screen digital TV in the downstairs living room.

A future upgrade for the router may be required also to the Draytek Vigor 2910 or Draytek Vigor 2820Vn with 3G Cellular Data (3G backup) i.e. when the pricing for 3G connectivity becomes more attractive.

For my NYR (New Years Resolution), I vow to stop using pnemonics in my posts so everyone knows what I'm talking about.

My apologies for the all the acronyms. I guess I've been working to long for BT. Oops I did it again. I mean British Telecom. I seem to have caught the disease for which I used to complain about myself.

http://www.btplc.com/Glossary/index.htm - for a simple guide to the acronyms used by British Telecom and these are just the commonly known ones - they have dozens more pages of their own internal acronyms. If fact they have acronyms within acronyms.

you can spell it all out and chances are i still won't know what you are talking about. i am so far behind the power curve in that area...

10-4, 11-98 when you're 10-98 and aren't 10-6 at #10...

As long as you aren't 10-15 at county
Starting to wonder if CA and OK used the same 10 code. According to sick daughter, one arm'd typing isn't and excuse to use 10-code. She just doesn't understand.