I honestly don't remember whether the plugs were the clunky four pin or the then-modern RJ11. I recall studying RJ11 and RJ45 plugs and sockets at some point and discovering that some plugs and sockets had six wires instead of only four or two. I never did learn if they had a different number. The form factor was the same. This was GTE territory. Steve On Jan 3, 2013, at 10:36 AM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > --On Thursday, January 03, 2013 10:10 -0500 Steve Crocker > <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> In 1974 I moved into a condo complex in Marina del Rey near >> USC-ISI. As has been my usual practice, I ordered two POTS >> lines and I went to the phone company to get the phones. The >> condo was pre-wired with jacks in each of the major rooms. >> The phones I got from the phone company came with plugs that >> were wired for either line 1 or line 2. It took me a minute >> of incredulity to understand the system. Each jack was wired >> for both lines, and each phone was wired to connect to one or >> the other of the two lines. Clever but definitely different >> from anything I had seen before. I could move the phones from >> room to room. Each phone "knew" whether it was for line 1 or >> line 2. > > Steve, > > Just out of curiosity and if you remember, were those pre-wired > jacks the round four-pin puppies, RJ series, or something else? > I saw those sorts of setups several times with the four-pin > jacks but never with RJ11/14 ones. Of course the "knowledge" in > the phone was about which pair was connected to the screw > terminals on the inside so, if one ignored the threats and took > the cover off the phone... > > Equally out of curiosity, was MdR in Pac Bell or GTE territory > at the time? I know that some of their policies were different, > but don't know which ones and what the actual consequences were. > > john >