Warning: don't trust the old coax in a 1970s apartment building

My lead, Mike, told me to just patch into the existing line in a unit in the old Parkview complex. I did, and the signal was so degraded the customer's modem wouldn't sync. Had to run a whole new drop from the pole, which took an extra hour. What's the oldest wiring you guys have seen that actually still worked?

3 comments

3 Comments

rodriguez.jordan3mo ago

Man, that's rough lol. So the old coax was basically just a dummy pipe at that point? I gotta ask, was it the original cable itself that was shot, or did you find a bunch of crappy splitters and chewed-up fittings hidden in the walls? I've seen some ancient stuff where the center conductor was just green dust.

christopher_flores463mo ago

I used to think any coax with a decent signal reading at the tap would be fine. Then I found a line from 1982 in a condo that passed signal but had so much noise the modem kept dropping. I mean, the jacket crumbled when I touched it. Now I just assume anything older than me is gonna be a problem.

lopez.brooke19d ago

Different take maybe, but I've seen plenty of RG59 from the 70s in old brick buildings that somehow still runs fine if it was installed right. The real killer is usually bad connectors and old splitters, not the cable itself.