Ok... Well my phone jack upstairs has 2 of the 4 wires unconnected inside (I don't really know how to describe it but ask me if you need me to try harder) but thiers 4 wires inside when I open in and 2 of them seem to have snapped or came loose. Anyway I was wondering if someone could tell me how I could fix them/ reconnect them.

Thanks

Most residential homes are wired using 4-lead cable, where the leads are red, green, yellow, and black. Usually (not always) the red-green pair is the only pair that you need to worry about, as residential phone service only needs one pair of wires. The red-green paiir should be connected to the center two terminals of the jack. The yellow-black pair may be used if you have a two-line phone, but otherwise it doesn't matter whether they are connected to the jack or not. Please clarify whether the cable is indeed as I described it, and which of the leads are connected to the jack. Also - you haven't said whether you are having problems with your phone line, and if so, in what way?

Thanks for the answer.

I just checked and the red and green pair is not connected but the yellow black are... anyway I have no problem with the phone line as I have it installed on another phone jack downstairs.

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I only need this connection to work so that I can connect my modem through it... it does connect on my downstairs jack also but I can only access xbox live through it being connected to the one upstairs.

If you plug the working phone from downstairs into the upstairs jack do you get dial tone?

Yeah I do... any ideas? I was just going to re-connect the unconnected wire but don't know how I'd go about doing that.

I don't understand what the problem is. The upstairs jack works, right? Are you trying to do something other than get a working phone line upstairs?

Right after Alexander invented the phone system, he set up a four wire circuit.

Red - Green were for Tip and Ring. Yellow was the bell circuit and Black was the ground circuit.

Currently, if you are using the small, clear plugs, Red and Green (Line #1) go to pins 3 (R1) and 4 (T1) <center two pins> Line 2 would be the Yellow/Black conductors. Yellow (R2) to pin 5 and Black (T2) to pin 2.

With a 2 pair station cable, you would be limited to two phone lines.

If you were using Cat5 cable, the individual parings used are different colors and you would be limited to 3 phone lines and a digital line.

Donf - your post makes it sound like the yellow and black pair are needed for a plain old telephone service, but they're not. This second pair is only needed for a second line. If there is no 2nd phone line, they can be left disconnected.

XBlackxEyex - can you please explain a bit more what how you're planning to use the upstairs and downstairs jacks, and specifically what you are doing with thie modem you mentioned? Are you trying to use the phone wiring to connect something between the downstairs and upstairs jacks?

I guess you missed my causal mention of "Alexander", as in Alexander Graham-Bell for the almost original design.

No, I did not say that at all. I said the original design called for Yellow to be the bell circuit and Black to be the ground.

Please return and read my post, I clearly show the pin configuration for a 2 pair RJ-11 pin including their proper designations for each phone line.

Actually, the second pair had another use... 50 years ago. A small transformer provided the power to light the dials on the older phones.

MB,

Sorry I don't go that far back in time.

Did you actually know Al when he was dreaming up this stuff? :)