Will Honea wrote:

** Reply to message from "Mark Henigan" <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com> on
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:29:27 -0800

I think I need to describe the situation a little
more clearly, given your reply and several others.

Not to beat a dead horse, Mark, but are you SURE that the phone company only
ran two wires?  Virtually every piece of their wiring I've looked at is at
least 4-wire (2 pairs) and most, if not all, the whoie house installations wre
either 4 or 8 pair bundles in a continuous loop from the service entrance
around the building back to service entrance.  They may have gotten really
cheap in the last few years, but I would still bet on at least 4 wires - a lot
of their extra service oprions require 2 pairs, so that's what they use.  Be
worth a littel more investiagtion - you may have everything you need already,
especially if the house is more that 5-6 years old.

Hello Will:

I haven't seen more than two wires per line
in years in residential installations; and,
that is all they gave me.  I made a couple
of primitive adapters with a little heat-
shrinkable tubing to cover the majority of
the length of the four wires that run with
the foil shield on some coax I salvaged.  I
also covered the point where the main
plastic insulation was cut to inhibit the
passage of moisture (trivially).  I have a
large spool of high quality coax that I
could have used.  But, I let my "waste not,
want not" tendencies to take over.  I
installed it with a little stretching at
one end due to underestimating the distance
between terminal screws.  I also forgot to
get a grounding F-F pass-through connector.
I'll get one and install it by this weekend,
so long as there is no significant current
to ground, something I'll check before
making the connection.

The connection is marred by intermittent
crackling static that is never loud enough
to interfere with conversation and will
likely disappear after I ground the coax.
It's no worse than many of the lines I've
used in businesses.  The amplitude/volume
is good.

After some thought, I concluded that the
ring tone was unlikely to cause any
problems based on its voltage because it
is both brief and intermittent, and is
probably at a low enough current to not
heat the wire of the coax.  After all,
the wire used in telephone connections is
tiny.

I think it's going to be fine, despite its
theoretical inadequacies.

Thanks for your thoughts and your
experience from a time when things weren't
being done quite as cheaply.

- Mark

Mark Henigan