Ok. It appears that the plugs I need are 2mm banana plugs, not tip plugs. Tip plugs
almost fit but are a tiny bit too big in diameter. Banana plugs will be here tomorrow.
My need for these is because of the amazing purchase I made at a local thrift store for 20 bucks – a Tempo Sidekick Plus, which originally sold for about $5000, and can be found now on ebay for $400-$500 and more.
So what's a Tempo Sidekick? It's geared towards analog phone lines and network wiring. It will (simultaneously) measure AC and DC volts. Resistance and leakage current (at around 130V). Capacitance and cable length (if the properties are known). And a bunch of phone line signal quality issues.
But the biggie for me – it's also a TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer). It sends a pulse into the cable (pair), and the pulse is reflected back when discontinuities are detected. Shorts, opens, poor splices in the cable. The results are shown on a graph in feet or meters from the cable end. Need to know where your network cable got severed? The TDR will tell you it's 43' (of cable length) from the end of the cable. That might not be too useful if you don't know how the cable is run, but if the 2 ends are 30 feet apart, the other end is probably the place to start.
In the telco world, red is connected to the ring, which is negative and black is connected to the tip which is positive. Arrggghhh.
Measurement results are shown on a big bright digital display. Or analog if you're old school.
The third input channel does not work, but fortunately it's not required for most functions. There are a bunch of relays in this thing which go clickity-click when changing functions. I suspect one of them is the culprit.
By the way, this thing is huge – it's over 12" tall.