rmadison@euler.berkeley.edu (Linc Madison) (07/30/90)
I was recently back at my alma mater, Princeton University, and discovered that they have done some strange things with the University's phone system, along somewhat similar lines to the UCSB changeover. The complete details are below for trivia buffs, but to summarize, the University in 1982 installed a cumbersome set of dialing procedures (with some dangerous repercussions) in order to allow the office phones to have a different set of capabilities (all sorts of call forwarding, three-way, billing codes, and other stuff) that the dorms didn't get. Now, they've changed to a new prefix (presumably because 609-452 had other users in segments not used by the University and they needed more capacity) and reintegrated the dorms into the system (although presumably without the fancy capabilities). Why did I say it was dangerous? In order to reach the campus emergency number, you had to dial 121-3333. But they didn't get enough trunks to connect the dorms to the bureaucrats, so "121" frequently busied out. Add to that the fact that they disabled 9-452-xxxx for University extensions, and you have a potential problem. In fact, the only time I called the emergency number, I got a busy on 121. Fortunately, because I and others had seen this problem coming, they had re-enabled 9-452-xxxx. What follows are the gruesome details. Way back when (1981-82): Area Phone number dialing from dialing sequence ---- ------------ ------------ ---------------- Univ. offices 609-452-xxxx Univ. offices 2-xxxx dorms 2-xxxx Student dorms 609-734-xxxx Univ. offices 4-xxxx dorms 4-xxxx Plasma physics lab 609-683-xxxx off's/dorms 125/xxxx ** ** the / indicates separate dial-tone - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Big change #1 (1982-85) Univ. offices 609-452-xxxx Univ. offices xxxx dorms 121/xxxx Student dorms 609-734-xxxx Univ. offices 8/4-xxxx dorms 4-xxxx PPL 609-683-xxxx off's/dorms 125/xxxx - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Now (1990) Univ. offices 609-258-xxxx both 8-xxxx ^^^ Student dorms 609-734-xxxx both 4-xxxx PPL 609-683-xxxx both ??? (125/xxxx?) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The other interesting thing about PPL is that it is physically located in territory that should be in a 908 exchange; it's FX'ed out of the Princeton CO for political reasons. Linc Madison = rmadison@euler.berkeley.edu