Steph in PA wrote:
Hi, I have two problems:

1) I bought one of those telephone line testers made by GB Instruments for
$5. I plugged it in, and it came out as "red", which means "reversed line".
What does this mean?

I checked at the NID (the part inside the house), and only a red and green
line are connected there, with the yellow and black not connected and being
wrapped around the green and red; but my phone works fine.

BTW, I'm furious that the yellow and black wires are not connected, since I
am getting a second phone line in the next few months. Why would someone
install the phone line this way? Is this normally how the pros do it?

2) My other telephone jack in the house is testing as "dead", since no light
lights up on the tester. I checked at the NID in the house again, and the
red and green wires are connected there. I traced the line about half way,
in the basement, and it appeared to be ok. The other half was inaccessible,
since the landlord has about 1-2 feet of books, newspapers, magazines, etc.
piled on the entire floor, which is blocking my access to the part of the
basement where the line runs.

Does anyone know why my phone jack is reading dead? I haven't check the
actual jack yet.

Black and Yellow are to be used for a second line. You can purchase
line splitters.

Polarity reversal is how the determine whether you have a pulse dialing
system or a tone dialing.