alvin, I found an old phone with three wires, red, green, and yellow. I
connected the red and green to a regular jack and plugged it in. I could
hold a conversation easy enough (very little static considering I taped the
ends of the phone wire to the "new fangled" jack). I could not get the phone
to ring though. I think I read where you have to ground the phone within the
jack with the yellow wire. Do you know how I would do that?

thanks,

wrote:
So can one jack be set up the old fashioned way with the phone company

[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]

Thanks.

Those old phones were usually hard wired into a wall module. Some
people would add a large 4 pin plug.

Now you can buy a large block thing that plugs into any modern jack.
As you said " with the plastic thingee that you press to get into the
jack" You just connect the wires into that plug, replace the cover
and plug into a modern jack. \

You CAN use a rotaty phone on any modern phone jack as long as they
still support "click dialing". Or some rotary phones do use tone.

My mother still has a rotary phone. It's the same phone she had when
I was a child (50 years ago). She also has several modern phones, and
has replaced every one of them at least once.