Somewhat OT Knob & Tube wiring (was Re: Power and the RA82)

[Curt at Atari Museum]

AC "zaps" for a 10th of second at 110v isn't too bad when crawling 
around running wires, it smarts and leave a nasty tingling feeling in 
your teeth, makes you super wary the rest of the day.

What is the most painful is hooking up a telco line (I used to work for 
an alarm company many many moons ago) and it just never failed that when 
you were wiring up the RJ31X fail-over box to the alarm system, somebody 
would call into the line and man does DC hurt and burn like a 
Mother-f'er!!!    (RJ31X's are great little boxes that will fail the 
telco line over to the alarm box and cut the phone service to the rest 
of the house, this is good in case someone has left a phone off the hook 
or a burglar rushes in and starts punching numbers on the a telephones 
keypad to force the alarm to misdial the central station).



Curt


Vintage Computer Festival wrote:

>On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Have to admit, though, that except for basements and attics, I've
>>always seen that kind of wiring _inside_ the walls (or threaded
>>through former gas-light pipes).  I've never seen a ground wire with
>>knob and tube.  AFAIK, that didn't even come into fashion when they
>>switched to asphalt-impregnated cloth-covered Romex (1940s?).  I think
>>ground wires became standard in my area post 1960, with the advent of
>>plastic-covered Romex.
>>    
>>
>
>I once helped a friend wire a new T1 for his ISP.  His office is located
>in a real old building with knob & tube wiring.  Being the most limber, I
>agreed to go up into the attic and crawl around amongst the wiring to run
>the cable through.  That was scary, as I had no idea if the wires were
>live or not and my friend's reassurance that the power was shut off didn't
>seem to be based on any factual knowledge.  Very disconcerting.
>
>  
>


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