In alt.home.repair on Wed, 30 Jul 2003 11:47:04 GMT "CMF"
posted:


I don't object to your upgrading things, only to your degrading
things.

Meirman

So, is your concern me degrading the CAT2, or the phone in the bathroom?
(smiley inserted here)

The phone in the bathroom. It's one of the best things I have, and I
would gladly sacrifice quality sometimes to keep it.

I can understand, given your background, why you care about this.
Most people don't know enough to care.

I didn't understand a lot of what you wrote, and since you know so
much more than I do about this, you might appreciate a story, or even
help me figure it out: My house is 24 years old. About 5 years ago,
there started humming on my phone line when I picked up the phone, so
much that I could not hear a dial tone, and neither dialing or
touching touch tone keys caused it to dial. (This is just 8? or 10?
pair wire coming into the house and to the two lines the builder
installed. 4-color wire for what I put in.)

I disconnnected all the phones and accessories except one and still
had the problem. I disconnected that one and connected another and
still had it. Then I disconnected the two phone lines I had put in
(one because the previous owner put a second wall over the phone jack
in my bedroom, and I couldnt find it.)

I was ready to start on the two that the builder put in, but with less
than millimeter of extra wire beyond the squeeze connector (what do
you call it. Like a fork you push the wire between the tines), I was
afraid I wouldn't get it back together. I'd been without a phone for
a day or so, so I ran a wire from a second floor bedroom window to the
phone company interface downstairs outside. I only had the phone by
my desk and I ran a wire down the hall to my bedroom.

Busy with other things, I went for a year that way, until a neighbor
complained. I put it back the original way, and everything was fine.

Then a year later it happened again, and I went back to the outside
wire. This time it was a year or two, but when I was using the
inhouse wires, my 56K modem broke, and when I had to go to the outside
wires, I got better connection speeds with a 33K than I had gotten
with the 56K when I went through the house wires. I think I had only
gotten 28000 with the 56K but was getting 33333 with the 33 and the
outside line.

I didn't want to go back to the house lines, even if they worked for
the phone, but I tried them after two years and they work. And they
work well. I got 49,333 and 50,666 connections, and later it went up
usually to 51,333.


What's going on?


I'm slightly suspicious of the wall-phone connections in the kitchen,
which use those fork-tine-squeeze-things. Should I take them apart
and solder all 4 wires there? But I think there is more to it, partly
since I didn't touch them and it keeps not working, then working.

--

Also, given my situation, so far from CAT5 I'm not even close, do you
see a problem with using the yellow and black wires, or whatever color
they are, to take output from my computer sound card and run it to the
other rooms, where I will have small amplifiers with speakers so I can
listen to web-radio in all my rooms? I'll be careful not to overload
the sound card (and if worse comes to worse I can use the one a friend
gave me or buy another) but I wonder if there is some other issue I
have totally forgotten about.

Thanks a lot.


Meirman

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