I have an old rotary telephone?

Question

I have an old rotary telephone and the wires out are red and black...I have no problem in taking it apart but would like to wire it with the more recent 4 cable phone line...anyone be able to tell me how

Answer 1

wow.. people are confused...

if the wires going into your phone are red and black, then somewhere along the line someone did a repair to the wiring, as it should be red and green wires... yellow and black are for a second line.. either that, or someone connected it wrong in the first place..

if you are upgrading your wiring.. the new wire will be diffrent colors then you have now.. just connect the blue/white wire to where the black wire is connected now (should be where the green wire is/was) and the solid blue wire to the red.... then at the jack that is providing the dial tone.. or the nid... connect the blue/white to green and solid blue to red... the other wires are for additional lines, or spares for repair...

PS.....

you CAN still use all of the star codes successfully with a rotary dial phone... just in place of a * you would enter 11...
for example *69 would be 1169

rotary or pulse dial will NOT work with most VoIP services..

Answer 2

No, you cannot.

Even most new phones use only two wires for 1 tel-co line. Phone that use 4 wires are either PBX phones or 2 line phone. I don't think an old rotary phone supports 2 line access, unless you change the whole system inside.

Answer 3

Two station wiring is color coded: Red and Green for Line 1, Yellow and Black for Line 2.

Because your phone is wired red and black, assuming Line 1 is active, you should connect Red and Green to red and black (polarity shouldn't matter. If it does, flip it over).

Considering how old the wiring probably is, it's probably asking a lot to crimp it to a RJ11 connector. The gauge wiring may be thicker than what those connectors can handle. There used to be 4 prong-to-RJ11 adaptors, and they may still exist. You may need to wire them directly onto the posts in the phone jack.

Answer 4

No problem just connect the red and black wires to the phone line

Bob who is a telephone engineer

Answer 5

the tele engineer is right. BUT here is a little more info.

red to red, black to black.

the yellow and green wires could be used for power to a phone in the case of an older installation like my brother-in-law's or for a second line. If you have a second line and want to connect to it wire red to yellow and black to green.

Answer 6

Wow if you put that on antiques road show, that might be woth a few thousand dollars! You don't see those anymore!

I hope you are not renting it from the phone company, many of those old phones were rented, it is on the bill.

Answer 7

Yep. I endure in techniques extensive cellular telephones. when I see fairly woman I balk on the size of his cellular telephone in that outfits boutique on Rodeo rigidity. To be/sense previous ;o) heavily . . . existence before computers? I endure in techniques having to write my e book document. My son looks at me like i'm nuts when I say that.