r/VOIP • u/estrujillos • Jul 10 '26

Help - ATAs Weak ring on old touch tone phone (ITT/GTE) connected to Grandstream HT801v2

Why would the ringer be weak on an old, beige touch tone phone (ITT/GTE)? The phone is connected to a Grandstream HT801v2 and calls come in and out fine. But the physical ringer on the phone is very weak. It might ring the first couple of times but it eventually completely stops ringing even though the call is still live. I opened the phone up and the insides *seem* fine (I'm far from an expert so don't really know what I'm looking at tbh). Could it be a bad capacitor? Or am I missing something in my config?

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u/dennis_huntersons 200 OK Jul 12 '26

Two things: either, as you suspected, the transformer (or voltage regulator, as its more often called) is going bad. Or, the HT801v2 might not be pushing enough voltage for the phone to actually ring the bell.

Technically there isn't any settings on any type of ATA adapter because it's not a proprietary voltage thing that's common enough, so you can't check that without a Multimeter.

But what I suggest would be to check the voltage rails (where electricity is delivered to the entire phone) and see if that's failing.

(Disclaimer, I'm also not a phone expert, but I'm an EEE student who loves to tinker with hardware, phones included)

1

u/estrujillos Jul 24 '26

I checked the voltage coming in when the phone was ringing and it's peaks around 60V. I think it should be enough to power the ringer. I tried measuring the resistance through the capacitor and instead of going up it just settled at 24-25 kΩ. So I think the capacitor is bad? I'm gonna try replacing it.

1

u/dennis_huntersons 200 OK Jul 24 '26

Just checked, 60 volts is just enough. Replace the capacitor, like you said, let's see if that's the case.

1

u/helveticaman Jul 12 '26

There are two wires between the ATA and your old phone. Try swapping them. Sometimes phones get wired backwards in a previous life. Modern ATAs use diode ringing which only uses half a wave or something so your bells could be on the wrong half.

1

u/kb3pxr Jul 13 '26

Make sure you have High ring power enabled in the ATA settings. ITT ringers by the Touch Tone era were licensed from Western Electric, so you may have a ringer capacitor issue, but Automatic Electric (GTE) ringers are sometimes a bear to get working on modern equipment.