BALDWIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert W. Baldwin) (11/01/86)
Over the past month I've encountered a strange failure mode on my home telephone (617-492 in Cambridge MA). Often I can't break dial tone with my touch tone phone (its a GTE phone from before the breakup). Flashing the switch hook does break dial tone. The problem is solved by hanging up and trying again one or more times. An added twist that appeared this week is that calls don't complete after I've dialed them. I just hear click, click, silence. Pressing extra digits does not solve the problem. It seems like a large fraction of the tone decoders serving my line are broken or dying. Has anyone else in 617-492 had this problem (replys to me, not the list)? Does anyone have ideas on what could be wrong (I wonder whether an auto dialing modem could cope with this)? Finally, any advice on getting the phone company to fix this? I've reported the problem twice in the past month. --Bob -------
dp@JASPER.Palladian.COM (Jeffrey Del Papa) (11/03/86)
Date: Fri 31 Oct 86 16:29:57-EST
From: Robert W. Baldwin <BALDWIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Over the past month I've encountered a strange failure mode on
my home telephone (617-492 in Cambridge MA). Often I can't break dial
tone with my touch tone phone (its a GTE phone from before the
breakup). Flashing the switch hook does break dial tone. The problem
is solved by hanging up and trying again one or more times. An added
twist that appeared this week is that calls don't complete after I've
dialed them. I just hear click, click, silence. Pressing extra
digits does not solve the problem.
It seems like a large fraction of the tone decoders serving my
line are broken or dying. Has anyone else in 617-492 had this problem
(replys to me, not the list)? Does anyone have ideas on what could be
wrong (I wonder whether an auto dialing modem could cope with this)?
Finally, any advice on getting the phone company to fix this? I've
reported the problem twice in the past month.
--Bob
-------
it is far more likely that the tone generators in your telephone have
drifted off spec. Try a different phone. (I have had it happen to
several phones, including WE co. phones.) It may be possible (but
given that it is a gte phone, not likely) to adjust the tone
generators, and cause the phone to start working again. (GTE tends to
over cost-reduce their phones, I remember a desk phone that had a
large capicitor held only by the leads, which were push on
connectored, not soldered. The third time the phone fell off my desk,
one of the leads popped out, and the phone lost the ability to ring.
(I suppose if they had soldered it, the lead would have broken, making
it harder to fix... all to save a $.002 blob of adhesive))
<dp>