I just added two more telpehone jacks to our city house, and as usual I only used the red and green wires. Everything works fine. So what are the extra wires for — the black and yellow ones?
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I believe this is correct. The black and yellow are for the second phone number. If you use a 2 line phone you can plug it into the one jack that has all 4 colored wires attached to the correct screws.
If you use 2 phones or a 2 line phone with an answering machine on one of the lines, you need a 2 jack cover.
The red and green connect to red and green screws for one jack, and the black and yellow connect to the red and green screws for the other jack.
Could also be useful if/when you find out one of the regular leads is broken. No need to pull new wire, just switch to the redundant wires.
back in the late 60's when Princess phones were popular the black/yellow provided additional power for the lights.
The yellow was for the ring.
Back then you got charged for any extra phone(s) after the first one that you had in the house, there was rumour going around that the phone company used the yellow wire to monitor how many phones you had so you couldn't cheat them on the extras.
So everybody I knew disconnected the yellow wire since houses were a lot smaller then and you could hear the ring anywhere in the house from a centrally located phone.
When the phone company ran line out to my house, they ran CAT 6 cable - 8 wires.
Interesting that your phone company ran Cat 6. I had a new drop put in last year and the phone company used a 6 pair wire encased in a somewhat square sheath. They brought it into my distribuition panel, and installed a simple punch down block. Then made a pigtail of Cat 6 to plug into my phone distribution module (Pass & Seymour). The distribution module has a way to use a different pair for a "business line" or FAX, plus another phone line, etc. 4 total lines, I think.Our old phone service was worse than that picture. I asked the installer when he thought the wire was done. He said it was from the 20's, which is when the house was a boarding house. You wouldn't believe the amount of old phone wire that we pulled out of the house.
there is a little known fact that the Gov't required Ma Bell to wire every home with an extra line so the military could have a secure way to communicate with SAC and Norad from any available Princess phone in case of a nucular attack........
All four are used when you use a modem or DSL line. Swap them around and you severely cut the baud rate. It is worth a saturday morning to straighten them out.
Otherwise use them as spares.
Now that is a very different answer from the others I've gotten! As it happens, the new boxes are for dial-up computer connections. But, it looked to me as if there are only two wires entering the house. I'd better have another look.
Frankly I don't know what they do. all I know is that when I originally hooked up my dial-up modem I couldn't hit 1/2 of the 56K it boasted. From some insight from a PC chatline it was suggested to check all of the drops in the house and make certain they were wired the same. I did that and the baud rate shot up to the 52.6 or whatever the theoretical rate is.
Checking at the input at the house puts this in a different light. There is a carbon resistor on the incoming phone line that hooks up to your water system (or a good earth ground). That is the lightening arrestor. VERY important to have that in place. There are only 2 wires on that block per my memory.
My tip could be an urban legend...
It did work however, maybe it was a loose connection or swapped leads somewhere that I corrected on my weekend hunt. The phone does work if you reverse the 2 main wires. That might be the baud difference maker.
As for the DC for the princess phones. that is a fact. I disconnected the transformer in my basement a few years back. Those phones had a big light under the dial that required the DC lines.Jack of all trades and master of none - you got a problem with that?
Guess I'll try swapping some wires in the AM.
If it goes to 12Kbps I'm going the wrong way.......
Joe H, waaaaaaaaaay out in the country
It is an urban legend.DSL signals are high frequency signals that ride on the same pair as voice.Now there are several different ways that DSL can be run in a home.If you strickly use the self install kits then every phone jack in the house will have both DSL and voice signals on them.However, phones and other phone equipment will load down (effective short out) the DSL signal and it won't work or you will get poor performance. Thus every device connected to the phone lines (except the DSL modem) need a micro-filter. That includes not only phones, but modems, faxes, answering machinces, TIVO/satelite system, and alarm systems. Alarms system that use a special jack and seeze the line require a special filter and don't come with the kits.The other way of installing it is to have splitter installed at the NIC (phone company interface box). The phone side of that spliter is connected to the normal house phone wires. The DSL side is either feed to a new cable that goes to jack just for DSL or it is connected to the 2nd (or 3rd pair) of wires in the cable.A phone company professional install should include that and many people will buy the splitter ffor their own installs. Using the splitter gets rid of the problem of having to find and filter all of the phones and also the problem of old wiring of unknow condition.
A phone company professional install should include that and many people will buy the splitter ffor their own installs. Using the splitter gets rid of the problem of having to find and filter all of the phones and also the problem of old wiring of unknow condition.
Bill, what kind of splitter? Do you need a whole house filter between the split and the line that feeds the phones?
