[ionized]

I have some of these sprinkled around the house in rectangular housings on the baseboards. The house had working telephones when we bought it, but we have been making do with cell phones. and the landline phone is not working at this point. (We never connected with the local telco.) The house had more than one line at one time. There are also standard modular phone plugs in several places.

I am fixing floors and I have to decide if they are necessary or desirable. If it is all junk, I should cut them off and not take the trouble to retain them with the new baseboards and floors. (They come up through the floors.)

Thanks for looking

 

[Jim Port]

Those are 25 pair connectors commonly seen on the older commercial phone systems. I don't know how you would need them on a residential phone that typically only uses 1 or 2 pairs.

 

[kbsparky]

20th century relics/junk.

No longer used in most commercial phone systems.

 

[jbfan]

Scrap wire if you want to pull it out.

 

[fa_f3_20]

Yep, museum pieces. That's a really odd thing to find in a residence. Did a bookie own the house before you?

 

[gregzoll]

Yep, museum pieces. That's a really odd thing to find in a residence. Did a bookie own the house before you?

Probably some Telco guy, had a PBX hooked up in that place. The old 300 baud deskset modems would use that Amphenol connector to hook them up to a five line phoneset.

There is a lot of Copper connected to those connectors, you could get enough bucks for a few cases of some good beer, or put towards a bottle of 12 year old Scotch.

 

[ionized]

Thanks for your responses. To answer one question, the former owner was in there for at least 40 years and was an electrician. He ran his business out of an office in the back of the house. There were at least two phone lines. The cable connected to these probably runs to the shop/garage too.

If these things are still active, along with the modular plugs, will it screw up the whole system if I just cut them off?

 

[gregzoll]

No it will not screw things up, because they would connect back to where the PBX controller was. If you are going to disconnect the ends, pull the wiring out and take it to a scrap dealer. Quite a bit of money in the amount of Copper that you have running through that house.

 

[ionized]

Quite a bit of money in the amount of Copper that you have running through that house.

You don't know the half of it. I have an incredible number of switch loops. I have one lighting circuit with 4 switches for three lights in a hallway. The king, however, is for a set of lights in a separate garage/shop. There are two switches in the house and 4 in the garage! If I ever run short of cash, I can start removing some cable! :no:

 

[Billy_Bob]

Those connectors were for old multi-line business phones with a "hold" button and a "local" line. (You could call from one phone in the business to another.) They looked like this...