what kind of adapter do I need?

[rbig]

I am completely new to this phone cable business, and just want to confirm up front that I don't know what I'm talking about, so please bear with me.

I have a wall mounted phone jack box. It has two separate jacks, each having a different phone number.

I need to take cables from the two wall box jacks and plug into a switch box that has one four conductor jack (all the jacks have the same physical size; it's just that some are two conductor and some four conductor). The switch is used to enable a single line phone to be switched between lines with different phone numbers (line 1 and line 2).

I will need an adapter at the switch, as both cables from the wall jack will have to be plugged into the single four conductor jack on the switch.

So, what would an adapter for this purpose be called, and where do I get one?

[suemarkp]

A normal 4 pin phone jack is called an RJ-11 jack. The two pins ins the middle are line 1 and the two outer pins are line 2. So you can take your existing wires and merge them into one connector and still have two lines.

It can get confusing when people break the wires out to only two, or reverse which set is on the middle two pins. This is because a normal single line phone only uses the two middle pins. There are adapters that plug into an RJ-11 jack and break them into three jacks -- one with line 1 on the center pins, one with line 2 on the center pins, and a 4 pin just like the original plugged into. This works for most people.

But if you want one phone to easily switch between two lines, you need a phone line switch. Check at Radio Shack and see if they have such a device. I'd expect it to take a normal 4 wire RJ-11 jack and it would have a switch the moes the two signal pairs to the center to pins of the jack the phone handset plugs into.

There is also a wiring order for the phone pins. It may matter which of the two wires goes on a specific pin of a pair of pins. The standard color codes are all over the net, but you need to know if you have modern cables (blue, blue-white, orange, orange-white wires) or old style (red, green, black ,yellow). The phone jacks usually have a color marker by each screw to help you sort out the colors. The center two pins are red/green in the old style wiring. If you need to put line 2 there instead, you need to know if black is equivalent to red or if yellow is equivalent to the red.

[rbig]

Thanks for the info. I think it's over my head.

The way I can handle it is to bring two single line phone cords up to an adapter that then comes out with a two line plug to go into the backside of my switch (I've already got a switch; it takes a single cord with both numbers in it). The right kind of adapter is what I need, but I'm not finding any with searches. Possibly because I don't know exactly what the adapters are called.

[joed]

This device should work for you. Note this is two line jack splitter. Not an add an outlet splitter.
It says for splitting your two line jack into two separte lines. It should work in reverse also to combine your two lines into one.


http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102899&cp=2032052.2032075.2032077.2032088&parentPage=family

[rbig]

I think it'll work. Thanks.

[AllanJ]

Do not use a phone line splitter in reverse unless you are absolutely positively sure that no two conductors from the phone company (for example the incoming red and the incoming yellow representing lines 1 and 2 respectively) end up being Y-connected together.

[rbig]

OK. Thanks.