Midway Phone Socket

[Kroma]

I might be contradicting myself here but that doesn't explain why the downstairs phone sockets continue to function.

Bizarre!

Daz

[Bill]

In message , Kroma writes

Daz, I feel it might be time to very carefully trace the cabling and see just where it goes and what else it connects to. The phone wiring should not be connected to anything else and certainly not anything connected to a ring main! As was suggested maybe a phone line extender, although I thought those only regenerated ringing volts and would have left 2 and 5 alone. Maybe not though. Hopefully there is a simple explanation to it all and there is something legitimate missing from your description but I'm not sure what at the moment. Maybe the previous suggestion of "call an exorcist" would be worth while?

Best of luck and nice knowing you.

[Bill]

In message , Chip writes

Could be, but he says that the sockets down stairs continue to work normally. If it had seized the line then you would not expect this. Maybe try having a phone plugged in upstairs while disconnecting the power to that ring and listen to what happens, does something try to dial out?

Does the alarm panel contain a dialler? If it does is it plugged into a proper phone socket or has some one hard wired it into the phone circuit some where?

[Chip]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 00:18:09 GMT,it is alleged that Bill spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:

[snip]

My thought was that it had been [improperly?] connected to 'the nearest available phoneline' which may have not been the main incoming cable as the engineers suspected?

[snippage]

[Kroma]

I've traced the wire back from the rogue upstairs socket and it would seem that it goes through the floor into the integral garage and then round the edge of the ceiling into... the alarm unit.

I'm wondering if the fact that the reversed wire colours upstairs (blue with white rings occupying the position at which white with blue rings appears on the downstairs sockets) could be the cause of the non-ringing from the upstairs socket (when used with my old cordless phone). "Does it matter if A and B are interchanged" from

suggests that. The "can cause other problems" bit is a bit worrying! Which problems would they be then? IS my ADSL connection likely to work from this socket when I transfer it from my parents' address? And these extra two wires are baffling.. I think they were actually white and pink... no bands. They're not in the downstairs sockets but they come from the alarm and are present in the upstairs socket.

I connected to the net via dial-up from the upstairs socket today and got reasonable speeds (44Kbps I think).

The loss of the line upstairs when the upstairs power sockets are 'off' doesn't really bother me I guess as I won't be turning the power off on the whole!

Daz

[Chip]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 23:14:36 -0000,it is alleged that "Kroma" spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:

That certainly could cause the 'no ringing' symptom, or possibly (If you had another older phone with 3rd wire ringing plugged in) continuous ringing or permanent off hook line state, or some combination.

Another possibility is they simply haven't connected the ringing wire through at all, and it's a red herring, this would also cause 'no ringing'.

Depends on the phase of the moon I'm afraid, [not literally, but that would be as accurate a guess]

Assuming you don't want to mess with the alarm wiring, and it all seems to work, any possibility you could abandon this wiring and run a nice new length of CW1308 or even Cat5? That would solve the problems and leave the alarm functional (Although whether the unfiltered alarm connection would coexist with ADSL is doubtful also).

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Cordless phones don't usually take the ring signal from the 'third' wire. Nor do many other modern types.

Here are the standard colours of cable, flex and their terminals.

Terminal Cable Cord Function 1 Green/white Orange Spare Blue 2 Blue/white Red B wire (Line) -50v Brown 3 Orange/white Blue Shunt wire. (Bell) Green 4 White/orange Green Local earth (Not usually used) Orange 5 White/blue White A wire (Line) 0v 6 White/green Black Spare