Odd telephone fault

[Geoff Pearson]

I'm thinking the obverse to this - that I have had it wired wrong from 20 years and now it's right I have a problem. I'm colour-blind - the BT colours are really awkward.

[George Weston]

And me - which is why I suggested it. And it came with a bonus, as the removal of my internal wiring improved my broadband speed!

[Dave Liquorice]

That is certainly a possibilty. Can you reliably identify one pair from the two (or three) in the extension cable? If so rewire using that pair on terminals 2 & 5, making sure the same wire stays on the same numbered terminal through out. OK you might choose the orange/organge white pair but the electrons are even more colour blind that you. B-)

[John Weston]

Ah a new fact... You need a signal-injection cable tracer (£20-£30 and up) or a cheaper alternative - a DC LAN cable tester (£2-£3 on Ebay, more elsewhere) You will also need two RJ11 to BT phone plug adaptor cables, or RJ45 to BT plugs. The sender half will put a voltage for a short time in turn on your wiring at the socket on the master faceplate with it removed from the test socket to isolate your wiring from the incoming phone line. On a remote sensor half of the tester, plugged into your slaves in turn, the LEDS should be seen to flash in the same order at both ends. If not, you have cross-connected wires

You can do this with a multimeter on its continuity setting, but to use this, you may need a temporary known good wire connection between the two locations.

Or. as others have said, migrate to DECT phones as we all seem to have done :-)

[tony sayer]

I wonder..

Might here be a filtering issue here some where perhaps, someway round or other thats causing some tone in the DTMF sequence to "beat" with an out of band VDSL signal component perhaps?..

And thats accessing that by the via the extension wiring but not on the filtered socket output?..

Not that I know much about the way thats delivered VDSL having fibre over co-ax here;!...

[tony sayer]

A while ago now Dave but IIRC DTMF is made up of Two component tones right?. So if one was missing then you'd just hear the one tone component. However as per the other post I bet theres a filtering issue here somewhere being introduced on that line, possibly its been there all along and is now only showing up perhaps with the new system....

[Mark]

That test does not work with the number 6 for some reason ?

-

[Dave Liquorice]

There are 16 "digits" that can be sent via DTMF, each one represented by a pair of tones that are selected by the crosspoints of a 4 x 4 matrix.

A tone missing from the coder or filtred by the line would affect a whole row or column of digits from the matrix. The OP say's it's only this one number that is affected. I find it rather hard to believe that all the other numbers call don't use any of the digits from the affected row/column. It is something the OP could check, the matrix is:

[Frank Erskine]

Which is, of course, no good for real (dial) phones...

[SteveW]

Still very useful at times - I can send repeat prescription requests to my GP by letter or fax, they don't accept phone or email for it. This week I realised that I was running low and would run out over the weekend, so faxed them from work on Wednesday and picked up the prescription on Friday (I usually finish early on a Friday).

SteveW

[Frank Erskine]

How quaint. I simply phone the surgery and a day or two later collect the stuff from my pre-nominated apothecary.

In fact, if the GP prescribes a "one-off", by the time I drive to the said dispensary the goods are awaiting me (perhaps a 5 minutes wait in busy periods).

[Graham.]

Is that a question or a statement of what happens on your line?

If the latter, I suspect it does work, in as much as the dial tone stops, but perhaps you then hear NU rather than silence.

All that means is in your area there are no local numbers beginning with "6".

[Graham.]

The first cordless phone I ever had the opportunity to play with had a little rotary dial on the handset.

[Graham.]

And the test with the single digits?

[polygonum]

Even our small and technologically incompetent surgery now has online ordering of repeat prescriptions. Still takes two working days for them to be done. And they have no mechanism for either telling you they are ready or sending them on to you.[1]

[1] Well they do have a process, you can take or post an SAE in with the repeat request. But that rather defeats the whole purpose of online requesting, doesn't it?

[tony sayer]

Simples.. you only need the Two wires OK.

Disconnect them from the master socket. Put a 1.5 volt battery across the Two lines and check for 1.5 volts with a simple meter at the other points. Check for continuity and isolation on that pair, this will show you continuity and polarity. Of you need the Third line then just pair that up with the other two joined together you soon be able to work out which one that is. Simples eh;?..

And you don't have to know what colours the wires are its that simple..

No need to go under the floorboards and if your wiring is as it should be and you still have the fault then I reckon you have a good case to ask BT back in..

Yes but thats a bodge around a fault that should be easily sorted..

[tony sayer]

Yep the medical bizz is still rather olde world. I can e-mail the doc now but I still have to go get a bit of paper from then and cart that to the chemists shoppe. It seems beyond them to develop an electronic transfer system:(...

Still we know the NHS and IT shouldn't be in the same sentence;!!..

[tony sayer]

Usual Den response.

I know what it is and you should learn .....

[Dave Liquorice]

We can order repeat prescriptions on line and collect from the surgeries phramacy, as that is our default. If the default is the (note singular) phramacy in town you collect from there but I have a feeling that is person from phramacy taking the bit's of paper to that phramacy...

Unless you are an IT company and require a licence to print money. B-)

[Bob Eager]

I am reluctant top use it for that reason!