All telephone service to the Throop Church building is now underground from Henry House (280 S. Los Robles). Henry House service comes from a telephone pole (known as Raleigh) located on the property line between the church and the church-owned apartments. There are 5 lines, 2 of which go thru a Merlin (AT&T) telephone system in the main building. Another line goes directly to the main office and is used for a fax machine and possibly for computer modems. Two more lines are used for the pay telephone.
(see the file henry.. for telephone wiring inside Henry House). The interface (demarcation point) with the telephone Co. is upstairs behind a wood cover low on the S wall a little to the E of center. Three 6-pair cables and one 2-pair cable from the outside enter here thru the wall (14 pairs total). They connect to 3@ 6-pair fuse blocks plus 2@ single fuse blocks. From here 5 pairs feed the telephone room of the main church building thru a 25-pair underground cable.
1. A 2-pair black cable from the telephone pole feeds the 2 incoming lines to the Merlin system controller in the telephone room of the church. The colors in the 25-pair [2-pair from telephone pole] are: line A: 1.white-blue [white-orange]. line B: 2.white-orange [white-blue]. Sorry but the phone Co. used their pair 2 for A while our 25-conductor cable uses pair 1 for A (more logical).
2. Pair 24.violet-brown feeds the 3rd line (not Merlin) to the main office. It's currently used for the fax machine.
3. Two pairs are used for the pay telephone (reinstalled Sept. 1999) in the telephone room of the main building: 16.yellow-blue 17.yellow-orange
This room has a coin telephone. It was removed about around 1995 to supposedly save money but was reinstalled in Sept. 1999. In 1995 the pay phone was replaced with a phone on the Church's line B. This phone had restricted calling due to a call controller. It also had an "honor system" coin box for the public to use to pay for calls. It may be removed now that another pay phone has been installed.
The 2 Merlin system lines from Henry House (A: white-blue and B: white-orange (via a 25-pair cable from Henry House) feed one surface mount jack box. The B pair goes to a small white jack box which has a modular jack which feeds the large AT&T (Western Electric) model 206 Merlin Communication System Controller (input B).
The A line pair enters a larger beige jack box. It's spliced and exits this box to a jack upstairs in the church office. A jumper cable upstairs connects this to another jack (on the same upstairs jack box) and the main line then returns via a pair of wires in the same white cable (which runs along the S. side of the Telephone Room ceiling) back to the same jack box in the telephone room. This return cable is connected to the other pair of terminal screws which go to the other 2 contacts of the modular jack which feeds input A of the Merlin Communication Controller. Also connected to these 2 terminals is a violet-slate pair (#15) tap line (before the Merlin system) which leads to an answering machine in the main office.
The purpose of feeding the A line upstairs first is so that a modem may be connected to the upstairs jack directly to the A line without having any other telephones on the same circuit. The 3rd telephone line is a violet-brown pair from Henry House that is fed to a jack in the main office via a violet-brown pair to the upstairs punch down block.
This is a large box about a foot square mounted on the wall of the public telephone room. To remove it, lift up and pull gently out. It has 2 lines from the phone Co. (A and B) and 6 lines (0-5) for special Merlin Telephones using 8-conductor (4 pair) wires to each phone using 8-conductor modular jacks. As of 1996 only 4 of these 6 lines were in use (we have only 4 Merlin telephones). Three of these jacks feed (thru surface mount jack boxes) wires in a 25-pair phone cable which runs E. on the ceiling edge and then up thru the ceiling to a punch-down connector block in an upstairs office. 12 pair are used for 3 Merlin phones upstairs, plus one pair for the answering machine. Merlin line 2 feeds a phone in the telephone room which is set up for "incoming calls only" by a DIP switch on the Merlin Controller. In 1996 additional Merlin phones cost nearly $200 each with a $200 installation charge if they install it. There is a manual for the Merlin system and a smaller manual to be used for each telephone.
this is located in the SE corner of E-most small office --not the large office on the E side. The left side is fed from the 25-pair cable from the telephone room. On the right side are 4@ multi-conductor cables to the 4 offices (one to each office: 2 go left and 2 go right. The left 2 go thru a hole in the wall to 1. the large E office; 2. the large W office (runs in the hallway around the door frames). The right 2 go to: 1. this office (ends after several feet); 2. the office just to the W.
Cable identification of connections: (Pair 19 refers to 19 (yellow-brown) per the color-code chart, etc. Cable to downstairs: Pairs 1-12 are for the Merlin system: Pairs 1-4 are for phone #0 (W. Office), pairs 5-8 for phone #1, pairs 9-12 for phone #3. Pairs 24 and 25 go to the W office. The cable to the W office is an old style cable with solid color wires (no tracers). Pair 24 is the 3rd line from the telephone Co. and feeds pair 7 (red-orange) to the W. office. Pair 25 is for the answering machine and feeds pair 6 (red-blue) to the W. office (taps the 1st line from the tel. co.).
