Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1991 22:30:57 EDT From: Lynn Goodhue Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Old Phone Wiring Puzzle Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 473, Message 3 of 6 Lines: 41 I've got a puzzle for all you Telecom experts out there. My mother-in-law lives in a house built in the 1950's and the telephone wiring is probably as old as the house is. She's bed-ridden now, and we wanted to rewire the phone in her bedroom so we could unplug it at night and it wouldn't ring in her room. I bought the modular converter for the wall jack, and a modular to four-wire cable to wire in to her phone. When I took apart the old jack, there were only three wires -- green, red and yellow -- no black. So I connected the green, red and yellow wires to the new surface-mount outlet, and screwed everything down tightly. I took apart the phone, and connected up the green, red and yellow wires where the corresponding old wires were on the phone itself, left the black wire dangling, buttoned everything back up, and plugged it in. The phone worked fine -- dial tone, could dial a call, everything. Except that the phone doesn't ring any more. The old wires were a heavier gauge than the new stuff. My trusty AT&T _The_Telephone_Book:_AT&T_Guide_To_Installing_Telephones_&_Accessories doesn't say anything about three-wire wiring, or about what could be wrong if the phone doesn't ring. It *does* say that if the red and green wires are swapped, you wouldn't be able to break dialtone. For the moment, this mystery has actually *solved* the original problem, which was to have the phone available for Mum, without it ringing in her room. (It's one of those old, reliable desk sets that will never die, and you couldn't turn the ringer off, just down a bit.) But some day we'd like to make the phone work again the right way, short of putting back the old heavy three-wire non-modular stuff. Any ideas, guys? Thanks! Lynn Goodhue Smith College BITNET: lgoodhue@smith Internet (maybe): lgoodhue@smith.smith.edu [Moderator's Note: In the box you mounted on the wall try connecting the yellow wire (to the phone) with the red wire. If that does not work then try the yellow wire connected with the green wire. PAT]