My Panasonic 616 is Bad!

[Cingle]

Hello, all!

I just wanted to write and ask if anyone else had a similar problem to mine, an if so, is it common. 

Thant being:  I purchased a 616 on Ebay for $100 including shipping.  They said "It works Fine"   in the ad.  When it arrived it was packaged very well, and was quite clean. 
The Bad:
Plugged it in and defaulted it by pulling the battery as I learn on this forum.  Checked the battery with a meter--Dead. 
Connected about 6 phones to the system and my line simulator to a CO Port and lifted the Lineset phone---NOTHING rang. 

Rechecked all the phones on my regular CO line, all worked great. 

Tried port to port dialing--Nothing except a talk path when you lift the handset on the phone you knew you were calling. 

SO::  I thought Id open the case and have a look, and found that in the very center of the main upper board, that a support had cracked out the board, and the traces appeared burned at that point. 

Has this happened to anyone else?  Hopefully this is rare as dragon teeth because I ordered a different one from Oregon today...

[twocvbloke]

Sounds like someone told porkies when they sold it, if the mainboard is cracked with damaged traces, then I'd consider that as faulty, not working, as you have proved...

They're pretty tough systems, but I don't think even electronics can survive mr. butterfingers dropping it or something onto it...

My 616 does have a damaged PCB (over-tightened screw), but it's the Serial printer port, but as it's not covering tracks on the board, and that it's not used by me, I'm not bothered about it, but the mainboard breaking, I think that'd be more down to mishandling...

[George Knighton]

Told porkies.

I have been away from England so long that I no longer understand the lingo.  That's a new one on me.

[twocvbloke]

Told porkies.

I have been away from England so long that I no longer understand the lingo.  That's a new one on me.

Porky Pies = Lies...

Sort-of cockney rhyming slang...

[poplar1]

You should ask for a refund.

The last one I ordered was DOA (dead on arrival). The seller said it was working before he shipped it. The seller replaced it at no charge to me. The second one is OK other than one bad CO port, which he told me.

[Phonesrfun]

Cingle

I had a 616 that got jarred so badly in shipping that the PC board on the power supply cracked and broke several traces.  I was able to get a refund from the seller.  A couple months later, I thought I would at least try to reconnect the broken traces.  I was able to bridge the breaks with some small chunks of wire and re-solder them so that it worked.  That was a couple years ago and it is still working.

The power supply in the 616 has the transformers mounted directly to the PC board.  There is supposed to be a foam rubber pad under the board to prevent the board from flexing under the weight of the transformes when being jarred.   Based on your experience and mine too, I am wondering if this is a systemic problem with the 616, especially when being shipped.

Let us know how the second one turns out.

[AE_Collector]

Does anyone know if there was some sort of packing in this area when they were shipped new? If so pictures need to be taken and then sent to the seller showing them where to put some foam to prevent this sort of damage in shipping. Where is GG when we need to ask hm about this!

Tery

[twocvbloke]

I would hazard a guess that there would have been proper polystyrene packing around the whole system when new in the box, rather than packing it with whatever was to hand and probably getting it wrong in the process...

Of course, not knowing what they were packed like originally ('twas an awfully long time ago since they were new!! ), I'm not sure anyone can be sure unless they came across some NIB models...