Metropol

Well thats dodgy. I redid the phone wires (internal) to add a point upstairs and a spur for a BB modem. A normal call uses just two pins/lines/wires so you setup will work, but it certainly seems flawed.

I'll check my own tommrrow morning and see if I can make any recomendations. But I'd stay off adding what you "think" is the earth. Remember the phone line does carry a small current.. you dont want to short it.

I'm not surprised taht your internet isn't working with all this fiddling.

Why are you using crappy DIY type B&Q cabling though, and not the standard BT stuff? Could be a reason why your internet isn't functioning ...

In other words - is the cabling from the master socket to the termination point coloured? I mean with blue/white stripes, orange/white stripes etc - I've not been in a box for some time so I can't remember the colours. But from what I can remember, the colours of domestic supplied cabling and BT supplied stuff are different hence them being able to tell from a mile off that it is not theirs. If you have the cable with bl/w stripes and o/w stripes etc then it's BT stuff.

It's not illegal per se to fiddle with the wiring, but you won't to jail for it. It's just a violation under the terms of your service contract with BT, and you might get kicked off if they do find it and/or be charged for remedial work to sort it out to company standards.

Yeah, there seem to be only two wires which let me make calls. The red and the blue (connected to the centre terminals on my master socket.)

The earth is not connected, which it should be. I'm well aware of the small current - it gave me a small electric shock earlier!

This black (and fairly thick) cable coming into my loft looks like it's directly connected to the telegraph pole (which is outside my house...on our land actually hence why BT pay us a few quid a year for the honour).

Before I go disconnecting the master socket, and putting the black cable into the back of it, I just wanted some advice. The last resort is of course calling BT out to fix this mess which was caused by my father at least a decade ago, because he aint been into the house since 1996. We don't want to fork out at least £100 for the BT man, and if messing around with cables is illegal, then we might be prosecuted for my fathers fiddling!!!!

No the white cable coming from that screw connector box in the loft does not have stripey coloured wires inside. Just red, blue, green and white.

I did find some old cable strewn onto the loft insulation which did have the coloured stripes, but it's only about 5 metres long and looks very dog-eared. (it's probably the original cable which should be in place, but it's probably the same age as the house, which is 25 years old (built in 1981), so maybe I need a new cable with the stripey coloured wires inside?

Oh this is so annoying. I'm on dial-up at the moment, and the speed has been drastically cut from 28.8Kbps from when before ADSL was enabled last week, to a measly 14.4Kbps now... :roll:

Whats the story behind the "master" socket being spured off of some b&q thing?

Well the cable thats there now (the white cable) is very flimsy and its typical of the thin extention stuff you get in B&Q, Focus, Homebase etc.

Jamez wrote:

Okay, if the fault is isolated to that missing connector coming from the telegraph pole then that's an issue for BT to come and fix. But having said that, it would probably become chargable if its obvious that the thing's been tampered with internally and that's not illegal as such, just a breach of contract between you and BT.

Here's a list of what coloured wiring goes to what from the Master Socket inwards:
http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/wiring_info.htm

Number 4 is optional and not used but is generally connected anyway for neatness.

If nothing else, you need numbers 2, 3 and 5 wired up correctly across the extensions.

That third conductor in the black dropwire coming into the house was probably for a remote earth, at the pole, and will be a leftover from many years ago, when the phone was on a party line.

It won't be required any more. Ignore it for now, but see last paragraph.

Don't try to fit the conductors in the black dropwire directly into your master socket. The conductors in dropwire are far too thick for the blade terminals in the socket and will phuque it permanently by pushing the blades too far apart.

From the dropwire to the master socket, you MUST go via a separate terminal box, simply to change from cable with thick conductors to cable with thin.

The use of the "B&Q" wire MIGHT be the problem, as it COULD also be too thick for the master socket, though that's UNLIKELY if the system HAS worked okay.

The actual wiring in your diagram looks okay to me. Volts go down a red wire just as easily as they do down a green; so colour coding, whilst important for convention, and for the next engineer to come along to understand what the previous one did, doesn't actually matter a toss electrically.

The only question left in my mind is whether they've been fiddling about on the top of the pole and have possibly got the three conductors in your dropwire mixed up whilst disconnecting and reconnecting. They MIGHT have left your exchange line coming across on ONE of the conductors connected at your end and that spare one.

Nick Harvey wrote:
Don't try to fit the conductors in the black dropwire directly into your master socket. The conductors in dropwire are far too thick for the blade terminals in the socket and will phuque it permanently by pushing the blades too far apart.

The NTE5 (which is what you should have - if the master socket is in 2 "halves", one usually with a BT or ntl, telewest, or other cable company logo it's an NTE5) has screw terminals for the dropwire



the half with the IDC is the bit you are allowed to touch, which comes out of the half with the screw terminals.

- the bit with the socket in the bottom right is the bit where the dropwire connects via screw terminals. The front bit then plugs into that socket and that is where the thinner extension wire goes, in the IDC things.

What I would do, is move the NTE5 if you have one to where the dropwire is, and then run any extensions off of that using the IDC terminals. If you don't have an NTE5, they're easily available on the internet, you don't need BT to fit one (though if you can buy a BT branded one in case you really do need to get an engineer - he probably won't care if it's BT branded or not but there's always an if).

You will need an IDC tool (cheap) to push your extension wire into those terminals. I would then put a secondary socket onto the end of any extensions.

If you do that and you still have problems, well that really is BT's fault. (or tiscali).

My wiring is:
dropwire > BT fitted connection box: > more dropwire-spec wire > NTE5 screw terminals > NTE5 front plate > extensions through IDC terminals. All extensions are filtered with an ADSLnation XF-1E filter @ http://www.adslnation.co.uk/products/xf-1e.php which INCLUDES sky boxes and the like.

I suppose, that if you wanted to, you could use an adslnation XTE-2005 ( http://www.adslnation.co.uk/products/xte2005.php ) so all the extensions are filtered at one place, and perhaps run a special extension that is unfiltered for your ADSL modem.

Just to keep the soddin' pedants happy, James, if you've got an NTE5 box, then feel free to insert the dropwire under the screw terminals.

If you've got a master socket (which you obviously have from the position of the contacts in your diagram), as I said originally, then DON'T try to fit the dropwire conductors into the IDC (blade) connectors.

NTE5 boxes were introduced many years AFTER the boxes you obviously have in your installation.

Bloomin' 'eck, it just ISN'T worth trying to be helpful in this place, sometimes, is it?

Nick Harvey wrote:Just to keep the soddin' pedants happy, James, if you've got an NTE5 box, then feel free to insert the dropwire under the screw terminals.

If you've got a master socket (which you obviously have from the position of the contacts in your diagram), as I said originally, then DON'T try to fit the dropwire conductors into the IDC (blade) connectors.

NTE5 boxes were introduced many years AFTER the boxes you obviously have in your installation.

Bloomin' 'eck, it just ISN'T worth trying to be helpful in this place, sometimes, is it?

But IIRC BT do replace any non-NTE5 socket with an NTE5 if they visit your house - this house is coming up to 100 years old, it's had a telephone line since before BT (apparently since the 50s, before automatic service) and plugs and sockets came along.
It has an NTE5.
The connection box was also replaced because it looked old (it had the old the old circular T logo) a few months ago because I was complaining of speed problems and BT were adamant that it was my equipment, not their precious exchange (though it was the exchange in the end)

So while NTE5s are relatively new, I doubt there are a great deal of houses left with a "master socket" (and I guess Jamez is one of them)