I'm hoping someone here can help guide me in the right direction. My phone jacks went dead in my house over the weekend (which also leaves my DSL internet dead). Phone company said service is good to the house, so I'm left to chase down the problem. I'm wondering if my old Siemens S66M1-50 could have "gone bad." It doesn't seem like there is anything in a device like that to go bad, but I have no experience.
More background if you want it:
House is 4 years old. I wired it for electricity, phone, and ethernet myself (but I'm no expert). I used CAT 5 for phone, knowing it's overkill but better than CAT 3 and I had it on hand. I had an old 66 block someone gave to me. Never used one before, but concept seemed simple enough for one-time use for phone wiring my house.
So... trying to get to the point, the service IS good into the house. If I hook up a phone to the line from the phone company, it works. But after 4 years of working perfectly, now no phone jack will work in the house if wired from the 66 block. I have phone company line wired to rows 1 & 2, column 4. Other phone jacks wired down column 4. I use one pair pulled from a spare CAT 5 piece to loop from rows 1 & 2, column 3 to column 3 of the other connected rows. I've changed wires, etc. Narrowed it down (seemingly) to the point where the 66 block would appear to be bad. Again... is that possible? We do get lots of lightning around here, but I don't know if that's relevant or not.
I guess a new 66 block wouldn't be very expensive, but it just seems weird that something so simple (no moving parts or computer chips) would suddenly stop working.
Puzzled,
Shawn
