Connecting a rotary dial phone via an RJ11 jack ?

oisinaodh

Hi,

I have an old rotary dial phone (IMG_3855.jpg) which was in use up to the early 90's before we installed a number of push-button phones in the house. I would like to know if it is possible to reconnect the rotary dial phone via a RJ11 jack or would I have to hard wire it back to the master socket ? I think it basically boils down to the question, are two conductors enough to make the rotary dial phone function or do I need more conductors carrying additional (ringer) signal(s)? For reference IMG_3867.jpg shows the frayed end of the original connection showing 4 conductors coloured green red blue and white, are they all essential?

Thanks.

FruitLover

I'd say it's down to whether your provider still supports pulse dialling rather than the cabling. I'm not a phone guy, but the green and red wires are usually the centre pair, and I think this pair should be enough for general purposes.

rmacm

oisinaodh wrote: »

Hi,

I have an old rotary dial phone (IMG_3855.jpg) which was in use up to the early 90's before we installed a number of push-button phones in the house. I would like to know if it is possible to reconnect the rotary dial phone via a RJ11 jack or would I have to hard wire it back to the master socket ? I think it basically boils down to the question, are two conductors enough to make the rotary dial phone function or do I need more conductors carrying additional (ringer) signal(s)? For reference IMG_3867.jpg shows the frayed end of the original connection showing 4 conductors coloured green red blue and white, are they all essential?

Thanks.

Hey OP

There was a thread about this before if I remember correctly but since searching is disabled temporarily I can't find it. I also edited your post to remove the first attachment because it shows a phone number....is it your actual number? Probably best that you don't post it here for the world to see.

FusionNet

Ive an old rotary phone connected with an RJ11. and yes the networks still support pulse dialling. The olny thing to note is that its not a straight forward termination. As in normally you have your four wire yellow, red green, black. Ill have to have a look but I think I had to reverse pairs etc.. Ill have a look and re-post..

thegen

Not 100% on this but I think you will have to take the inside pair to the outside a vice versa like in a BT plug.

rmacm

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055237332

^^^ Two posts by Solair in that thread show you how to connect a rotary dial phone. Eircom exchanges still support pulse dialing so you should be ok.

SeanW

Yeah, I was using an old push-button pulse dial phone, as a 2nd phone until about 2 years ago, so Eircom does still support them, your old rotary phone should work so long as its wired correctly.

cluttrell

Hi Osinaodh,

Just wondering if you've made any progress in getting this to work? I'm looking to do the same thing. I've just bought a fairly new house (under 10 years old) and would like to wire in 2 old rotary phones from my late Grandmothers house.

The house I'm in has 2 eircom phone sockets, 1 in the main bedroom upstairs and the other in the hall right next to the front door, which isn't an ideal place really. I'd like to wire in 2 more sockets, one in the living room and one in the sunroom/extension which is off the kitchen, and connect the two old phones to them.

I've read through the other post and I'm a bit put off really, it seems like a lot of work and I'm not too experienced in this area. My two main concerns are.

1. How easy is it to tap into the phone socket by the door and run cables from there to the living room and sunroom, and is it actually ok to run 2 sockets off another one?

2. As I have DSL fand a modern cordless Skype/Landline phone, will the entire system actually work ok or will the overall quality be degraded by the older technology and additional sockets.

Thanks,
Ciaran

thegen

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