1. Home
  2. Electronics Repair
  3. Landline phones damaged from thunderstorm

Landline phones damaged from thunderstorm

I am trying to help my grandmother with a phone problem. I'm not entirely sure what's going on (she's very confusing) but some (possibly all) of the Caller ID displays on her home telephones are garbled to the point where they're unreadable. I think it happened after a thunderstorm where the electric went out. The phones work fine except for the displays. It's on both the cordless and corded phones.

Is it at all possible that the storm would damage only the displays on the phones but yet the phones still work fine otherwise? I can't be sure, but I think even the cordless extension sets that aren't even connected to the phone line have the garbled display. That seems really strange to me.

I think the displays on at least five phones are damaged.

Just out of curiosity, could it be something on the phone line that's damaged which is causing the garbled displays? Or is it actually the phones which are damaged?

Reply to
Mike S.
Loading thread data ...

The answer is yes and yes. All of the phones could have been damaged in a lightening strike, even if the lightening did not strike anything in the house, or that enters it e.g. power, telephone, cable tv wiring.

Or they could just be getting garbled information.

The first thing to do is to bring a phone you know works and try it.

If it fails, unplug all the other phones, surge supressors, etc from the phone lines and see if it works.

If it still does not work, and you live in the U.S., find your demarc (demarcation) jack. This is were the phone line enters your house and officially the phone network ends and your private wiring begins.

Unplug the house wiring from it and plug in your known working phone. If it still fails, call the telephone company.

I have no idea if demarc jacks are used anywhere else. Here they are not.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
Reply to
Geoffrey S. Mendelson

Could be just that the micros in the phones have got screwed up. I would try a complete reset on all of the phones, and then 're-mating' the cordless extensions with the base. Seems odd that it should have knocked out all of the phones, and all in the same way. Also agreed with what Geoff said. Try a known good phone on the line.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

On Mon, 1 Sep 2008 02:42:25 -0700 (PDT), "Mike S." put finger to keyboard and composed:

There's the clue.

It doesn't look like a display problem. Instead it appears that the caller ID data is garbled before it gets to the display.

Could it be that one partially damaged phone is loading the line and affecting the signal strength? I'd measure the voltage on the phone line at the wall socket with all telephone devices and modems disconnected (it's 52V here in Australia), then reconnect them and measure again. There should be no appreciable difference. Of course all phones must be on-hook for this test.

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one \'i\' from my address when replying by email.
Reply to
Franc Zabkar

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.