About: Every week two geeky people in Rochester MN spend every ounce of their freetime creating educational videos, podcasts, articles, and music. They publish it all on the internet, free to anyone in the whole univ…

In our shop it is tradition for the first step of any good plan to be "Build a Time Machine". If you have a time machine you can do the rest of the steps in any order, measure once and cut twice, have your future self hold a nail for you to hammer in, or go back to convince yourself that the whole thing was a very silly idea after all.

We never seem to have time to follow through with our good intentions, but over the years we've been collecting parts for an actual time machine. Ok ... so maybe it can only bring you to the early days of the ARPANET, but it does it in style. Get on your fez and bow tie, we're heading for the pre-dawn of the internet.

Needed

Antique Telephone (G type handset)

300 Baud Acoustic Coupler Modem

DTMF Tone Generator

Private Branch Exchange

Green Phosphor Cathode Ray Tube Monitor

Model M (buckling-spring, clicky) Keyboard

AT to PS2 Keyboard Adapter

PS2 to USB Keyboard Converter

External USB Fax Modem

Raspberry Pi Dial Up Server

Raspberry Pi Dumb Terminal

Seamstress Computer Desk

The scope of this Instructable is huge. If we were to try to include it all in one, it would have taken scores of steps and hundreds of photographs. So instead, we are trying something new. Think of this as the overstructable. Through out this guide, when a step or component is too complex to explain in the required detail, we will link to a substructable. Each substructable is a stand-alone project on its own. There is a wealth of information and history about dozens of subjects covered in this group of Instructables. The overall theme of the set is telephones and telecommunications. If you've ever wondered how it all works (even if you don't see yourself building a Telecom Time Machine) we've done our best to make it well worth reading through the whole set.

We sincerely hope something here inspires you to tackle your own project (and post it to Instructables)!

Special thanks to Forbin for building the amazing time capsule telehack.com, and to all of the people in the #tymkrs community who helped figure out how to make all this stuff work.