Subj : Dead Phone LIne.
To   : JAY EMRIE
From : Jerry Schwartz
Date : Sun Nov 28 2004 03:01 pm

Hello, JAY...

It's not impossible that unplugging everything eventually gave the one 
troublesome device a chance to reset itself. The telco might also have taken 
your line out of service for awhile to protect the network, they might have 
found and fixed a problem at their end during the same period you were working 
on it, etc.

I'm not big on faith healing.

I'm not sure if a dead short in the wiring would look like a busy, because a 
phone isn't a dead short when it's in use. It might be something the telco's 
diagnostic robots would detect, and again they might take your number off line 
temporarily. You said that you didn't detect a short with a meter, so let's 
assume that you don't have one in the wiring. In any case, if you did then 
moving things over to the secondary jack in the service entrance (I think 
that's what you said you did) wouldn't fix it.

I am a little confused about what you did, though. If you moved the live 
connection over to the other pair in your house wiring, then you'd have to redo 
the wiring to each device as well: they typically only look at one pair. (They 
don't know the color, of course, only the pins.) That's why I'm guessing you 
switched the service over to another jack in the service box, and then 
connected the red/green pair to that. It could be that your box took a hit from 
lightning, or some such; I think there's some protection built in.

Regards,

Jerry Schwartz

mailto:jerryschwartz@comfortable.com
http://www.writebynight.com
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