telephone extension

[babypoly1]

Hi I am trying to rewire an old telephone extension at a junction box
Its cable is
Red
Blue
White
Green
the new cable is
Red
Yellow
Black
Green

Which connects to which please?

 

[oharaf]

red to red green to green yellow to white black to blue are you sure they are all in use?

 

[ericmark]

Many electricians don't worry about colours so impossible to give 100% answer.

There are just 3 wires and two really important so two main wires go to pins 2 and 5 and once connected the dial tone is heard. The third connects to pin 4 and works the bell. If bell doesn't work swap 2 and 5 around.

Pins 1, 3, and 6 are not used. For computers and powered telephones (cordless) the pin 4 is often not required. Many telephones will still work if 2 and 5 are wrong way around some it does matter which has resulted in many a argument as to if phone is faulty where borrowed phone works so one assumes phone is faulty and in fact 2 and 5 are swapped.

 

[Lectrician]

Many electricians don't worry about colours so impossible to give 100% answer.

There are just 3 wires and two really important so two main wires go to pins 2 and 5 and once connected the dial tone is heard. The third connects to pin 4 and works the bell. If bell doesn't work swap 2 and 5 around.

Pins 1, 3, and 6 are not used. For computers and powered telephones (cordless) the pin 4 is often not required. Many telephones will still work if 2 and 5 are wrong way around some it does matter which has resulted in many a argument as to if phone is faulty where borrowed phone works so one assumes phone is faulty and in fact 2 and 5 are swapped.

Got your 3 and 4 mixed up Eric

Also, if you mix your 2+5 up after the the NTE, and have the ring wire correctly connected, you can get continuous ring when the phones are on hook. Not all phones need the ringer (3), but you should connected it through.

 

[Taylortwocities]

Would have been easier if the OP had used proper telephone cable.

Or is that
Red
Yellow
Black
Green
from the telephone you are trying to connect?

 

[Paul_C]

It sounds as though both sets of wiring involved here are the flat flexible line cords (as found on ready-made extension cords) rather than fixed cables.

Red/blue/green/white is the standard for British line cords. The colors match up with the fixed wiring and jack terminals as follows:

2 - Red - Blue/white
3 - Blue - Orange/white
4 - Green - White/orange
5 - White - White/blue

Red/green/yellow/black are the standard American colors, but these cords are increasingly being used to make up extensions for the U.K. as well (imported from the far East), with no particular regard for which way around the cords are connected.

If the cord already has a U.K. plug or jack at one end, then the in-line nature of the four conductors means that the colors should match up as either:

Red - Black
Blue - Red
Green - Green
White - Yellow

- or -

Red - Yellow
Blue - Green
Green - Red
White - Black


However, if the U.S.-style cord is coming from the telephone (probably via a modular jack) then it may well be a basic RJ11 connection, in which case you need to connect:

Red - Red
White - Green

There are other possibilities, depending upon what it actually being connected though. Some more details would be helpful.

 

[babypoly1]

Thanks ever so much for the advice, , I ve spent a happy day playing with wires and decided to lateral thinking is the only way forward
Rock on!

 

[Paul_C]

Erm...... Does that mean you got it working, or not?

 

[ericmark]

Many electricians don't worry about colours so impossible to give 100% answer.

There are just 3 wires and two really important so two main wires go to pins 2 and 5 and once connected the dial tone is heard. The third connects to pin 4 and works the bell. If bell doesn't work swap 2 and 5 around.

Pins 1, 3, and 6 are not used. For computers and powered telephones (cordless) the pin 4 is often not required. Many telephones will still work if 2 and 5 are wrong way around some it does matter which has resulted in many a argument as to if phone is faulty where borrowed phone works so one assumes phone is faulty and in fact 2 and 5 are swapped.

Got your 3 and 4 mixed up Eric

Also, if you mix your 2+5 up after the the NTE, and have the ring wire correctly connected, you can get continuous ring when the phones are on hook. Not all phones need the ringer (3), but you should connected it through.

I'll take your word for it. Not got box in front of me. Sorry for any mistake. Was wanting to point out can't go by colours. Also my old fax machine swapped 2 and 5 wires as it went through machine and I had to swap them back again before feeding phones.

New fax machine does not need phones feeding through it.

 

[Paul_C]

You could be mixing up the plug numbering with the jack numbering. Due to a monumental lack of coordination during the design stages, the contact numbering on the plugs is in the opposite order from that of the matching terminals on the jacks, so that 3 on the jack goes to 4 on the plug and vice versa (ditto for 2 & 5 and for 1 & 6). Sometimes printed references are to the jack numbering, sometimes to the plug numbering, which results in a certain amount of confusion!

Most modern telephone equipment is not polarity sensitive, so reversing the connections to 2 & 5 will have no detrimental effect on it if it needs only a 2-wire connection. Mixing up 2 & 5 and 3 & 4 with 3-wire equipment, however, can result in no ringing, continuous ringing, etc.

 

[babypoly1]

Well no not yesterday,my internet crashed so I could not pick up your posts, I realised that I was on the wrong track and I needed to extend the Ethernet cable rather than the phone cable, however today I will try the extension again follow your advice and see that I can get the phone over there too|!

 

[simonpolly]

The colour is not important as long as you use the same wire at both ends,just think of the wires as copper path.

As has been said 2,5 and 3 to ring the bell.

If you want to be professional about it use the correct cable and the colour wires below.
2- blue/white fleck
5-white/blue fleck
3-orange/white fleck

 

[TicklyT]

The colour is not important as long as you use the same wire at both ends...

Not strictly true. The usual cable construction is twisted pairs, with each wire of a pair sharing the same colours. WHITE/blue and BLUE/white is a pair. WHITE/orange and ORANGE/white is another etc, etc.

Splitting the transmission path A&B wires (terminals 2 & 5) over two pairs can degrade both the speech and ADSL signals.

 

[Paul_C]

The usual cable construction is twisted pairs

For fixed cabling. The flat line cords aren't twisted pairs though.

And although it's gradually becoming rarer now, there is still a fair amount of the old blue/orange/green/brown fixed cabling in service from the 1970's and earlier in some installations, which isn't twisted pairs.

 

[simonpolly]

The colour is not important as long as you use the same wire at both ends...

Not strictly true. The usual cable construction is twisted pairs, with each wire of a pair sharing the same colours. WHITE/blue and BLUE/white is a pair. WHITE/orange and ORANGE/white is another etc, etc.

Splitting the transmission path A&B wires (terminals 2 & 5) over two pairs can degrade both the speech and ADSL signals.

Point taken but in a short internal cable run it won`t make any difference,if the pair coming from the exchange to the end user is on a split pair it will effect the capacitance balance and when tested will coming back as a unbalanced pair.A few metres of internal will make no difference.