Basic Tone/Pulse dialing Princess phone clone made by Conair, Model SW-204. Don they make blow dryers and back massagers?
Symptoms: One can just barely make out a dial tone – very faint. Buttons do seem to produce tones or pulses depending on the switch setting but these do not make it to the phone line. Side-tone does work. Testing: Tried different cords (both base and handset), whacked and pounded it – no change. Rich brought in both a Fisher VCR that eats tapes (boring – bad idler tire) and this cheapo phone. Well, it takes all types…. He said he was trying to determine why the phones in his house went dead and tried in the ‘test’ jack, wherever and whatever that might be. Then this phone stopped working everywhere else. Indeed, plugging it into a known good phone line results in just barely being able to make out the dial-tone. Nothing else works. I figure it is probably not worth spending a lot of time on this thing. After all, it is not what you would call valuable in any sense of the word. Check for bad connections, test semiconductors for shorts, clean the keypad. That is about it. Maybe I will