I honestly don't remember whether the plugs were the clunky four pin or the
then-modern RJ11. I recall studying RJ11 and RJ45 plugs and sockets at some
point and discovering that some plugs and sockets had six wires instead of only
four or two. I never did learn if they had a different number. The form
factor was the same.
This was GTE territory.
Steve
On Jan 3, 2013, at 10:36 AM, John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
wrote:
--On Thursday, January 03, 2013 10:10 -0500 Steve Crocker
<steve(_at_)shinkuro(_dot_)com> wrote:
In 1974 I moved into a condo complex in Marina del Rey near
USC-ISI. As has been my usual practice, I ordered two POTS
lines and I went to the phone company to get the phones. The
condo was pre-wired with jacks in each of the major rooms.
The phones I got from the phone company came with plugs that
were wired for either line 1 or line 2. It took me a minute
of incredulity to understand the system. Each jack was wired
for both lines, and each phone was wired to connect to one or
the other of the two lines. Clever but definitely different
from anything I had seen before. I could move the phones from
room to room. Each phone "knew" whether it was for line 1 or
line 2.
Steve,
Just out of curiosity and if you remember, were those pre-wired
jacks the round four-pin puppies, RJ series, or something else?
I saw those sorts of setups several times with the four-pin
jacks but never with RJ11/14 ones. Of course the "knowledge" in
the phone was about which pair was connected to the screw
terminals on the inside so, if one ignored the threats and took
the cover off the phone...
Equally out of curiosity, was MdR in Pac Bell or GTE territory
at the time? I know that some of their policies were different,
but don't know which ones and what the actual consequences were.
john