Google Voice keeps cutting out .....
SteveInWA:
Here is a list of some of the expected measurements on a telephone line:
Telephone central office or ATA connected, all phones on-hook: approximately -48VDCSame, but at least one phone off-hook: approximately -12VDCPhone line ringing: approximately 90VAC @ 20Hz, superimposed on the -48VDC
Voltages can vary considerably. As long as they are within ~20%, it's working properly. Note: ring voltage can cause electric shock; be careful.
mtmind8:
Wow Steve, thank you so much! I'll get a multimeter.
Lavarock7:
As I read these messages about voltages, I am reminded of one that most people may ignore (possibly for good reason). All but a few are probably removed, but you never know.
A decade or two ago, the consumer advisor Clark Howard talked about people who were still paying phone companies for phones. You remember long ago that you didn't own the phone, you leased it.
Very few people probably still pay the phone company for a phone BUT if the house is old, there may still be a remnant lying around.
There was a time that the Princess phone was all the rage and it had a lighted dial that came on when you picked up the phone. Long before LEDs were common, there was a small transformer on the wall somewhere in the house and it connected to the second pair of wires in the house telephone wiring. In an apartment house, it might have been on a different pair as sometimes there was multi-pair run through the apartments.
In both a hotel and condo I have been in in recent years, I have seen weird transformers attached to connecting blocks. It brings to mind that as older houses are upgraded to new phone, perhaps some of those transformers still are plugged in. Little grey modules about an inch and a half qube.
mtmind8:
Well, I finally ran the tests. Don't know if I did it right. When I put the leads together, the meter went wild, from over 180 to a low of 2.0 when I barely touched the tips together. May be because it is a cheap Cen-Tech digital multimeter, but it is new. Zero volts and 8.5 ohms, but nothing is connected to any wall jacks. Two of the wall jacks are hard to get to. I just took off the phones and left the cords on the jack. Would this make a difference? The tests were done on the wall jack that shows on shook status with the obi. The other jacks gave off hook status. There is no transformer in my 1970 house. In fact, all the wires from inside the wall have red, green, yellow and black wires, same as the jacks, making it easy to connect correctly.
SteveInWA:
Quote from: mtmind8 on July 21, 2017, 11:15:04 pm
Well, I finally ran the tests. Don't know if I did it right. When I put the leads together, the meter went wild, from over 180 to a low of 2.0 when I barely touched the tips together. May be because it is a cheap Cen-Tech digital multimeter, but it is new. Zero volts and 8.5 ohms, but nothing is connected to any wall jacks. Two of the wall jacks are hard to get to. I just took off the phones and left the cords on the jack. Would this make a difference? The tests were done on the wall jack that shows on shook status with the obi. The other jacks gave off hook status. There is no transformer in my 1970 house. In fact, all the wires from inside the wall have red, green, yellow and black wires, same as the jacks, making it easy to connect correctly.
Primer: Resistance, measured in Ohms, is the measure of difficulty in passing an electric current through a conductor. Zero Ohms means no resistance (a "short circuit"). When using an Ohmmeter, you first need to firmly touch the two meter probe leads together, and calibrate the meter to read zero ohms. This takes into account the inherent resistance of the meter wires. You then measure your desired conductors. Typically, this is just a "continuity" test; meaning, you'll either get a very low resistance (below 10 Ohms) or a near-infinite resistance (the meter will usually display "OL" for "out of limits of measurement".
So: perform the tests as I described and report back. With all telephones disconnected, the green/red pair of wires must read near infinite resistance, or you've failed to disconnect something.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page