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?

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Assuming it's a standard analog telephone connection and not a digital
connection:

When the phone us hung up, about 48V DC across the connector wires. Red &
Green is one pair, Yellow and Black the ohter pair; do NOT get them crossed
or it'll get even more confusingg.

When you pick up a phone, there will be around 9 to 24V DC across the wires.
Thus, you can watch and see if the phones are connected to the ones you are
looking at.

If you get a phone call while you're measuring the voltage, it will be about
130 V ac across the wires.

Everything is current-limited for you, but there's still enough in ringing
voltage to give you a good jerk! So keep that in mind as you workg.

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