Phone jack woes? Any experts?

[timbirr]

I've tried researching this and I am now completely confused by all the web page advice and really don't want to read about RJ's cat5, etc. any more :>0

1970-era home. Replacing old "painted pink" in wall modular telephone jack.

New jack has screws for red, green, black and yellow screws. Old wiring is two reds, two greens, one black, one light blue, one white connected to six different screws. Can I connect these to the new jack?

If so, what wires would stack together.

Phone is a cordless if that makes any diff...

[bobmct]

"official" phone installers will holler, but...

you only require TWO of the wires to connect to the jack. They are referred to as "tip" and "ring". The problem is that you cannot be sure that the colored wires are connect properly (i.e.: colors) at the demarc (where the other end of the wire is connected).

You only need to connect the inner two pins on the new jack. With a phone plugged in and off-hook so you can hear a dial tone, try various combinations of the old wires until you hear a dial tone. Those are the only ones that need to be connected to the inner two pins.

I've done this several times always with success. Good luck.

[Jim Redelfs]

You only need to connect those wires that were (hopefully, still are) connected to the old jack's red-and-green lugs. Simply transfer those wires to the red-and-green lugs of the new jack.

The color scheme you describe is partially familiar to me. It sounds as though your '70s-era home is wired with three-pair wire. If true, there are three pairs: Blue, Orange and Green. (Blue + White-Blue, Orange + White-Orange and Green + White-Green)

In a common installation, only the Blue/White pair carries dial tone and should be connected to the red/green lugs on the jack.

If it appears there are TWO of every color, that indicates that the house was wired using the continuous loop scheme: The cable descends from above into the box then back up into the attic on to the next location and so on. Just connect or "splice through" all the extra colors (like color to like color), connecting only the blue/white pair to the red/green lugs on the jack.

Failing this, subscribe to your telco's Inside Wire Maintenance Plan for a month then have them come and fix it for "free". Good luck.

[AndyS]

Andy comments:

Only two of the wires are needed for a phone connection.

On the outside of your house, you will see a customer service box. This can be opened by the customer to check out the telephone themselves before calling the phone man...

It may be that you can determine which two wires in the cable are used by examining this box.

Also, If you have a voltmeter, you can also determine which wires are used by measuring the voltage between pairs..... When the phone is on-hook ( not in use) , there will be approx

45 volts DC between the two wires which are used. An unplugged phone is considered on-hook.

( When off-hook, and in use, this voltage drops to around 5 volts DC or so).

Typically there are four wires in a phone jack. Either the two inner wires or the two outer wires will be used. Usually it is the two inner wires, but not always....

Another easy way is to put a couple clip leads on a normal phone cord, and just try the cable , two wires at a time, until you hear a dial tone.

This stuff isn't rocket surgery, but you might have to mess with it for a few minutes.....

Andy in Eureka, Texas

[timbirr]

Thanks to everyone here for their help and quick response.

I read BobMCT's reply early-on and thanks to my wife's constant neg about it -- LOL -- he gave me some courage to take the plunge and disconnect the wires from the exisisting plug.

So, turns out once I got those off, that there were only red and green wires coming out of the wall -- two of each. The other wires were aqll part of the "PLATE."

So, I just hooked up two green to the green terminal, two red to the red terminal and all is good. But I swear, looking at it hanging out of the wall, it appeared that all those other wires were part of the bundle coming out of the wall.

Anyway, thanks again to all, phone works and wife is quiet....LOL

[Stormin Mormon]

I'm not an expert. But, I did read a small book on the subject, years ago. Red and green are the ones needed to make the phone work. Black and yellow are for the lighted dials, on Princess phones. In the case of newer phones, they are for a second phone line.

I'd connect red to R (both of them) and both greens to G. Fold back the others, and tape em off. See if that works.

[Stormin Mormon]

Another job turned out well. That is good news. Thank you for letting us know what you found. I'm sure you have helped others to do their phone wiring.

[The Daring Dufas]

Phone equipment used to be sensitive to the polarity of the circuit. I'll bet you don't know what "tip" and "ring" means or how the terms came about. I also like to mess with folks and tell them to press the "octothourpe" button on the phone. There is a very good explanation of home phone wiring on this website:

TDD

[RickH]

Tip and Ring refer to the old 1/4 inch phone plugs (commonly used today as an electric guitar plug or a full-sized headphones plug, etc). The Tip is the tip of the plug and the Ring is the ring just under the tip or Ring can also be the Shank (if not using a stereo phone plug). Dont trust the colors in your wall, get a RJ11 phone jack tester to check the polarity (they only cost about 2 bucks). As for the RJ45 jack I usually use the blue/bluewhite pair for the first phone line, this makes the inner-most pair of the 8 contacts hot. Then the next pair out in each direction becomes the second line, up to 4 lines, etc. You do only need one pair per phone line.

Here are the RJ45 contacts:

|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

4 and 5 above are blue and line 1 pair

3 and 6 would be line 2 pair 2 and 7 would be line 3 pair 1 and 8 would be line 4 pair

[RickH]

I would add that most multi-line phones expect the jack to be wired up like this, from the "inside out" in pairs. Single line phones also expect the inside-most pair (pins 4 and 5 above) to be the line, pins

1,2,3,6,7,8 are ignored.

[Roger Shoaf]

Dial phones are able to be used with reversed polarity but touch tone will not be able to dial if you reverse the polarity.

Tip was for the old PBX switchboard where the center contact on the jack was the tip, and the outer contact was the ring. I think the tip was the negative pole of the circuit.

Octothorpe is the # symbol but the use of the term is not an official designation for the symbol. The phone companies tend to call the * symbol the star key, but there the standard name for the symbol is asterisk.

[Stormin Mormon]

Especially since "octothourpe" isn't an English or American word.

[Stormin Mormon]

Tip and ring were explained, in the small book I read. It was many years ago I read that book, but I do remember much of what was written. I even devloped a memory jogger to tell which would be red, or green.

[aemeijers]

True on most older TT phones, but not true on later 2500s or phones with similar guts. No idea what they changed. Never seen it make a difference on modern disposable corded phones.

-- aem sends...

[The Daring Dufas]

The star key, brought to you by those who changed "through" to "thru". *snicker*

TDD

[Mark Lloyd]

I like "nanogram" better.