atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Ringer Equivelence Help

Quick Clarification...
Referring to post #1, the wiring that is being disconnected is usually behind the NID so any CO testing to the NID would not help the problem.

Remember these are systems that have had a lot of fingers into them over the years, by the RBOC and various contractors. Usually a tech is trying to 'clean up the mess', looking for spare pairs going someplace, is simply not well trained or reckless. Some have had problems understanding the wiring on an RJ-31X!

As for record keeping, I'll just say that a few years ago, at the owner's request, many lines were temporarily placed out of service by the CO. This was part of a summer cost savings attempt. Despite the records kept by in-house maintenance, many of the dialer circuits went dark! These were not all dedicated circuits, but were shared with seldom used sets.

When you try to 'educate' the educators it's like speed dialing into a permanent busy!

Len

In respect of the out-of-service resistance for testing, yes, but the whole common ringing capacitor at the dermarc idea wasn't so great.

When our modular jacks were introduced in the early 1980s, they changed the whole wiring of ringers, but missed the opportunity to simplify everything. The 3-wire extensions and the different modular cord configurations cause a lot of confusion, because many people just see a cord with the right plug on each end and don't realize that there are different types.

Paul -

How do your phones wire up? Pre-modular we had a 3 wire line cord. Green, Red & Yellow. G & R were tip & ring and if you wanted the bell to ring, you put the yellow on with the green.


Sam

I have a couple of old Bell 500 sets with the 3-wire cord. At one time our old 700 phones had a similar arrangement with the bell return brought out on a separate wire, allowing it to be grounded for party line ringing or to have extra ringers connected in series. On a simple, single-phone installation it was just strapped to one side of the line at the wall box.

Here's a quick sketch of the wiring and color coding for the modular jack system introduced around 1981:



The loop/speaking/dialing path circuitry in the phone is across 2 & 5, with the ringer connected between 3 & 5.

Can you imagine Sparky being able to figure that one out? The mind boggles at the permutations of errors that might ensue if the high-voltage/heavy-handed gents were to get ahold of that scheme.

Maybe 'sparkies' in the "mother country" have more respect/common sense (as in leave the unknown that way) than the ones in "the colonies"? The schematic makes he whole thing together, though. That is one of those neat ideas that should have been left 'on the paper'. I can see the convenience in being able to test whether the pair is good to the demarc, and how Joe customer and anyone else that wasn't schooled in the particulars, would ruin the great idea! John C. (Not Garand)

I've seen quite a few! Tip & ring reversal is common enough, and often isn't noticed at first until the person suddenly realizes that the phone isn't ringing on incoming calls. Swapping the W/O pair gives similar symptoms.

I've even seen B/W and O/W swapped over: "The phone won't stop ringing when I plug it in!"

Sometimes mistakes aren't really the installer's fault though. Some cheap imported jacks (made in you-know-where) have the terminals numbered backwards. That really confuses the issue for the unwary!

Increasingly, a lot of newer equipment doesn't actually rely on the third ringer wire anyway (made for world markets), so some wiring mistakes don't get noticed until the person uses a different phone, then of course he blames the phone because "the other one worked O.K."

Just to complete the picture, #4 on the jack is spare on a basic direct line but is generally used for earth recall on PBX extensions. 1 & 6 (the outboard positions on the jack, W/G pair) are only used in "special" applications, such as auto dialers which need to seize the line.

By the way, I just noticed that in a moment of old-school thought I accidentally labeled the surge arrester as a "spark gap." It is in fact a metal-oxide varistor type of suppressor. Diagram amended, as I can't bear to see uncorrected mistakes!

Half ringer note:

Suttle has a half ringer, it is their model 3A. They are available as a factory order and the cost is about the same as the 4 parts required to roll your own!

Thanks for the response.

Len