Dodgy phone line? Phone works modems dont.

Philbert

Hi folks,

I have a problem with a phone line. Basically a standard analogue house phone has no problem working on this line. But when I plug in a fax or data modem, the fax crashes and the data modem fails. I have tried two different faxes (both Dell A960) & a standard 56k dial up modem.

Does this make any logical sense? Usually when I want to test if a phone line is working before I put a modem/fax onto it I just test it with an analogue phone and this test was usually conclusive until now.

Any ideas what might be happening?

Btw. There is Eircom DSL on the same line. So effectively there is a box with a DSL port and phone port. DSL Modem in one, phone in the other. Apparently there is no need for a DSL filter adapter because the filter is already inside this box.

Thanks for your help

Webmonkey

Hmm i don't know anythign about faxes but often modems wouldn't work when a phoen would work simply because you could be using a phone cable instead of a modem cable. The modem would complain no dial tone. This happens on quite a lot of modems, most of those intel soft modems.

Phone cable has 4 pins. Modem cable has 2 pins.

What is the same in both is the inner two cables so what i do to turn a phone cable into a modem one is by clipping the far left wire and the far right wire leaving the inner two so basically clip the outer 2. Think the color wires on outside are green and black afaik.

Don't know if this is the same with faxes but could possibly be since they are a data call as well.

Philbert

Hmmm.. Interesting Webmonkey.

Will test at the weekend and revert with results.

Thanks.

Philbert

Webmonkey you’re a genius

I was using 4 wire phone cables and that’s exactly what the problem was. Switched to a 2 wire cable and it worked straight away.

I’m really surprised that I had never come across this before. I’m even more surprised that the manufacturers don’t build their modems to simply ignore the outer two wires rather than CRASHING!!

Thanks a mill. You’ve cured a couple of people of a big headache

Webmonkey

No problem Glad it worked!

Donal