When I finished lunch, I was ready to go. First task, work on the phone system. I looked at the jacks in the apartment, and found that the wiring was four pair (eight wires, as you know). That would give me four separate phone lines. It was pretty lucky to find four pair wiring in apartments, most places only had two pair for two separate phone lines. I split the lines into four phone jacks, getting them ready to mount on a short strip of plywood by the computer area. (And just realized that trip number two - remember the "three-trip" rule"? -- ould be for a desk area for the computers. A couple of sawhorses and a sheet of plywood would do just fine.)
I set up a tone using a 'fox'. When you need to find a phone wire, you put a little box called a 'fox' on one end of the pair of wires. The fox puts a warble tone on the line. Then you go to the other end of the wire, in this case the telco's junction box outside the apartment. You use another tool called the 'hound'. It's basically a large pencil-looking thing that senses the warble tone, playing the tone on a small speaker at the hound's eraser end. You pass the pencil end of the hound along the rows of wires, and listen for the fox's warbling sound. Where it's the loudest, you've found the other end of the wire. It's called a 'fox and hound' set and it's very useful for finding the right pairs of wires.
Out at the junction box, I quickly identified the pairs of wires. (I had put all four pairs on the fox, so I could find them all at once.) Once identified, I did a quick test of the quality of the phone lines. All four pairs test ok, which meant that the wiring was intact, and I'd have four phone lines available.
As you can tell, I had some phone experience. I'd worked for the phone company during the 80's, and not much had changed with the junction box at the apartment complex. Just visualize the content of the junction box as a series of wire connectors, or punch down blocks. One side of the punch down blocks are used for the wires to each apartment. The other side of the blocks hook up to the telephone company system.
There were always a few spare active lines available in the boxes so the telco techs could use them for testing and communications. I used the butt phone to find some unused active lines, did some quick quality tests, and found ten good active unused lines. I made some notes on my notepad, and then hooked up the four pairs from the apartments to the active lines I had identified.
I then went back into the apartment, and did a final quality test on the phone lines. The lines tested out good and clear; no crackles that might cause data transmission problems.
Phase one, the telco phase, was done. On to phase two, security for the apartment.