Another phone wiring question...

SantaHoe

My question:
I need to install a phone socket (of some sort) onto a line I have... there are 4 wires, but I'm unsure of which wires I need to connect and in what order.
And where could I pick up a phone socket... you know, the regular RJ11 outlets that you'd have in just about any house.

The background:
I had my ISDN removed last year, and the technitian uninstalled the ISDN box, but left the isdn phone cable in place.
This phone cable enters the room through a hole drilled in the wall and I'm told it's hooked up to my main landline, so I could now use it exactly as I would my main outlet downstairs.
I believe it's connected directly to the telephone pole outside and is not just a run-off from the main cable somewhere in the house.
The cable is just flopping there from it's hole where it once attached to the ISDN box.
Where the jacket was stripped, there are four wires, Black, White, Orange, Green, which are terminated with plastic caps for safety.

Thanks.

tribble

I believe it's connected directly to the telephone pole outside and is not just a run-off from the main cable somewhere in the house.

If it's connected to the cable entering you're house then it's feeding off the same cable as the one your phone is plugged into.

You can test if it's connected by using a multimeter and measuring the voltage across the white and orange pair. These I believe are the usual pair but they could be any two. Should be 50V.

New phones (15-20 years) and modems are (wait for this) "internally decoupled" - basically they don't need a third wire for the "bell circuit"(spelling?) - so just connect the 2 with the 50V accross them into the centre two pins of your socket that you're going to buy in peats or maplin.

Some REALLY OLD phones actually require three wires on the circuit inside you're house - if you have such a phone scrap it.

Some (oldish) phones care about the polarity of the circuit (basically which wire is connected to which of the pins - just suck and see as I can't remember which way they go - if they're wrong you'll hear a dialtone but it will be clouded in interference.


that should be about it....

tribble


ps search for my posts on this about 3 months ago....

MadKevo

Phone 1901 and demand that a new master socket for voice telephony be immediately installed, free of charge, be firm with them, ask for supervisors if necessary blah blah! - this *should* have been done when ISDN was removed. Master sockets allow the line be isolated from internal wiring for line fault testing (and DSL pre-qualification too!).
I'm guessing you want to just fit a double adapter for phone/computer, but if you want to do more:when it's installed connect the other (slave) phone sockets in the house to the connector in the removable part of the master socket - most probably to the L1 & L2 terminals .

SantaHoe

Actually, I still have my old ISDN box... couldn't I just hook that back up and use POTS off of it?
I'm not exactly sure why they un-wired it in the first place.