Newsgroup: sci.electronics

[This article is distributed only in the UK.  Any UK experts please answer.]

I recently tried to connect a wireless phone bought here on a two wire
socket on another European country.  To do this I removed the British
modular socket and connected the two outer cables to the continental
socket.  This got me dialtone and the ability to dial.  Unfortunately
the phone refused to ring.  I removed all other phones from the circuit
thinking that the problem was a high REN, but it still wouldn't ring.
I tried all the other cable combinations to no avail.  I also tried to
connect some of the cables together, but that also didn't work.  When
I opened the phone I found that the two middle cables were indeed 
connected somewhere, so they were of some use.  This made me try to connect
a 5.6K resistor between one of the middle and one of the out cables and
this convinced the telephone to start ringing.  It also made it refuse
dialing.  I gave up.

When I returned here I opened a modular socket and found that there were
THREE wires coming into it.  It also included some circuitry (some of it
sealed) which must be doing something useful.

My question is:

How can I connect a British 4 wire socket to a continental 2 wire plug?
What circuit is needed?

I would also appreciate if someone could enlighten me as to the uses of the
other wires.

Many thanks

Diomidis
--
Diomidis Spinellis                  Internet:                 dds@cc.ic.ac.uk
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Imperial College                    JANET:                    dds@uk.ac.ic.cc
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