Well, unlike the UK the eircom/telecom/p&t push button phones are (and always have been) designed to work on 2-wire service only they never required a 3rd wire ringer.

Hence, in most cases the "R" terminal(s) is left disconnected in the socket. You had to set a jumper to activate it in the master socket too. I would guess that the older sockets from the late 70s and into the early 80s do provide the ring signal by default. Others don't. Many people also use regular 2 X RJ11 flush sockets or those little beige skirting sockets for extension phones. None of these sockets would have a 3rd wire ring connected up.

I know that in some instances an RJ11 master socket (eircom call it a Jacks Modular 1M/1) was added to household wiring where it was feeding hardwired "500" type rotary phones at other extensions. It would provide the old 3-wire installation with the (R) connection. The likelihood of actually plugging a rotary phone in with RJ11 was pretty slim unless you had one specifically modified.
The rotary dial phones were wired as 2-wire with the ringer and (L2) connected to one terminal and L1 to the other unless there were extensions where a bell tinkle would occur.

The "Jacks Modular 1M/1" system was implemented before digital switching was nationwide too. So there were probabally the odd SxS line and definitely plenty of crossbar lines terminating on them with pulse dial phones well into the 1980s. I'm sure there are still pleanty of phones still set to pulse dial on digital lines.

We never had the ultra-strict "it's illegal to touch the master socket" approach that BT had. As long as you knew what you were doing it wasn't exactly very difficult to move the master socket. Eircom don't seem to object as long as you don't mess with the stuff outside of your house. If you used a normal RJ11 point it would just mean that the over-night line test might cause a "tinkle" but only on old rotary phones. Other than that it worked fine. If you screwed up you could call them out but they charge a pretty heafty hourly rate.

In a modern house it wouldn't be entirely unusual not to find a master socket or to find a TE/Eircom socket and a load of generic RJ11s all wired directly to the incomming line (radially) (Eircom even do this themselves!)

There was never really an issue with connecting anything that would work to the Telecom Eireann network. P&T (it's predecessor [pre 1983])used to be a bit obcessive (like BT) about DIY work but it had more to do with unions insisting on jobs for the boys than anything technical. They'd get all freaked out if you connected an answering machine! and insist on printing a ø beside your name in the phonebook ! to indicate "automatic answering". They would obcess about this kind of fine detail while being incapable of providing a simple reliable STD line from Dublin to Cork. The result was they were completely abolished for gross incompetence and "for damaging the economic development prospects of the country!" The public and government finally snapped when they were taking up to 9 months to provide a new phone line and screwing up communications systems to large multinational companies! By the end of the late 1970s and into the early 80s there was a multi billion £ plan to turn the entire network digital (way ahead of most of the world). Lots of rural areas went straight from manual operator service to cutting edge digital systems.

From what I remember of the French system it had a similar set up too. 3rd wire ring was possible but not usually installed.

I don't know why BT continued to specify 3rd wire ringing in new phones. I can understand keeping backwards compatability in the socket system. There are plenty of BT specified products that are fully modern yet require 3rd wire ring!

On the alarm system point:

Ours takes the line before any jacks.. the phone line comes in and goes into the alarm then on the the "master jack". To sieze the line it simply disconnects the entire house.


[This message has been edited by djk (edited 05-13-2003).]