Originally posted by Baffled:
Since we're scrimping to save money at our Senior Center, I thought I'd take a shot at replacing a broken phone jack myself. Trying to be a hero, I bought a Radio Shack six-pin (RJ-11/RJ-14/RJ-25) modular telephone jack. I removed the old jack and discovered eight wires: BLUE, ORANGE, GREEN, BROWN, WHITE/BLUE, WHITE/ORANGE, WHITE/GREEN and WHITE/BROWN. The jack I bought has six points(RED, GREEN BLACK, YELLOW, WHITE and BLUE. Is there a way I can make it work? Which colors from the wall do I connect to which colors on the jack? If that's a lost cause, what jack should I buy? Or, is it time to bite the budgetary bullet and call the phone company?
I'm assuming since you bought a 6 position wall plate that is what came out of the wall.
Typically, the wh/bl bl/wh pair goes to screws with the red/green jumper wires (pins 3&4), the wh/or or/wh pair to the black/yellow (pins 2&5), and the wh/gr gr/wh pair to the white/blue (pins 1&6). That said, there is no guarantee the wiring in the phone room is standard - you might have dial tone on the brown pair, or on green and blue, or split pairs, or any number of funky configurations.
If you've taken the wires off of the old jack and didn't note their positions, it's best to call a pro to fix it.
Jack
