On Jul 18, 2:08*pm, nesesu wrote:
On Jul 18, 12:11*pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:





On 7/18/2010 5:46 AM Andrew Rossmann spake thus:

In article ,
says...

(And by telephone I mean the kind God intended us to use, a regular old
land line, not those Dick Tracy cell-phone thingies.)

Client has a bunch of phones in their house. Starting a few days ago,
several of them don't work; pick them up, no dial tone. (Confirmed with
a good set which I used to test all the jacks.)

But get this: while I was there, at least one of the phones that doesn't
work (a wireless phone) rang on an incoming call. WTF?!?!? It rang, but
when picked up--nothing, dead. No dial tone trying to make a call.

Anyone familiar with the inner mysteries of the telephone system care to
try to 'splain this? How could a phone not work, but still ring on an
incoming call?

You didn't mention this: What happens if you move a non-working phone to
where a working phone is? Does it now work? If so, then it's a wiring
issue. Otherwise, it's the phone itself.

Well, I didn't test that, but I did the reverse test which shows that
the problem is the wiring, not the phone: I took a working phone (a
regular, non-cordless phone) and plugged it in to a non-working phone
jack. It was dead, so the problem appears to me to be the wiring.

The phone that rang on an incoming call, by the way, was a cordless
(i.e., powered) phone, which tends to confirm the diagnosis someone else
here gave of a "DC open", a corroded connection that would pass enough
of the higher ring voltage to make the phone ring, but not enough to go
"off hook".

--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

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There is probably a break in L1 or L2 at a daisy chained jack. Down
stream of the break, there is no DC path for loop current to trigger
dial tone, BUT, since the ringer is AC, there can be a path back
through the ringer of a phone bridging the break [effectively two
phones in series] so the phone could ring, but not close the DC loop
when taken off hook.

Neil S.

EXCELLENT!

That would account for the electronic phone ringing very well,

Bet the old ATT 'dialer' phone has a weak ring, right?