Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!apple!lemke
From: lemke@Apple.COM (Steve Lemke)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: crossing phone lines
Message-ID: <16980@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 12 Sep 88 05:19:30 GMT
References: <7921@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Reply-To: lemke@apple.com.UUCP (Steve Lemke)
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 28

In article <7921@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> stevel@tybalt.caltech.edu (Steve Ludtke) writes:
>A friend just presented me with an interesting question. He has an answering
>machine, and 2 phone lines. He wanted to know if he could just cross the
>two lines to get it to work on both. My immediate response was, of course
>not, that would really screw thing up. However the longer I thought about
>it the less certain I became. Since he wouldn't be dialing out while it was
>hooked up like this, that wouldn't be a problem. I don't know what a phone
>line will do if you send a ring signal over it. Anyone have any theories.
>I'm tempted to just try it, and see what happens.

Well, I had a two line switch from Radio Shack that would automatically
select the ringing line and send it to the answering machine (note that my
thing was the older, $40.00 model, and now they have a simpler one for $20).
Anyway, it also had buttons for line 1 and line 2 which would select which of
the two lines would be used if the device was a phone and it was picked up to
make a call.  Anyway, someone once pushed both buttons accidentally, thus
shorting the two lines together (this worked nicely for 3-way calls when we
wanted to) with the phone on-hook.  The box sat like this for a while, and
then one day one of the lines was dead.  The phone company said that since
the lines present voltages on the other lines, (2 on 1 and vice-versa), line
one dropped a "trouble card" at the office, and since they couldn't fix it
from there, they disconnected it.  Not a very good situation, and not some-
thing I would recommend.  Get the $20 box from RS and it will work fine.

			===== Steve Lemke =====
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