Any phone guys out there? I have had several two line phone over the past years, and occassionally I run into a problem where a new phone has my second number first, first number second when I plug it in. I am reusing the same jack, following all the instructions, and have not switched anything else around. How come why is that because?
The two lines are wired as two pairs of wires in the 4-wire jack. I would guess that there is no rigid standard as to which pair is which. If you are bothered by this, you can swap the lines at the wall jack.
You’d think there would be. I always thought that the first line was the inner two pins and the second line was the outer two pins. This means that if you only had one line, but bought a two line phone all calls would come in on line two. Not a big deal, but kind of obnoxious, especially if you DO have two lines and multiple phones. It could get confusing.
Are they cheap phones that might just not be wired properly?
There is a standard - whether the people who installed it followed it or not is questionable, but try this:
Check here: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/phone_wiring.html. According to that, Line 1 comes in on the green and red, and Line 2 on the yellow and black. Wiring diagrams are included on that page - it’s rather comprehensive.
Easy way to tell a phone number: Call 1-800-444-4444. This is the MCI service center. It will read back the number you’re calling from , and after it does, you can simply hang up.
Hope this helps.
Or, for about $5 worth of parts & 20 minutes of your time, you can build yourself a switchover cable to keep on hand whenever this occurs.
Basically, you have a short piece of 4-wire phone cable, and wire a plug on one end and a socket on the other. But cross the connections, so that the green-red wires in the plug connect to the yellow-black wires in the receptacle, and vice-versa.
Then whenever you get a new phone that causes this problem, just plug this switchover cable in between it and the wall.
In Greece, the two inner wires are for Line 1 and the outer ones for Line 2. Most cables I’ve seen do not even have the outer wires connected at all.
But I’ve seen telephones brought from UK[sup]1[/sup] or Germany that use the outer wires for Line 1. It’s confusing. Of course it is trivial to make your own telephone crossover cable. All you need is a crimp tool and a few RJ11 connectors.
[sup]1[/sup] Telephone wall sockets in UK use a BT jack. But on the telephone side there’s always a RJ11 socket.
