500 not ringing

[Karen]

Can you see anything out of place thats causing it to not ring?

I DID try moving the back wire to the green.... nothing.  Is it the wrong frequency or something??

A couple times I tried it, it moved the gong one time. One bing and then nothing.  Very strange.

[twocvbloke]

Well, the Black wire does need to go to the Green wire, but my thoughts are leaning toward how many phones are on the same line, as too many phones can cause some or all to not ring properly or at all, if you have several phones, try unplugging some of them and try again...

[Karen]

Yeah, its just the one.  I use that line to fix all my phones. 

Its weird I tell ya.  I had the black on the green one most of the time I was messing with it. I just put it back there to see if maybe that was the problem (you never know how the 4-prong plug ends are wired), but even when I used my own cord and plug it still wouldnt work.  No matter where the black was.

[TelePlay]

Do you get a dial tone and can you dial out?

[Karen]

Yeah, everything else is fine.

[twocvbloke]

Could be a faulty capacitor in the network (it lies between A & K, I think), which can be worked around, usually by connecting up a 0.5uF non-polarised capacitor (the boxy type, not the cylindrical type) between the Grey and Grey/Red wires, this is made easy by removing and insulating the yellow wire from G, removing the Grey/Red wire from A and then connecting it and one side of the capacitor to G, then connecting the other end of the capacitor to the Grey wire at K, thus cutting out the potentially faulty cap. inside the network and restoring ringing function...

This is after you've tested the ringer assembly in another 500 type phone of course, just to be sure it's not the ringer's coil or anything...

[Karen]

Well it must have been something in the ringer assembly since switching that out fixed it. 

[twocvbloke]

Sounds like the coil's got an open wire somewhere, or from the sound of it (seeing as you got a brief movement) a shorted wire... 

At least you know it's the ringer coil though, you could easily swap that with a working on one from a junker phone...