About ten years ago we bought a new phone system at work. It was an AT&T Partner system, which is still in wide use. We paid about $10,000 for it, and it worked perfectly until a few months ago.

We had a power failure (more and more common in L.A. these days). When the power came back up, the phone system had lost all of its settings. When a call would come in on line 1, line 2 would ring with it. Voicemail was missing, none of the buttons on the 25 phones worked... it looked like it might be lost.

I called a phone repair place. A guy came out and said that it had just lost its programming. He reprogrammed it for us and charged $100.00. At the time I was happy to pay it to get the phones up and running again.

Then a few weeks later, it happened again. I called them out again, and said that one time, maybe it was a fluke, but twice in a row really seemed to me that maybe the system had a battery that was dead inside.

The guy looked at me and said, "No, when that happens you have to replace the main processor". The processor would cost $1200.00 including installation. Or we could buy a new phone system and replace the old one.

This didn't sound quite right to me, but I wasn't really sure what to do about it. A few weeks later I was in Las Vegas on business and my cell phone rang. The phone was all screwed up again. I had them call the guy out again. Another $100.

So, I started looking around on the Internet, and found a company that sold refirbushed processing units for $235.00, but I'd have to install it myself.

I work with a guy named Mark, who really is a hardware genius. He is the kind of guy who takes apart the computer in his car, copies the computer code from the Eproms, reprograms them, burns a new Eprom and puts them back in the car.

I told him that I was going to buy a new processor, and asked if he would help me install it.

He looked at me and said, "why don't we just open the case, find the batter, and replace that for about $20 bucks?".

That sounded tempting. I figured that if we totally screwed it up, and could aways get the other company to overnight me the replacement unit.

Today I forwarded the main line off, and we unplugged the system and pulled the unit out of the case.

We cracked it open and found a NiCad battery inside. It was soldered to the circuit board.

Mark got out a soldering iron and removed the battery. Then he soldered on two long wires where the battery used to be.

Then, we drove over to Radio Shack and bought a battery carrier that could hold 3 AAA rechargable batteries, and the batteries to go in it.

When we got back, he soldered the battery holder to the wires, and we put the thing back together and stuck it back in its cabinet.

$18.49 later, the thing worked like new.

I guess the idea is to put a battery on the board, knowing that the thing is going to wear out in 5-10 years. Then when it does, tell the customer that they have to make an expensive repair to this "old technology", or better yet buy a new system. I did ask three technicians if we could simply replace the battery. All said it wasn't possible.