Number 197 - October 1999

Fixing My Phone Line
By Carl Tenning, Tacoma Open Group ctenning@msn.com
The other day I was at Radio Shack to purchase some audio cables. Along with the purchase the salesperson included a complimentary phone line tester1. It fits into the modular phone jack and displays a green light if the circuit is okay, or a red light if the green and red wires are reversed. If neither light comes on then the circuit is dead.     I have two phone lines coming into my house, one for regular voice calls and the other used exclusively for my computer modems. I got the Green light when I plugged it into my voice phone line. But when I tried this on my modem phone line I was surprised to get the Red light. Plugging a regular phone into this modular jack I got the dial tone okay and was able to make calls.     The computer modem using this line had also been working. I had, however, been getting what seemed to me to be a lot of aggravating inadvertent disconnects.	The disconnects were random. At first I attributed this to AOL because I had heard a lot of complaints from others about disconnects on AOL. However, when I signed up with Telisphere I found that I was still getting a lot of inadvertent disconnects. Now then, I reasoned, could it be that the disconnects are being caused by the reverse polarity in my telephone wiring?     Switching these wires in the modular jack corrected the reversal and the Radio Shack telephone line tester then showed a Green light. Since making this correction I have not had another inadvertent modem disconnect. 1 There is no stock number on the line tester. All it says on the device is "The Sprint Store at RadioShackTM." On the back it gives the directions for use. There is no other identification, except what looks like a mold stamp (P250). It is white and about the size of a Popsicle stick.
Number 197 - October 1999