Hi. I have two phone lines in my house. I'm trying to change one jack from line A to line B. I've got it covered at the jack end. Originally, the red and green conductor wires were connected, so I just switched them over to yellow and black.
My problem is that at the other end in our basement, the yellow and black wires were never connected for this line (only the green and red). the basement box looks like this:
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It's a 66B4-3 cross connect block.
I'm trying to figure out how this block works. Would I connect the yellow next to an existing yellow or above/below an existing yellow?
If the setup on the 66 block is typical, and what you've done is put the black and yellow conductors in the cable on the red and green terminals at the jack then you would put the unterminated black and yellow wires horizontal with other black and yellow.
When you say to put the black and yellow conductors in the cable on the red and green terminals at the jack, that doesn't seem like what I did. Here's what I did at the jack:
I saw that the module cover had its green wire connected to the green wire that came up into the jack from the baseboard. Same thing for the red. So I removed all green and red, then connected the module cover's yellow wire to the yellow wire that came into the jack. I connected black to black the same way. Is this right? It seems consistent with the way it was, just with the colors switched.
Next to. If the block is truly a 66b4-3 then each row is one terminal and there are 6 pins or 3 pairs. Your outside feed should be on the set of pins that go the opposite way and in green,red,black,yellow (or white-blue,blue-white,white-orange,orange-white) order from top to bottom. The 5th and 6th row would be for the 3rd line.
Then, on the opposite side of the block you would terminate your house cables, up to 5 of them from the outside column to the insde, in the same green/red/black/yellow order. This would be the easiest since you didn't mention owning a meter or any other type of test equipment.
The jack's green amd red wires go to your phone, so you should connect the black and yellow wires coming in, to the jack's green and red wires, respectively. This allows you to leave the 66 block alone.
An alternative is to get one of those adapters that has two jacks and a plug that goes into the wall. The adapter has a 'line 1' and a 'line 2' jack, and the line 2 jack should have the second line on it. Just don't bother using the line 1 jack.
Thanks to everyone who replied to this! Based on all your input, I determined that there is actually a defect in the yellow/black wires coming into the house. I don't think the phone company ever checked them, since they were not being used from this particular box. Now that I need to use them, I'm finding that they don't work.
Here's one follow-up question: what sort of tool would I use to determine if these yellow/black wires are holding a signal? Is this something fairly inexpensive I could purchase at Lowes? I figure the more I know for sure prior to calling the phone company, the better off I'll be.
No, you went too far. Assuming you now have the yellow and black pair connected correctly at the 66 block, you want the yellow/black pair at the baseboard jack to be connected to the red/green pair on the module cover. This assumes a typical single line phone in which the red/green pair connects the phone and the yellow/black pair is not used.
What I normally do is connect the 4 wires from the cover to the coresponding screws in the base (R=red, Y=yellow etc) and then connect the yellow/black pair from the 66 block to the R & G screws.
Do you mean the yellow/black pair from the 66 block to the wall jack? If so, Its possible that there is a splice somewhere inbetween and the yellow/black pair is not connected at the splice.
If you mean the yellow/black pair entering the house from outside, then line 2 could never have worked. Does line 2 work anywhere? Or does line 2 enter the building at a different point?
Somewhere between the 66 block and the street there should (unless its a VERY old installation) be a NIJ (Network Interface Jack). This is the interface between the lines that are telco's responsibility and the inside wireing which is your responsibility (unless you are paying telco for inside wire maintenance). In that box, there is a modular plug and jack, one for each line. Unplug the jack and plug a known good phone into the jack. If it works, the problem is in your wireing, if not, its in thier wireing.
I traced the problem to the Verizon NID outside my house. The cat-3 line that goes into my basement and onto the 66B4-3 box has its red/green hooked into the NID line for my secondary number. The yellow/black of this line is not hooked up to anything. So there's the reason that the yellow/black will not give me a dial tone in the house!
The NID has jacks for about 6 lines, but only two present a dial tone--one being our primary number, and the other being our secondary number. I'd like to get that dangling yellow/black pair onto the primary number.
So my question is this:
Should I just hook the yellow/black into the primary number line at the NID? My concern is that there are already conductor wires from other cat-3 lines connected to that line. Is there any potential problems putting another pair of conductor wires there?
I agree. Unfortunately, this is how it got set up when our house was originally wired three years ago (when we had the house built). I'm just learning this stuff, and it really made it hard to figure out what was going on.
The line insulation actually has "cat-3" printed on it, though it does meet your JK quad description, as well.
I was concerned about crosstalk, especially since this main line also carries my DSL connection.
Here's something that seems strange. Perhaps you can tell me if this is typical. The NID has connections for 6 lines. Each connection is in a small rectangular plastic case. When I open a case, there are only two connector screws. I was expecting to see 4 to support two pairs of conductor wire (r/g, y/b).
The way it is now, I'd have to put the r/g from one cat-3 in one of the cases (the one for the main line) and the y/b from the same cat-3 into a second case (the one for the secondary line).
Is this typical, or am I dealing with a strange NID? It's a Verizon NID (says so on the cover).
Also, could the phone company set it up so that two of the NID connectors would each provide access to the same line? That way I can hook the second cat-3 into its own connector case.
It should work OK, but offends my sense of decency. This is because I am a bit anal on keeping to the correct color codes.
Red/green should be the primary number EVERYWHERE.
Yellow/black should be the secondary number EVERYWHERE.
There are some good practical reasons for this in that in the future if someone is trouble shooting something the non-standard color codes could waste somne time or possibly cause some failures if they assume that the colors are "correct" in the whole installation.(1)
When you are saying "cat-3" lines, is this truly cat-3 cable or is it JK quad (4 wires red/green/yellow/black in a round jacket approximately 1/4 inch in diameter)? If it is truly cat-3 you are OK, but using 2 lines in JK quad wire can give excessive crosstalk.
(1) The only exception to this should be as I described earlier where you connect the red/green wires in the wall jack cap to the yellow/black on the screws so as to connect a single line phone to line 2.
Thanks much for all your input. Based on that, I was able to solve the problem. I just put the r/g that was being used for my secondary line onto the NID connector for my primary line. Problem solved! Took a while to figure it out, but there it is.
Well, you can fix it now and KNOW its right or you can fix it later when some more work needs to be done.
Hmmmmmmm. If you can strip it back a bit more, see if the 4 wires are twisted together (JK) or the red/green pair is twisted together and the yellow/green is twisted together and seperately from the r/g pair (cat-3).
I personally use both types of wire, but the JK quad never carries more than one line with the second pair not used. I found a roll of several hundred feet of 4 pair cable at a yard sale and have whats left of 2 600 foot rolls of JK that I bought as a surplus sale some time ago.
Normal. From the NID out, there is one pair per phone line. The yellow/black pair in the NID is not connected, and if you look at the modular plug, you will probably only see 2 pins in it.
Normal.
VERY unlikely. The normal way to do this is to run multi-pair cable from the NID to a distribution point such as your 66 block.
I run a 4 pair (only 2 used) from my NID to a 25 pair 66 block. Everything else comes to the 66 block.
BTW, to connect wires to the 66 block CORRECTLY you need a punchdown tool. There are cheep ones, but investing in a good one is better. It can be done with a thin bladed screwdriver but the connections may not be as reliable.
Go to
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and put "punchdown tool" in the search box. The one I use (from Graybar) is a Harris D-914. It handles both
66 blocks and 110 blocks (newer, smaller). It may be discontinued as I don't see it on the graybar site.
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