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Panasonic 616 PBX Odd Malfunction

Started by George Knighton, November 26, 2014, 01:48:29 PM

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George Knighton

Before I give up, I thought I'd just ask here in case anybody has a bright idea.

My 616 PBX has suddenly started cycling the green Day Mode light.  It'll be on and stay that way for a long time, but then it'll give a hard click, the light'll go off, and Day Mode is off.

It still works, more or less, because when the Day Mode light is off I still get the dial tone for CO1.

However, the other CO lines are unavailable.

Any ideas for a simple fix?

I'm afraid I don't know much about these things.  I just found one that seemed to work, plugged it in, attached some lines and have just been enjoying myself for a while.  :-)

Extension 1 has too many phones on it, but that has never been a problem before.
Annoying new poster.

twocvbloke

Odd behaviour like that could indicate capacitors dying (depending on manufacture date, it could be 20-something years old), but I'd reduce the load on Ext.1 first, just incase it's that overloading the system's board... :)

unbeldi

#2
The problem sounds familiar.

I think one of mine was doing this or something very similar when I first got it.
I believe the fault in my unit was a poorly operating relay.  I seem to recall that it was a little bit depended on the position of the unit.  I am not perfectly sure what actually removed the problem, but I applied to each relay inside a good mechanical jolt with a hard object.


unbeldi

Btw,  all six CO lines should be accessible while the unit is off or in power-fail mode.
The C.O. lines each map to the first six station ports.
So, C.O. line 1 is available on port 1, C.O. line 2 on port 2 and so on.

The function of this is controlled by six power fail relays that are held when power is on; if it fails, they release and connect the station ports directly to the C.O. lines coming in.

George Knighton

Removed a bunch of phones from extension 1, put the fax machine on extension 2, and reset it...and now the Day Mode won't come on at all.

I believe it's probably done for, or beyond what I know to fix it.

Oh, well.  It was cheap.

I believe it lasted almost 2 years, too.

Right now it's just converting pulse to tone and giving me CO1...so I'll probably disconnect it and do something else.

Thanks very much for trying to help.
Annoying new poster.

twocvbloke

I'd still say capacitors, not too hard to replace, just fiddly & time consuming, but worth it, I need to replace the capacitors in my two Amiga A600 computers (they're about the same age as my own 616) as they've belched out their electrolyte in a few places, and will be replaced with Tantalum equivalents, the only reason I noticed the caps were going bad was one of them was acting very oddly (not starting up, then randomly starting on it's own, and the FDD sending sounds through the audio output, etc.), so odd behaviour of electronics can often be those annoying little barrels of paper, metal and goop... :)


Owain

Quote from: unbeldi on November 26, 2014, 02:21:00 PM
Btw,  all six CO lines should be accessible while the unit is off or in power-fail mode.
The C.O. lines each map to the first six station ports.
So, C.O. line 1 is available on port 1, C.O. line 2 on port 2 and so on.

This may vary by model; I think mine KX-TA616 has line 1 to port 1, line 4 to port 9.

unbeldi

Quote from: Owain on November 28, 2014, 03:19:38 PM
Quote from: unbeldi on November 26, 2014, 02:21:00 PM
Btw,  all six CO lines should be accessible while the unit is off or in power-fail mode.
The C.O. lines each map to the first six station ports.
So, C.O. line 1 is available on port 1, C.O. line 2 on port 2 and so on.

This may vary by model; I think mine KX-TA616 has line 1 to port 1, line 4 to port 9.

Yes, it varies by EASAPHONE model line.  The TA line is quite different from the T line.

The T line had discrete implementations of each CO and station port on the PCB, while the 'Hybrid' TA systems were modular in design and had plug-in cards for groups of station ports.   Only the first port of each card mapped to a CO line, whence CO1-->1, CO4-->9

I think most collectors here are using the much cheaper and older models KX-T308(10) and KX-T616(10).


James

My 616 is having the same problem. After I switch it on it works for up to a few minutes, then the I/O IC switches it to power failure mode. I did some poking around and the only thing I could find, so far, is that the 1 farad capacitor isn't holding a charge. So, I'm going to try replacing that capacitor and see if that helps any.

Phonesrfun

Looks like we revived an old thread. 

I thought my 616 died a few months ago, but it came back to life. 

Issue was that we had a power failure.  Once the power came back on, the 616 went nuts.  Phones ringing in cadence as if there was an incoming call, and the relays inside the box were cycling through with a definite rhythm.  I powered it off again and back on.  Same thing.  Powered it off for about a half hour and back on.  Same thing.  Brought it back up in programming mode.  Same thing.  Frustrated, I pronounced it dead and turned it off thinking that the power failure had also produced a surge.  I have a power strip ahead of the 616, but who knows how good it might be as a surge protector.  Maybe not at all.

So, after several months of it being turned off, I could not resist one more try.  Viola!  It worked and has continued to work now for a couple weeks.  I have no clue as to what killed it in the first place, and I guess what ever it was had to fully discharge any memory in the chips that may have been kept alive by some capacitor buried deep within, but after sitting for so long un-plugged it came to life.  Like Dr. Frankenstein:  "It's Alive!!!"


-Bill G

twocvbloke

If it has a battery, you could just pull that and reset it's memory, but if it has the supercap (a capacitor that holds a charge for quite a while) instead of a battery then that takes a bit more to discharge it, which is probably what yours did in either case (either dead battery or drained supercap)... :)

Doug Rose

I never power mine down....it is always running...Doug
Kidphone

Phonesrfun

Quote from: twocvbloke on September 29, 2017, 07:14:26 PM
If it has a battery, you could just pull that and reset it's memory, but if it has the supercap (a capacitor that holds a charge for quite a while) instead of a battery then that takes a bit more to discharge it, which is probably what yours did in either case (either dead battery or drained supercap)... :)
I did pull the battery, and so, I suspect it was a cap.  Like Doug, I never turn it off normally unless the power goes off, which is maybe an average of once or twice a year.

-Bill G

TelePlay

If you don't program your 616, there is no need for a battery, which is backup power to keep your programming while line power is out, and as such can just leave it out. Without a battery, it boots up to whatever the factory default settings were set to be.

If you have a battery, then you don't have that huge capacitor on the pc board playing battery until it is discharged.

andy1702

I agree about not having a battery fitted. I have a couple of units that I use occasionally at shows. When I got them I hard reset them both to factory deffaults, which works ok for me. There is a place to fig a battery bu I never bothered and they work fine.

Remember caps don't always bulge on the top when they go bad. I've had some in LCD monitors that needed replacing but looked perfecly ok to the eye.
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