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That was explained in the next sentence. "Sound out" means you put a tone on one end and find it ont he other end with a listening device. In fact, I have laying on my desk right now a Progressive Electronics 77M Tone Generator and 200B Inductive Amplifier. Still use them for tracing wiring within the building. (Phone and network) Sometimes, the labels are wrong! :-)

Not sure what you mean. Your house wiring is usually spliced to the electric feed using big honking metal bands and an even bigger crimper. And, it's usually worked live. Never wanted to do that. :-)

Don't know what you mean here. Thicknet was usually done with something called "a vampire tap". For this you drilled a hole in the side of the cable to get past the outer covering and shield braid and then the pin on the vampire pierced the inner insulation and contacted the center conductor. Of course, there were also taps that copuld be placed between sections of cable with the screw on connectors but the likelihood of having you taps all line up that way wold be pretty slim. :-) Thinnet was Tee-connectors connected to standard BNC connectors, And, of course, today it's all RJ connectors on twisted pair. Don't see an "zssszttt" or magic.

No magic in any of this. Actually, the closest thing to "zssszttt" is fiber which is usually fused with an arc. Come to think of it, the new splicing machines (compared to the way we used to do it by hand) sure look like magic. :-)

What, manholes or unions?

bill

-- Bill Gunshannon de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves University of Scranton