Jud McCranie wrote:

First some background. Several months ago the phones in our house
went out. I figured out that it was a wiring problem inside the
house. I called the phone guy to fix it. He said that our phone
jacks are in series on two four-conductor cables. He said that there
was a short. At one of the phones (it must have been between two of
the phones), he switched to the other pair of conductors. He said
that if we had this problem again that we would lose the use of one of
the jacks, I think it was at the end of the line.

Recently our phones went out again, and rather than another expensive
call to the phone company, I decided to try to fix it myself, thinking
that it might be a similar problem. I disconnected the wires to one
of the jacks he had worked on, and most of the jacks started working
again. Only three jacks don't work - the one where I made the
disconnection and two more on that end of the house. One of those two
is apparently the end of the line, since only one cable is leading to
it (the other two jacks have two cables).

I need to get one or two of the jacks on that end of the house working
again, if I can. The problem is that I can't tell which cable is in
or out. And if there is a pair of live conductors on the in cable.
The only equipment is a volt/ohm meter. Is there a voltage across
working conductors? If so, what should the voltage be and is it AC or
DC?

---
Replace you know what by j to email
Before you go to a lot of trouble here .. check to see if any of the
little gold-plated connectors in the jacks are corroded. My whole
house went dead a few years ago, and I found that the installer(s) put
the wall jacks in with the gold connectors on the down side of the
jacks. One of the jacks which was on an outside wall had accumulated
enough condensation on a hot, muggy summer day to short the connection
with a few drops of condensate and eventually, it corroded the contacts.
If they had installed the jacks with the contacts up and the release
tab down, it probably never would have happened. My point is, check
every jack internally to see if there is any corrosion or moisture
causing your problem