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TWayne TWayne is offline
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Default really old phone lines

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we just bought this house and want to put a phone in the
kitchen..unfortunatly, the wires are bare....now we bought the jack
and went to install it, and found that there are only three wires
coming out of the hole, red, green and yellow..no black,,,
how can we install this new jack to an old line that has only the
three colored wires?


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Assuming it's a normal analog phone system that's no problem.
You only need the red and green wires: The other two aren't used.
When the phone isn't being used, there is arounc 48V DC between the
wires *red negative w/r to the green).
When the phone is picked up, that voltage drops to around 9 to 15 volts,
depending on a few things.
Ringing voltage is nominally 90 Vac riding on top of 48V DC so it's
capable of giving a person a really good kick if you'r handling the
wires when the phone rings! So, disconnect the wires from the point
where they enter the house; there should be a box there where they can
be disconnected.
If not, then leave a phone off hook while you do the work. That will
set off an alarm in the central office and the phone will loudly
complain for awhile, but it stops after about 30 seconds and then the
central office just removes power from your phone lines.
In this case, it might take up to a few minutes of the phone being
back on hook before the central office system gives you back your
voltage and dialtone. Normally it's a pretty quick change but some
older offices can take quite awhile to return your service.

Test the phone after installing hte box. Try dialing a number from
another phone too. If the new phone "tinkles" when the other phone
dials out, then just reverse the red and green wires and it'll stop the
tinkling. It's not unusual for the red & green wires to be reversed in
old installations like you have.

HTH