writes:
On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 16:48:37 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 8:45:10 AM UTC-7, wrote:
I just got an old rotary phone from an antique store - the original
cord is attached - I want to hook it up and use it in my home - what
do I do??

got it working but think one of the capacitor for the ringer is not working

Do you have the green and yellow shorted together? You need that to
get it to ring right. (party line thing)

If it is a WE 500 series deskset, then there is a terminal block
under the cover that has a setting for party-line vs. normal. If it
is configured properly, then only the tip and ring (green and red)
conductors are required.

Likewise for the 300 series. I've both active on a standard POTS line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_302_telephone

Other than a defective ringer (extremely rare) there are common reasons old
Western Electric phones don't ring. The two most common reasons are
1.) A previous owner disconnected one or all of the wires from the ringer
going to the network inside the phone to prevent the phone company
from "seeing" his/her phone on the phone company's line test equipment or
2.) The phone was wired for "party-line" service which will prevent the bell
from ringing on today's "individual line" systems. Let's cover reason
#2 first. If your phone was originally wired for "party line" service
many decades ago you will need to do some simple modifications of the
wiring inside of the phone to make it ring. Referring to the schematic
you just printed from the link above, you will see vertical shaded bars
dividing the schematic into sections representing, among other things,
the ringer, the network, the handset, the dial and the line-switch
(a.k.a. the hook-switch.) Note in particular the wiring for the ringer
leads, line cord, and line switch. In the schematic you will see color
designations of R, BK, S, S-R, G, and Y. These refer to wire colors of Red,
Black, Slate (gray), Slate with Red stripe, Green and Yellow, respectively.

https://www.beatriceco.com/bti/porti...hones-500.html