On Sun, 19 Nov 2000, Bill Richman wrote: They're fairly easy to hook up. I believe this system uses three pairs for each station (phone): one for analog voice, one for digital signaling data, and the third would be for power. This might be a more efficient system though, using maybe only two pairs, or even one if it's really cool. The pairs would then be arranged in sequence on the punchdown block, and you'd hook them up to a jack in standard order. Standard order (for those not in the know): On jacks with red/green/black/yellow wires: green/red is the first pair (or line) and black/yellow is the second. This is a traditional phone jack, mostly found in older homes and stuff. Green and black are the positive (or "tip") side of the line, and red and yellow are the negative (or "ring") side. Polarity generally matters a great deal on proprietary phone systems with digital sets. It used to matter on regular telephone lines too but generally not anymore, although the PBX I have in my house will not seize a loop start trunk if the polarity is reversed. It's either a feature or a bug, depending on how stringent or how lax you are. On jacks with blue, orange, green, brown and slate (grey) wiring, the order is exactly as I have listed. The common color will be white. So the first pair will be one wire with mostly white, and the other wire will be mostly blue. The second is one wire that's mostly white, and the other mostly orange. The mostly white wire is always positive (tip) and the other wire is negative (ring). A 25 pair cable has a standard color scheme. The "primary colors", as previously mentioned, are Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, Slate (grey). A 25 pair cable is split up into 5 groups of 5 pairs. These are the colors for each group of five pairs. Each group also has a different common color. The first group is white, the second is red, then black, then yellow, then violet. So basically, as the 25 pair cable comes out of the phone system, the white/blue-blue/white pair represents the first line of the first phone. The white/orange-orange/white pair is the second line, etc. What you still need to figure out is how many pairs each set requires. Say they require three, then the first three pairs (blue/white, orange/white, and green/white) would be connected up for the first phone. The second phone would get brown/white, slate/white, and blue/red (see how we just moved into the second group of 5 pairs? the standard grouping of the colors has no bearing on how the phones are hooked up...at least I've never seen a system that would do something as lame as this). And the next phone would get orange/red, green/red, brown/red. And so on. You generally will not find any sort of manuals for phone systems on the web like you will old computer manuals. Phone guys are archaic. Knowledge is passed by word of mouth or by hard-copying manuals. Nobody has ever thought to scan any of these old manuals in and post them online in an archive like the computer hobbyists do (although many times I wish someone with more time than I have would do so). Mostly this is because nobody tinkers with old phone systems as a pasttime. You only need the manual once, usually to install and configure, and then after that it gets tucked away somewhere. You memorize what you need to know. Also, nobody wants to post something online that they can charge money for :) Anyway, all that being said, if you can't turn up a manual anywhere else, I'm almost positive we have one for the Strata DK in our library at my office. I can run a copy for you. Contact me at <sellam(a)vintage.org> if you're interested (consider this an olive branch ;) Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org