One time, at band camp -> Re: PBXes at home
Hmmm, I think I was confused. I think the system I saw was a #3 ESS, not a #5 ESS. Jon Around the 1993 time frame I was at high school band camp for marching band. We had an hour or so for lunch, so a friend and myself headed off to the nearby Burger King. Burger King was located next door to a GTE telephone switch facility in Chesapeake Virginia. The facility had a parking lot, and maybe a yard behind it with the trucks and what not. Lunch happened rapidly, and we were talking about the telephone company building. I had the bright idea that it's also their lunch time, and if we stand in front of the door -- maybe we could get a tour. With some 40 minutes to spare of our lunch, we stood in front of the door and caught the next employee. We asked about a tour, and she said it shouldn't be a problem but she needed to check. She had us wait in the entrance area while she checked with the manager. As I recall the manager wasn't available then, but she said it was fine and she could give us a tour. She started off, but then the manager came and was able to take over. They were both super friendly. He took us in his office and abruptly busted out with "Why you boys so interested in the phone company?" We explained we had BBS systems and were into computers, he seemed to think it was cool. We got a tour of their DMS-100 switch. My eyes were big everytime I saw a modem wired to that puppy, behind the managers back of course. It wasn't terribly large, they explained the building used to be full of switch but with the modern digital one it was now less than 1/8th of the building and the rest of the building became offices. I remember there were the line subscriber modules and the newer ones were twice the density of the older ones, 32 versus 64 POTS lines IIRC. And the 64 POTS lines module wasn't that large. A lot of it was the copper wiring frames with punchdowns. The DC power system was awesome, the whole setup was very clean. The security was higher than I would have imagined, IIRC the manager had to call in before opening the door. All and all it was pretty cool. When we were leaving the manager and the lady were waving goodbye and the manager said "Have a good onee boys! Please don't sabotoge my switch!" It was pretty surreal. He knew. How did he know I read phrack magazine and ran Tone Loc?! We were 20 minutes late getting back but word had gotten back to band director that we were getting a tour of the phone company building. He was cool with it.
Re: PBXes at home
On 09/20/2019 11:12 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: On 9/19/19 7:27 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: Where does one find a working 5ESS for home? 5ESS? Hmmm, you must have a pretty BIG home, no? I've had a tour of a 5ESS and it was QUITE big, like 50K square feet at least, not counting the battery room and the cross connect frames, or the Solar turbine generator. Jon Hmmm, I think I was confused. I think the system I saw was a #3 ESS, not a #5 ESS. Jon
Re: PBXes at home
On 09/19/2019 19:27, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: A number of years ago I picked up a Lucent Merlin Legend system. ... Around 2000 I picked up an expanded Nortel Compact ICS (CICS) with voice mail unit - might be the last thing I bought from a NetNews post. That was 8 analog CO lines and 24 extensions as received, with a tub of cables, phones, buttons, die-cut un-printed inserts, a few manuals, etc. Overkill for a four bedroom house with attached office, but it gave me all the features I wanted as a remote worker. I had the music on hold wired up, but stopped using it after one occasion where I put a staff meeting conference call on hold... When I finally acquired an ISDN line card years later I was very excited, but then I moved cross country before I put it into service. Maybe I should have tried to order ISDN at the new place but it was late 2005, and my DSL Internet service included an analog loop with free calling nationwide... Still using the CICS, having upgraded some handsets (M7310 -> T7316e) and the system software. --S.
