Tired, Punchy and my head hurts
First the news… Yes… it’s been a week since I’ve posted. Work, Baby… Family… you do the math.
Today was filled with a DIY project that was filled with so much promise. And met with failure. We have a room with no phone jack that direly needs one.The room has a cable jack… But we don’t use the cable.
I had an idea… what if I ride the phone signal on the unused cable from a room with both phone and cable to the room with just cable. I got two wall plates that each had a phone jack and a cable connector. I got a 3′ long coax cable to sacrifice for connecting the back of the cable connector to the back of the phone jack. I figured I’d cut in half, strip the cut end and attach it like I was wiring a phone. I also got a little multimeter… hoping that might help. Granted I know nearly -0- about electronics (I’m a software guy)… so the multimeter was more of an amusement.
I walked into the parking lot of the hardware store. Booty in hand. I was looking at the multimeter walking about 2 feet from the row of cars and pickup trucks. BANG!
Did you know that a 15 ‘ 2 inch diameter wooden dowel, hangs more than 2 ‘ out of a pickup truck and right at forehead level? Neither did I. This would be the part where my head hurts.
Well, I got home… Watched Rothlisberger forget that black doesn’t mean Steelers on the West Coast. And tinkered. I cut the coax and stripped the cut ends. On each plate I attached the copper core {D} to the Pair 1 ring terminal (red) and the copper screen {B} to the Pair 1 tip (green).
My first test was to connect the two plates with coax. Then attach one plate to a phone line and the other to a phone. This would test two things.
- Was I wired correctly?
- Would coax carry a phone signal?
The test worked.
So, I ran phone wire in one room over to where the cable jack was on the wall. I connected a small piece of coax to my makeshift jack and connected the other end to the wall jack. Then I connected the phone line to my makeshift jack. Then I picked up a good phone. The phone still worked.. so I hadn’t shorted out our phone. Theoretically, my phone line was now on the cable in the house.
I went to the cable jack in the room with no phone. Hooked another piece of coax to it and to my 2nd jack. I assumed that both cable jacks in the house were on the same line. This assumption proved wrong. Nothing came over the line. My guess is that there is a splitter somewhere before where I am patched in and the signal is not propagating.
the idea seemed good, but I’m back to square one.
Ah well. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.
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The real question is do you have actual cable signal on those lines? By hooking up the phone that way, you could interfere with the cable.. and vice versa. That being said, if you have no other signals to those jacks, splitters should be ok.
The real question is, do you have access to your attic and crawl-space space? Dropping a new line is not too difficult. And, if the wall where you’d want to put the phone jack is opposing a wall where you can GET a phone jack, you can punch straight through.. Or, if the room opposite the wall wher you want the jack has a phone line, attach a round cable via the working jack.. run it down through the baseboards, around the wall, until you get to the wall spot opposite the side where you want the new jack, and then punch through and put a blank in to cover it. Lots of other possible solutions too.
Now, if you want to avoid ALL of that, get your self the new fangled wireless sets that need only one base station attached to a phone line.. The rest are just chargers holding the other handsets. These are popular for people who use VoIP. *smiles knowingly*
At any rate, if you wish, plan a time with me, and I can help out if you opt for a wired solution.
I vote for the multi-extension wireless set. The big hole in the “punch a hole in the wall” plan is that they are renting a nice place. Landlords of nice places get cranky when you start putting holes in the wall!
What the other guy said.
Or, personally I’d pay the phone company to wire it. It really shouldn’t be that much and I find fishing wires to be a pain in the rear.
There’s a number of things that could be wrong, I think. You could be getting some AC interference; something that might not give TV sigs a problem, but might disrupt the phone.
It might also be a distance issue. What’s the difference between the one connection and the other? Coax isn’t good for telephone lines for a long run. It’s not a balanced connection.