byterock

Well No perl stuff today as I have spend the last 24 hours almost fully diconeccted for the real word.

My phone line died 100% just a buzz coming down the line. I checked my DSL which is supposed to separate and it was down as well so a call out to Ma-Bell and the standard

A technicia will call sometime today between 08:00 and 17:00. So up early off to my local coffee shop to work for the day till they guy calls to come and fix whatever.

Well after 1 hour and 3 coffees I was asked to leave and off to the local McDs where after 30min and two coffees I was kicked off thier wi-fi. So back home a wait at least I got a few emails out and a little work done.

Now the fun techie part as the Bell tech showed up at about 10 am (early) and after about 5 mins of playing around and listing to the Buzz coming down the line we went down into the basement.

So I showed her where my Bakelite wiring block was and she was quite taken aback as she wanted to see the NID and I said I am very sure that is where the phone line comes in.

Well she hooked her fancy testing device up to the my lines and then the party started well. To make a long story sort it seem my house was at one time wired for a small business some 40+ years ago and so there was a good deal of stuff that shall we say is obsolete at best antique at worst. There where three sets of twisted pairs, something called a ring-generator and what can be described as a rotary switcher.

So by 13:00 the tech was still there trying to find a short that was way back in the system as 14:00 the senior tech showed and by 17:00 one other tech showed up went back to his van and picked something that looked like this

Which he said belonged to his father as he was a bell tech as well. So he hooked it and dialed a test number and then said the RENwas too high and this old rotary phone was the only way he could detect that. He phoned in the the correction to whomever the Buzzing stopped

So by 21:00 my new bell friends where on their way they jury rigged my phone to work and even got me limited speed DSL back and they will be back in the morning to rip our the rest of the old junk (seems Bell still owns this stuff) and install a proper NID, There is still a short someplace down the line and a slight buzz on the line but they say that should be fixed up tomorrow.

So 3 techs 20 phone calls and 11+ hours of tech time glad this was on the Bell side of things and not on my ticket.

Maybe I will try full analog tomorrow