Thanks for the reply. There's a few reasons why I don't want to use the protel. I have VOIP service. Also the phone is going in my barn and I understand you need to use the phone at least weekly to keep the battery charged. I'm not always out there that often. Finally I know the protel board can answer a call on its own which I don't trust. It did that in testing it. I'm on call for work and can't afford to miss calls at home.
Your Protel 8000 chassis can be programmed to let it ring without it answering the call on its own. Mine did the same thing with its default programming (it answered the call after just one ring if I remember right), but it didn't after I had it programmed (I told the guy who did the programming that I didn't want the phone to answer calls on its own).
As for the battery issue, that only applies to crappy batteries (i.e., the NiCDs that come in the premade battery packs that are marketed for payphones). Use Sanyo/Panasonic Eneloops (the best rechargeable AA batteries you can buy) and you can leave them in there for a year or more without using the payphone and they will be fine, and you can recharge them in a regular battery charger. You can get the 4 batteries you need plus a charger bundled with it for $18 -
link. It's best to have 8 batteries though, so you can immediately swap in freshly charged ones while you're recharging the 4 you just removed. You'll need a 4-position battery holder and the right type of Molex connector. See my post
here for more details.
However, if you don't care about coin functionality at all, a "dumb" chassis has a lot less initial setup hassle, has no batteries to worry about at all, and is probably a good deal more bulletproof in the long run.