probably a bad pair somewhere, and instead of fixing it they just jumpered around it. this can KILL a DSL signal.

we moved the console at the police dept a few years ago. they had 25 pair cables run in a complete loop around the PD, due to the bad pairs, some signal went left to get where they were going, others went right, and like i said this was a continuous unbroken cable, run in a loop. when a pair would go bad, they would jus tpunch down the other side to get there from teh "good" side of the cable. made for some horrible noise issues as well.

Do you have an alarm system wired to the phone line?

Good question. There is an alarm system in the house. I don't use it, but I belive it was wired at some point. Would these lines go to the central system? How do I convert back to just 2 lines?

O.k., this is the way an alarm co. wires their alarm system to the phone line. Dial tone(normally on the red, green) comes into the house and is connected to a wire that goes to your alarm control panel. It returns on a different pair(say, black yellow or some other pair of colors) back to your junction box where it is wired to however many phones/jacks you have in the house. If you want to remove the alarm panel from the circuit, find out which pair is your incoming dial tone(use an ohmmeter..NOT YOUR TONGUE!) and then isolate all the wires feeding your phones/jacks and connect them together...i.e. greens to greens, reds to reds, w/bl to w/bl etc; You should end up with just one pair not connected to anything...this is the pair going to your alarm panel. By the way, if you open your alarm control box, you should see a phone jack with the alarm cord connected to it.
:)

Be advised though that if your alarm system is still active, you will probably either set it off or set a code when you disconnect the phone line. If you want to disable the phone to the alarm, you may have to totally disable the alarm by removing power and the battery.

The alarm has been disconnected for years.

I know which wires come back from the alarm panel. So I should just be able to connect the red/greean hot wires from the street to the wires that 'connect' to the return wires from the panel, therefore bypassing it. Correct?

Wease,
Did you determine that the strange wiring is because of the alarm panel? Are you saying that your "inside" wires(the ones going to your phones/jacks) are in the vicinity of the alarm control panel at some other point in the house? Normally, they should be somewhere in the vicinity of your electric fuse panel. If your inside wires are at your alarm panel at some other point in the house then, yes, you would send dial tone just on the red/green(or any pair) back to the alarm panel and connect that pair to all the other pairs feeding your phones/jacks.
Your original message alluded to "daisy chaining". This is the way electricians like to run phone wire because thats standard in electical wiring(i.g. outlet to outlet) but that's a big no-no when it comes to phone wiring which should always be "home-runned" from jack back to main phone panel and for great reasons. By the way, is all this because of DSL issues as DavidandKasie alluded to?

The alarm system is setup on the other end of the house. They ran a phone wire from there to one of the boxes on that end of the house and then did the funky wiring.

This phone line is daisy chained. My new remodel phone/cat5 is home runnned. I just need to get the 2 hot wires to my central room and rewire the basement.

o.k., then your alarm wire will now become a feed wire if you have dial tone on just one pair to feed the daisy chain mess. Leave the return pair abandoned. This will bypass the alarm. Any other phones/jacks you have(to remodel and central room) just run separate phone wires with dial tone on them to those points--it's like branches on a tree. Whoever homerunned the remodel phone wires should have run them to a point where there's dial tone but if not then you'd have to do as I suggested and run dial tone to that point(s).

o.k., then your alarm wire will now become a feed wire if you have dial tone on just one pair to feed the daisy chain mess. Leave the return pair abandoned. This will bypass the alarm. Any other phones/jacks you have(to remodel and central room) just run separate phone wires with dial tone on them to those points--it's like branches on a tree. Whoever homerunned the remodel phone wires should have run them to a point where there's dial tone but if not then you'd have to do as I suggested and run dial tone to that point(s).