A "punch-down" tool is sold for installing wire in the split beam terminals. The tool is excessively expensive ($40+ in 1996). It's claimed that a very small screwdriver also works. The insulation is stripped off as the wire is pushed down into the split beam.
The 16 pair cable to this office uses solid colors. Pairs 1-4 are for the Merlin phone. Pair 6 (red-blue) is for the answering machine. Pair 7 (red-orange) is the 3rd telephone line for the fax machine and modems. One modem line goes to the office to the E and has been routed thru the storage cabinets on the E wall. No such line should have been installed.
At the terminal block. The * are screw terminals. The numbers are the pair numbers per the standard color-code. Shown is the top half. The bottom half is a repeat of the top half except add 5 to each number: e.g. pair 4 becomes pair 9.
Note that terminal 6 has black and yellow patch wires substituting for the standard red-blue pair.* * 2 4 * * 5 * * * * 1 3 * *
Service was formerly from telephone poles on Del Mar with the lines running thru the electric basement. No lines here are currently in use. A low priority task is to remove all old wiring here except the line to the choir room which could be of some use in the future. Be sure not to remove the control line to the sprinkler valve which looks something like a telephone cable. An old telephone interface is on a girder about 2 m. N of the crawl space access door in the electric basement. An unused gray cable goes from here to the Public Tel. room but is not connected there. The terminal panel just W. of here is part of the audio system: see "Audio Wiring". Just above said access door are 3 small telephone cables. One which has friction tape on it outside the access door is joined by a splice just inside the door to a round white line which goes to the choir loft (mostly just laid on the dirt). Two others (white and gray) go to the Public Telephone room and could be removed.
This formerly fed the pay telephone.
This is on the N. side of Throop at top of fire escape ladder. These lines are not now in use and future service should be from Henry House. Both a 4 cond. line A and a 2 cond. line B go to fuse boxes just outside the room off the balcony stairs landing (near balcony entrance). A pair from each of A and B fed a cable which runs up the main stairway and then into the Morrison room to a jack by the door. At this jack one pair goes to the tower room & another pair goes to the E. Fire Escape Room.
Another pair (not now used) from A feeds a modular jack in the N. Balcony Room which was once used as an office. Another 2-pair cable goes over the top of the roof to the pay phone (not in use). The phone co. was supposed to remove it but didn't.
This prevents the telephone in the Public Telephone Room from making most long distance calls by allowing dialing to only nearby area codes. This is done by a little box about the size of ones hand with a red light on the front. It's located under the Merlin controller in the Public Telephone Room. It's connected to line B prior to the Merlin system and since most calls come in on line A, it will seldom get incoming calls. Unless there are 2 calls in progress on the Merlin system, the public telephone may be used.
It may be programmed by punching codes into the telephone it's connected to. There's an instruction/programming manual in the office. It's powered by a plug-in power supply. If you unplug it, a battery-powered alarm will sound. To remove it from the wall, push it to the right and pull gently. AT&T's phone re manual: 1-888-746-2355.
Shown below is the color codes of wires in a 25 pair (twisted pair) telephone cable. 1. means pair one, etc. Each pair consists of a ground wire (may have a small voltage on it) and a hot wire (roughly 50v dc). An example will be given for pair 1. (white-blue) but all other pairs are similar. White-blue means that the ground wire is white traced by smaller blue bands. The hot wire for pair 1. is just the opposite: blue traced by smaller white bands.
1.white-blue 6.red-blue 11.black-blue 16.yellow-blue 2.white-orange 7.red-orange 12.black-orange 17.yellow-orange 3.white-green 8.red-green 13.black-green 18.yellow-green 4.white-brown 9.red-brown 14.black-brown 19.yellow-brown 5.white-slate 10.red-slate 15.black-slate 20.yellow-slate 21.violet-blue 22.violet-orange 23.violet-green 24.violet-brown 25.violet-slate
For less than 25 conductors the same scheme is used. For old cable there may be no tracer (band) color and all wires are solid colors. There may be 5 white wires (all ground), and 5 blue wires (all hot). #1 is a solid-white solid-blue pair and if pairs become separated it's difficult to pair up wires again. The 16-pair cable to the W. Office seems to have the 16th pair: red-white.
Some other cables have half of the wires two-color and half solid colors: A white-blue wire and solid blue wire are pair 1. For 1 or 2 pair cables, the color codes are usually different: pair 1. green, red; pair 2. black, yellow. Here solid red and yellow are the "hot" sides.
AT&T no longer supports Merlin. They turned it over to Avaya Inc., 14400 Hertz Quail Spring Pkwy, Oklahoma City, OK 73134, 1-800-852-2436 (but see below). Another address for Avaya Communications: PO Box 78831, Phoenix AZ, 85062-8831. Phone # for "Classic Avaya: 1-877-582-3687. STL Inc. has used parts: 877-301-48700. Ordered a used handset from them for $25.