Why won't this 20 year old telephone work? ATTN ex-telephone installers

Factual Questions
1

20 year old GTE telephone. (Now known as Verizon)

Just found it sitting in a drawer. Been there for Lord knows how long. Seem to remember it working ever so long ago. We just replaced it with a more “modern” phone probably 15 years ago.

Probably one of the first of the touch tones. Built like a brick shit-house. Old fashioned bell. (I do miss the wonderful ringing sound of the old telephones)

Anyway—it doesn’t work when plugged into the household jack. Took the phone apart and didn’t see anything obvious. Nice and clean inside. All internal wiring seems well connected.

I think it is a lead-in wiring problem.

This old phone actually seems to use all 4 incoming wires. Whereas my newer phones only really use 2 wires of the 4 incoming. (actually 3 wires, but 2 of them are wired to the same post on the outlet) Possibly the phone company reworked the wiring in my house many many years ago so the newer 2 wire phones would work.

The 3 incoming wires actually used on the newer phones are color coded Blue connected to one side of the outlet. And a Blue w/white stripe wire wired together with a Green wire and both connected to the other side of the outlet.

20 year old phone seems to use internally all 4 wires.

Color code on the old phone internally with 4 wires used are:

PINK BLACK BROWN and GREEN

I know this is kind of a technical and limited subject, but will appreciate any help on this. I would love to make that old phone work again and hear that old fashioned telephone ring again.

I really don’t think there is anything wrong with the old phone.

2

Although someone else will have to verify the wiring codes, have you tried it in other sockets, in other houses? I’m pretty sure all it needs to work is two wires; I have some old 1960’s and 1970’s phones just like yours that work perfectly, although the modular plug is a retrofit.

3

You can buy standard modular adapter plugs at Radio Shack if the end wiring is stripped.

Here is a discussion of two wire and 4 wire setups. IIRC typically the extra wires were for a separate ring voltage circuit as the old phones drew so much power that without the boost more than one phone could often not be used at once in the household or they would be a large volume drop.

TWO & FOUR WIRE CAPACITORS (CONDENSERS) as Applied to Telephone Circuits

4

From Wikipedia

Most residences are wired with the full four-wire cable, but many only have the inner pair actually connected to anything, LocalTalk was designed to use only the outer pair (the black and yellow wires). Many homes also used the second pair for power, with a transformer wired into an outlet near one jack providing 24 or so volts DC to all phones in the house. Technically these would be RJ-11, because there is still only one telephone line connected, although RJ-14 cords are required to access whatever is on the second pair

5

WOW----

Lot of help here. Thanks guys.

Is this a great forum or what?