The spliter is combination of high pass filter that only allows DSL signals out set of terminal and a low pass filter that only allows voice to the other set of terminals.---- Update ---Search for links I found that there are true splitters and there are filters that are designed for whole house filter that are also called splitters.The Wilcom is a true spliter. That is what I installed.http://www.dslreports.com/faq/6114As is the Corning and I think the Shuttle.http://www.hometech.com/techwire/dsl.htmlWhen I installed mine I downloaded the engineering specs on those.The Keptel is a filter, can't tell about the others just from looking.Here are some other info.http://www.dslreports.com/faq/10443
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,1012399;reverse=0;root=remark,1012399;mode=flat
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,1040547;reverse=0;root=remark,1040547;mode=flatI have installed the Wilcom at both my house an a friends. I found a spot near the NID for hers and for mine a place in the attic where the phone lines come before connecting to anything else. Cut the lines and connected the pair from the NID to the input and the voice to the pair to the house wiring. Then ran a new cable from the spliter to a new DSL jack.
Edited 2/22/2006 11:20 pm by BillHartmann
Thanks, Bill.
I hope your phone systen doesn't look like this! This was in a house I was working on. After we did some work in the basement, the HO said she had no phone service. I bought a tone generator to trace all the wires. Most were old and dead.
That's classic CBAD!
blue
Mine's a bit better than that, but there definitely is a family resemblance. Our house was built ca 1905 and there are lots of mystery wires and pipes around, most of which I've hacked out.
"All four are used when you use a modem or DSL line. Swap them around and you severely cut the baud rate. It is worth a saturday morning to straighten them out."No offense, but wrong. Dial up modem uses the same 2 wires tip and ring from a pair as a phone does. True, if the tip and ring on the single pair in use are reversed, you can impair baud rate.DSL (actually aDSL in most cases), same is true. Only uses 1 pair, and it is the same pair that carries the standard phone signal. DSL is a high-freq transmission on the same pair, and the filter that you install is what separates the phone (voice) signal from the DSL signal.You have to beg for it if you only need DSL service (i have it at my house, since all voice calls are on my cell), but you can get what is called "naked DSL" -- that is, DSL service without an underlying phone line (POTS service) (and the monthly charge for that). Phone companies don't like to do it, and don't want to admit that they will, cause they want to dig you for that extra 20 plus bucks a month for a standard line that you do not really need.
You appear right. I wrote in a later post that the resistor block only protects 2 wires. The other 2 just dangle.
Thanks for the correction.Jack of all trades and master of none - you got a problem with that?
Dry or nake DSL is not available from many phone companies. Although you can get it from some people like Covad, but you are paying a much, much higher rate.And the reason that it is not available is that the rates are based on their already people a pair that is being paid for.Not SBC when they bought out ATT is being required to offer dry DSL, I think within 18 months. But they have not given any details yet. But there will be an extra charge of some amount to service the copper pair.
Also, if you use a telephone system, data is sent over those other pairs.
4 wires / two (potential) phone lines
you do not need two jacks at the box / a 2 line phone will connect to both lines in one jack (if the jack is wired with both red and green and black and yellow- there is a color coded place for 4 wires in one jack) / 2 line cords are also avaliable / a 2 line cord or phone cord is distinguishable by looking at the brass connections in the cord plug / 1 line cords have 2 brass connections and 2 line phones have 4
if you look in your customer interphase box where the phone company lines runs you will also find red / green and black / yellow and two jacks /one for each line
the phone companies customer interphase box is also a good place to tell if your bad connection or lack of connection is your problem or theirs / take a phone to the box / unplug the jack and plug in your phone / if you have a good connection then the problem is after their service and in your home somewhere / if you get no connection or a bad connection then it is thier problem with the service NOTE: plugging into thier box eliminates all phone wiring and interference beyond their box / you are at the point of service delivery
I use CAT 5 now days for phone and Data. That said the telephone here uses the blue/bluewhite pair for the primary line. You can use the others for DATA, FAX more phone lines etc. My electrician (old school) won't use the stuff, so I wind up having to wire the TV and Phones.
When we used 2 pair phone line we had this little code card to use. Old on one side New on the other with lines connecting the colors. I have one of those cards in the van somewhere, it seems perfectly stupid to me. I mean what was wrong with the old? and the pre-wired phone jacks we get here use the old color code. Oh well, that was part of my electircian's deal.
kcoyner
Actually, the black is for ground, to enable two-party lines, and the yellow to light up the dial on your Princess phone. (Or maybe the other way around. It's been a few years.)
While the wires can be used for a second phone line, it's not ideal, as the two pairs are not separately twisted.
happy?
Edited 2/22/2006 9:09 pm by DanH