Re: PBXes at home
5ESS? Hmmm, you must have a pretty BIG home, no? Not really, and most of the space is filled with arcade and pinball machines :-) But it is my understanding that a 5ESS could be widdled down to two racks. And it's not like I would keep it forever. Apparently the management platform that used to be a 3B2 runs on a Solaris machine in emulation now. So something like a Sun Netra T1 can take the place of the large computer. Only need enough line circuits to run say 32 or 64 analog loops and maybe some ISDN/T1? I've had a tour of a 5ESS and it was QUITE big, like 50K square feet at least, not counting the battery room and the cross connect frames, or the Solar turbine generator. True, but don't need rows of racks of modules that drive the subscriber loops. Jon -- : Ethan O'Toole
Re: PBXes at home
> > Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2019 22:27:23 -0400 (EDT) > From: Ethan O'Toole > Subject: PBXes at home > > A number of years ago I picked up a Lucent Merlin Legend system. > > -- > : Ethan O'Toole > I have a little Merlin 410 PBX at home, with the Conference and Music on Hold plug-in modules. -- Michael Thompson
Re: PBXes at home
Switches like that usually are pretty scalable. Purdue's SL-100 / DMS-100 that handled about 40,000 lines at its peak was similarly sized, and spread across 4 facilities on campus. However, for only a small number of lines, you could get away with maybe just a dozen cabinets worth of stuff. I guess that the fiber remote IPE cabinets would be good for hooking your neighbors up. :) Patrick Finnegan On Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 12:12 Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > > > On 9/19/19 7:27 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: > >> Where does one find a working 5ESS for home? > >> > >> > 5ESS? Hmmm, you must have a pretty BIG home, no? > I've had a tour of a 5ESS and it was QUITE big, like 50K > square feet at least, not counting the battery room and the > cross connect frames, or the Solar turbine generator. > > Jon > >
Re: PBXes at home
On 9/19/19 7:27 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: Where does one find a working 5ESS for home? 5ESS? Hmmm, you must have a pretty BIG home, no? I've had a tour of a 5ESS and it was QUITE big, like 50K square feet at least, not counting the battery room and the cross connect frames, or the Solar turbine generator. Jon
Re: PBXes at home
On 9/19/19 7:27 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: > The 386 PC ran a unix Sys V 3.2 > It had the full, > awesome Audix Which always tells you "your call is being answered by otters"
Re: PBXes at home
On 9/19/19 7:27 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: > > Where does one find a working 5ESS for home? How about a 5XB? :)
Re: PBXes at home
On 09/19/2019 09:27 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: A number of years ago I picked up a Lucent Merlin Legend system. It was around 1999, and Lucent wouldn't certify the system for "y2k" so this business switched over to a Nortel in a giant middle finger to lucent. About 30 years ago, I had a KTU 1A2 phone system in my house. I was trying to add an intercom/paging system to it when I was able to buy an NEC Electra 8/16 phone system. I ran that for 25 years or so, and finally the thing just died. It did paging, intercom, and general PBX functionality for the two lines we had. I now have an Asterisk PBX system with 4 Snom 300 VOIP phones. It does way more than the NEC Electra, but it is more complicated to use. I STILL haven't gotten used to transferring a call to another extension or paging. But, it does offer distinctive ring, auto-answer with message recording, and taking FAXes. Jon
PBXes at home
A number of years ago I picked up a Lucent Merlin Legend system. It was around 1999, and Lucent wouldn't certify the system for "y2k" so this business switched over to a Nortel in a giant middle finger to lucent. The irony is the only thing that was "y2k incompatible" is you had to one time set the date on the 386 PC to 2000, otherwise it would roll back to 1970. Past that though -- it was good. The 386 PC ran a unix, and had a special interface card that presented 4 analog phone lines to the PBX. It had the full, awesome Audix (my favorite voice mail system) on it. The PBX came with an entire pickup truck bed of crap, for the price of $1200. IIRC I sold about half the phones and some line cards for $800, which made the system more affordable to me (and based on the price of the phones in those days, it made someone else's day too.) At the time I had 3 roomates, and it was very handy to be able to transfer calls around the house. In addition, there is an option to page all extensions. This was constantly used by roomates for tons of fun. And aggrivation. Some stories: We had music on hold setup, and there was a thrift store CD player in the coat closet that held all the hardware for this thing. The system had two carriers and about 6 boards. When people would call, if it was a telemarketer "track 2" was the crazy over the top rap hold music. That way when you transfer the call it sounds professional -- but not the hold music. I remember trying to go to bed, and the frigging roomates were paging my phone over and over. It was about 2AM. Given the house was a rental, the cabling to all the extensions and computers was run down the hallways -- no permanant modifications. I remember punting the phone down the hallway and slamming the door shut followed by tons of laughter. I eventually ended up with the better 486 computer that ran Audix. It came from an auction of a local ISP in Virginia Beach called Picus. I still have the hard drives and the ISA cards that interface to the PBX. One day I would like to try to convert all the voice prompts and build an asterisk setup that uses the same voice mail menu format and clean voice prompts (versus the lame ones asterisk has.) MAP 5P I think is the name of the 486 computer. My roomate always begged to upgrade to the line card that supported caller ID, but all the phone lines were in my name. I always fought it, because I knew he would never answer the phone. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I swear I would hear voices downstairs in the house. It seemed like the place was haunted or something. Finally I was in the right place at the right time the MLX-10D phones (so bad ass, look them up) had some kind of issue with the rubber components decaying in them. The phones had quick dial entries from the prior owner still stored in a lot of them. Well, in the middle of the night I guess the phones would "false trigger" and dial on speakerphone random people. So it was their voices in the middle of the night coming out of speakerphones. I also had the MLX-20L huge secretary phone with two sidecars. It was killer. The Merlin Legend was a pain in the ass to program. I think there was windows software that sort of helped. I never messed with a Magix. The MLX-10D + the Definity equivilent were my favorite phones. The rings, the look of the black set with the LCD, etc. I speculate they run on ISDN, but am not sure. The original Merlin was stylish, and I had one for a period but it was just too limited. Cool ring tone though. Where does one find a working 5ESS for home? -- : Ethan O'Toole
