"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Smitty Two wrote:
I have a cordless phone / answering machine system at home that's
started giving trouble of late. It's a Panasonic, model KX-TG5433. 5.8
gHz. It came with 3 handsets, which I like because I can always find one
of them and at least one always has a full battery charge. I'd guess
it's about 5-8 years old.

Problem is, two of the handsets have stopped reliably communicating with
the base. I often can't get a dialtone to call out, nor answer an
incoming call. Error message sometimes comes up on the handset display,
saying I'm out of range.

First thing I'd check is the batteries. 8 years is a very good life for
rechargeable types. Swap from the good handset to a faulty one to prove
this hypothesis.

--
*He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

Dave Plowman

Considering that with most cordless phone handsets, the manufacturers pay
little if any attention to 'correct' charging schemes for the type of
battery being used, they are remarkably long-lived. I used to do a lot of
work on first, second and third generation cordlesses, and almost all,
irrespective of the manufacturer or cost, charged the batteries via a simple
single current limiting resistor.

My household cordless has two handsets, and I would guess that they are
probably getting on for 10 years old now, and they are both on their
original sets of batteries, and are both still going strong. Sometimes, the
handset in the bedroom, can sit on its charging base for days, undisturbed,
with the batteries just cooking away gently, but doesn't seem to have done
them any harm.

Arfa