On 13 Nov 2016 01:13:11 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:
On 2016-11-12, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Sat, 12 Nov 2016 05:23:55 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Larry Jaques wrote:
On Wed, 9 Nov 2016 08:46:05 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
[ ... ]
The new FAA building at Ft Rucker, Al. had a phone room on each
floor, with 1200 pairs, and walls covered with 66 blocks. That was over
40 years ago. 20 years later, they would have needed under 100 pair,
each with a SLIC for up to 16 lines.
You must be a very patient guy, Mikey.
That wasn't my job, but I was working at the site. We had to
provide a connection to the Weathervision system, to the FAA building.
The color coding was easy to learn.
Easier than resistor color codes? 
Ten colors, in two groups of five. That gives 25 pairs. The stripes
are not the same width, so it is quite easy to pick up.
Yeah, prolly so.
Stripes, or on some telephone cables, solid color with other
color dots every half inch or so.
I used to repair the frayed looms on US and Euro cars after accidents,
where a replacement wire loom was deemed too expensive. I remember
seeing some solid color cables with dots, but I don't recall the
brand. Mercedes often used same color wire with varied color stripes
way back.
An example, from the start of the sequence is blue and white,
typically blue with a white stripe and white with a blue stripe as the
other half of the pair. Keep using blue through the other four pair of
that group, then increment blue to the next color and repeat the
sequence of the other color in the pairs. So each color pair identifies
both wires of the pair as belonging together.
I'm sure that helps immensely when you're faced with 50-500 wires in a
group.
Once you get beyond 25 pair, you wrap a 25-pair group in a pair
of colored threads and go on to the next bundle which repeats the wire
colors already used. So you can have 25 groups of 25 pair -- 625 pair
or 1250 wires. Beyond that, I presume that you get bundles of 26
bundles repeating again. But the water-proofing grease used on the
1500 Pair or larger is just too messy for me to take apart and see what
the pattern is. (Aside from the ribbed aluminum sheet wrapped around
the wires all inside the black plastic jacket.)
Grok that. Ick!
I repaired a lot of 1A2 phone
systems. I still have a few hundred feet of 25 pair cable, somewhere
around here. 
Consider selling it as ANTIQUE. You'll be rich!
How about some, new in the box 400E KTU line cards? Or a few
subcycle power supplies?
Ah -- SubCycle -- put in 60 Hz, get out 20 Hz by some magic
inductive circuit. Used for ringing the phone bells. (Except the other
frequency bells used on some party-line systems, in addition to ringing
between one wire of the pair and earth ground. :-)
I was playing with the phone line wires once when a call came in.
Yeouch! Weren't those 90vac@20Hz? Surprised me.
Hey, some guy is selling old drive-in theater speaker poles with
speakers for $250 on Craigslist. Who knows what will sell? List it
and see.
I've got enough of all of the above, but there are certainly
some people out there collecting them -- or using them. :-)
People who don't know what stereo or hi-fi mean, y'mean? Fond old
memories of drive-ins, I remember borrowing Mom's '62 Lincoln
Continental, complete with suicide doors, to go to the drive-in after
I got my license. The front electric seat would to back, down, and
tilt back so we could put our feet on the dashboard to watch. Then,
when the movie got boring and my girlfriend got friendly, the cushy
seats proved long and wide. sweet sigh
--
If government were a product,
selling it would be illegal.
--P.J. O'Rourke