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Bell System 554 AB - Wall mounted rotary phone ....Need Help

Started by jljrlove, February 22, 2011, 12:05:31 AM

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jljrlove

We just got this awesome phone and now we need assistance in getting it going.  I took off the cover and found the following:
1) 2 Wires that are not connected: gray and yellow. Where do they go? They look like it goes to L2 but not sure.  At the location of L2 there are 2 screws. The bottom one has a red wire already connected. The screw above has nothing.
2) How do I get this thing connected and working with the phone service? What do I need to get? Does it need to be hard wired? Is there an adapter required?
3) When I took off the phone cover a plastic greenish tinted see through housing cover fell into my lap (2" L x 3/4" w).  Where does it go? On one side it's open as if it slips over something and on the other side it's closed.  It has a "V" at the closed end and an "8" at the opened end.  There is  3 little feet on the bottom (2 at open side and one at closed) that are used to snap in somewhere.
4) Is there any issues with having different phone services and having a rotary phone?
Your help is so appreciated! I hope this all makes sense.

jsowers

Please post a picture of the top of the network wiring block of the phone, so we can see which loose wires you're referring to. You should take the dial out (no need to disconnect the wires). Also a picture of the item that fell out would be good too. I'm scratching my head on that one. ??? The only clear cover thing in a 554 would be the cover over the back of the dial.

Some VOIP services won't support rotary and some will. You should be able to get dial tone regardless. The phone will need to be hard-wired unless you have a modular backplate on it. If it has a backplate, it has a modular plug that siides up and down on the back and mates to a wall phone jack.

Again, pictures would help immensely.
Jonathan

Phonesrfun

The plastic cover you describe covers the hookswitch contacts to protect them from dust.

The gray and yellow wires most likely come from the hookswitch and are souuposed to connect to L2, so hook them to that terminal on the upper screw.   The lone red wire on L2 most likely is the ringer screw.

The 554 was a hardwired phone in its native state.  You can purchase a half-modular cord that has a modular plug on one end and spade tips on the other for wiring to the phone.  Red from this line cord would connect to L2 on the network, and Green would connect to L1. Yellow and Black are not used, so I recommend snipping the ends off of the yellow and black wires and just letting them dangle.  Others have hooked yellow and black together on the G terminal on the network which is just a tie point.  I do not recommend doing this if you have an intenet phone such as comcast, verizon, vonage and so forth because they do use the yellow and black pair for a second line, and shorting them out raises heck with the ATA router.

All the above sounds like a lot to digest, but it is really quite simple.

The red ringer wire also goes to L2 on the network (as noted above)
Black ringer wire goes to L1 on the network
Slate (gray) ringer wire goes to terminal K on the network
Slate/red ringer wire goes to terminal A on the network

Hope this helps
-Bill G