Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: FCC REN's Message-ID: <8316@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 26 May 90 22:20:36 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 109 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 389, Message 6 of 10 In volume 10, issue 386, Tad Cook and Julian Macassey both replied to my earlier questions about ringer equivalency numbers. Below, "DT>" prefaces what I asked in an earlier submission. My current comments are flush left. DT> 1. What does the B or A after an REN mean? TC> A B type ringer must respond to 16 to 68 Hz ringing frequency, and TC> an A ringer only responds to 20 or 30 Hz, +/- 3 Hz. Frequency of what, if I may ask? That question has been slid on past throughout this discussion under the assumption that everyone must already know. It certainly isn't the pitch of the ringer's sound, and it isn't the frequency at which the AC is alternated...or is it? DT> 2. If the ringer on a telephone can be turned off, does it no longer DT> count in figuring the total REN load on a line? TC> A phone with the ringer turned off SHOULD have no REN load on the TC> line, but I could imagine an electronic ringer that still has its TC> detector across the line, but the sound source is off. So the REN has nothing to do with powering the ringer so much as with recognizing *whether* to sound the ringer? DT> 3. Two of my modems *do* have REN's, though neither has any sort of DT> bell or gong. They check in at "0.4 1.2B" and "0.5A 1.6B" DT> respectively. My other modem has a speaker and thus does make a noise DT> (but the speaker is powered by the electric utility, not the telco); DT> it has an FCC ID but no REN on it at all. TC> What's the question? Good point; I realized that myself after rereading my own words in the Digest. Somebody had said that yes, there could be 0 REN's: look at a modem or an answering machine for examples. So I looked at my modem and at my answering machine (which reads 0.4 B) and said, gee, hey, these numbers are not zero. Those were Cook; these are Macassey: DT> 1. What does the B or A after an REN mean? JM> I think I covered this in an earlier posting, but then I could have JM> glossed over it. Maybe you did, but when you and the other techie types in this Digest write at each other's level, my eyes (and the eyes of other readers) glaze over and roll backwards. You could put "the surf was great off Los Angeles today" into the middle and most of us wouldn't be able to read through the technical stuff to find that. Yes, this digest-cum- noozgroop is the place to discuss the technical end as well as the user's end, but please understand that a non-techie reader like me can miss something written deep inside an incomprehensible submission about the specifics of the guts of wires and switches. If it's any consolation, if you did cover that in another posting, you probably explained it in a way I couldn't have understood if I had read it, so I'd have had to ask again regardless. JM> See an earlier posting of mine where I waffle about this. I can't read your crackers, let alone your waffles. If you ever post a brioche, I won't even try. DT> 2. If the ringer on a telephone can be turned off, does it no longer DT> count in figuring the total REN load on a line? JM> [Essentially, Macassey's reply was that if you shut off the ringer JM> switch on the outside of the telephone, no, but if you open the JM> phone up and disconnect the wiring to the entire ringing circuit JM> (not just the part that makes the noise), yes. At least I guess JM> that's what he was trying to say.] All I know is this: if the phones whose ringers I have shut off do count toward the allowed REN total, it beats the heck out of me how the remaining ones still ring loud enough to wake me up when my mother decides to play alarm clock. ("This is your mother, David," she records on my answering machine as if I couldn't recognize her voice. "I know it's early, but" she's decided to phone me anyway, almost always about something that could have gone unsaid altogether.) DT> 3. [See quote of my #3 above if you want to reread it.] JM> ... In truth, all modems I have seen are type B ringers. To prove JM> this, feed say 60V at 60 Hz (yes power via a regular transformer) JM> to a modem; betya it picks up if in answer mode. May those among the readership who do not own the equipment to feed voltage X at frequency Y into the inwards of appliance Z nor the tools and know-how to fix the damage afterward be excused from this project, please? "Betya" you didn't know there were any of us here. JM> I wrote extensively about all this ringer stuff years ago in Popular JM> Communications mag, but I suppose it wasn't all that popular then. JM> Plus of course the editors used to bugger and censor my text so some JM> of the more esoteric stuff was jumbled and meaningless by the time it JM> reached the public and vulgar gaze. The editors didn't have to do that. The esoteric stuff is already meaningless to the public gaze without their help. All you experts, please be tolerant if we ask for a re-explanation of something in more common terms or if we don't realize that a question is equivalent to one posed previously in thick jargon. David Tamkin Box 7002 Des Plaines IL 60018-7002 708 518 6769 312 693 0591 MCI Mail: 426-1818 GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com