Spaceman, I'll do you a deal. If you fancy climbing up a ladder and removing the old black telephone wire from below the guttering all the way around my house you can have a length for yourself :-)

K.

"if that is the problem you can try disconnecting the ring wire at every socket in the house."

Are they colour coded? If not how do I know which one to disconnect? You did say the ring wire is redundant now, didn't you?

"By the way, Sky boxes are also a known cause of interference,"

I've checked that. I also have a TiVo and that talks to the phone with one of those Thomson devices that works through the ring mains. Cleary a danger, but I've tried disconnecting that as well.

The way my AM radio really buzzed as I carried it, unknowingly at the time, under the bell makes me think this is the first line to follow.

TP

The bell solenoid could be acting as an aerial. Try disconnecting the bell first.

The ring wire isn't necessary provided you have ADSL filters on all the telephones. Even without ADSL most phones don't need the ring wire (but some do). If you disconnect the ring wire it would be polite to reconnect it before you move out of the house. In the sockets the ring wire should be connected to the connector marked 3 and is normally orange/white. The telephone wires will be on 2 and 5, normally blue/white and white/blue.

Thanks K,

Plenty to do on what looks likely to be a wettish weekend.

TP

K thanks for the offer ;-) I have been trying to get some of that cable for a while, I am looking for a friendly BT installer with a few meters spare. I will let you know If I get some ....

TP

If its old wiring the -ve & +ve may be blue & orange with the bell wire green.Brown is (maybe) spare. Used on old sytem called a plan 1A if memory serves. Green wire was needed because the pnones were in parallel but the bells in series.
I used to work in strowger exchanges so know next to sweet FA about telephones :-)

My first wife threw loads of cable out, the ******* *******. Talk about the shirt off my back - Noooooooo don't get me started!!!!!

PS Most installers are friendly with the right kind of persuasion.

B.

Well that adds a challenge. Maybe when I get into the bell box it may become clearer.

Any benefit in using a small voltmeter?

TP

50v dc is what you're looking for on the neg & pos. How old is your wiring? A further complication (you might find old evidence of it) on old installations was that there was an earth for shared service lines :-)))) One sub signalled to the exchange on one leg and one on the other. Probably all ripped out now. Hmmmm thinking about it that could have been what the brown was used for.

It's all flooding back Captain Mainwaring!!!

Kayak. I haven't done the registry addition yet. I started G & T's early yesterday and didn't feel up to it today :-(
A clear head needed for us amateurs methinks.

B.

Any voltage on the bell?

TP

From memory 75v AC but only when someone rings you . It makes your tabs laugh!

So not usually.

Thanks B.

Will have a tinker over the weekend.

TP

.

Aha Spaceman :-)

See http://www.phonesockets.co.uk/shopping/

External Telephone Cable - 2 Pair Black
External Cable Clips - BLACK
Jelly Crimps (wire connectors 8B)

75v AC plus the 48v DC I think Bolshi. Don't stand in water while working on the phones :-)

BT ADSL NTE5 faceplate adaptor

SC, the ADSLNation faceplate I gave a link to earlier is said to be much better than the BT one, and that is my experience too. This thread contains info on faceplates.

K excellent find thanks, I have ordered some and I also got one of their punchdown tools as they look OK.

A little trick for anyone after a BT NTE5 faceplate, if you happen to have an intermittent problem with your ADSL, say one that does not seem to show up on the BT tests or when they visit, its worth suggesting to them that they change your master socket and put a faceplate in. I have managed to get a couple of them this way ! the engineers often know far less about ADSL than you expect and they are happy to try anything ! they are getting much better now though....

K and B,

I'm not going to be able to disconnect the bell as the govenor has become used to it now. I am not convinced that it is the root of my problem as I walk around the flat with my AM radio. There seems to be a run of mains cable that produces a lot of interference.

Anyway life will go on. I have ADSL and a WiFi link in my study. That deals with my laptop and more importantly with my PDA which is a godsend for checking for incoming e:mails as it does not need the inevitable boot up time of the PC.

When I put another PC at the other end of the flat I'll simply put in another ADSL modem and WiFi router.

Thanks for all your ideas.

TP

"I'll simply put in another ADSL modem and WiFi router"

Well you can do that, but you'll need another phone line of course if you want to use the modems at the same time.

Another solution is to have a second router acting as repeater, i.e. connecting to the other router as a bridge. Some routers will do this and not others. It's not something I know anything about though.

K.

I'd forgotten that.

I already have a pair of those Devlo jobbies that transmit an ethernet signal though the mains. Whether my mains already is over cluttered with info I'd have to find out the hard way. I believe I can then connect the remote end to a WiFi router and have WiFi at the other end of the flat.

So it is ADSL WiFi router to Devlo to Devlo through the mains to a second router with WiFi.

OK?

TP