atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems Nortel VMI (NT8B89DA-93) analog FXS ports not functioning

Hello all,

Newbie to the forums here. Looked like a friendly and knowledgeable place, so I decided to give it a try.

Got an MICS 4.1 system we need to hook a VMI up to, which we will be using as a 2-port ATA. I bought one off of eBay that was supposedly pulled from a working phone system last year and then sat on a shelf for several months before I bought it.

I can hook it up to a KSU port and see the new feature code to program it come on-line. I can talk to it at F9*3 and on the F9XX feature code it allocates for itself. I can dial its extension # and hear the ringtone in the phone handset I'm dialing from. So the MICS is aware of its presence, and it is responding properly.

But I cannot, for the life of me, get an analog handset/FXO device to "work" on the VMI. When I ring the VMI's extension, the phone attached to the matching analog port does not ring. If the phone connected to the VMI goes off-hook, I hear no dialtone (which I should, according to page 4-4 in the manual).

I'm worried that, in a past life, some doofus plugged the KSU line into one of the FXS ports and fried something.

Does its behavior indicate to you all that this VMI unit is most likely physically defective, or am I missing something really simple here?

Thanks, everybody!

-- Nathan

Hello Nathan,
to the board. You might be right and VMI is defective as the most things that you buying of the Ebay but first I would try to check for Prime line to make sue there is I/C as a Prime and to make sure that there is at least one Icm. assigned to that ports.

Prime line is indeed Intercom and I have 2 intercoms assigned to the DN as per the instructions on programming the DN for the VMI in the VMI's manual, page 3-4.

Any other ideas?

-- Nathan

Nathan,
I've never tried to use third party VM on Norstar, cause CP is a dirt cheap and its a grate VM, but maybe you can try to set those port as a ATA in Capabilities.

Well, using it as an ATA is essentially what I have been doing with these tests...as I said, I had a telephone hooked up to it, and the telephone did not ring when I dialed the DN nor did I get dialtone on the telephone when I took it off-hook.

We actually have the full-blown Norstar VM system (the one that runs OS/2...) and don't need the VMI for integrating third-party voicemail. I actually need an ATA with disconnect supervision and DTMF passthrough, which is why I picked up the VMI from eBay to begin with...to use it as an ATA. It will be connected to an analog FXO port on an Asterisk box which will in turn be terminating a remote VoIP handset. The idea is to have a remote phone that has an internal office extension/DN and to use IP as the transport/trunking mechanism.

But right now I just feel like I've wasted time and money making this thing not work...

-- Nathan

You probably right.

I've done what you are trying to do with a VMI and it does work. Keep in mind DS is a DTMF tone so your trixbox has to supply a DTMF tone (you decide what tone in the VMI programming) to the VMI to disconnect.

You're not getting ringing is a bad sign. There is no programming for ringing voltage. Put a meter on the output and see what you get. Sometimes a reboot of the MICS brings an ATA or VMI to life when they don't work on first install.

A regular ATA should do the trick for you - if you're using a Sangoma card with the trixbox I believe you can set it to go on-hook when it hears reorder tone. (no disconnect supervision required).

Hey, everybody...I'm back. :p

I ended up shelving this project for a while (...a long while...), but I want to take it up again and see if I can get this to work.

I have another VMI on order (although I paid next-to-nothing for it, so I guess it's possible it will arrive DOA, too...), and hopefully this will tell me FOR SURE whether the problem is actually with the VMI or not.

But if this VMI that I already have is bad, I'm trying to investigate what cost-effective options exist for repair.

I tried it again and got the same results as before. So I opened it up and had a look around. While it was powered up, I put a multimeter on the inside pair of the terminal jack and rang the VMI's DN from another phone. I got absolutely ZERO voltage while it was supposedly ringing. (I checked the meter by attaching it to the line jack and saw a steady 19.5V from the KSU.) I tried both the inside and outside pair. I also tried both Terminal 1 with KSU connected to Line 1, and Terminal 2 with KSU connected to Line 2 (as well as the other 2 possible combinations, but of course I didn't expect those to work...and they didn't): same results on both.

Unfortunately, there are zero visible surface traces on either the top or bottom of the PCB from the terminal jack posts to anywhere...the connections must be made in one of the middle layers. And, naturally, I have no schematic. So I have no idea what to test upstream from the terminal jacks.

There are no fuses and no split diodes. In fact, there are no visibly discolored, blown, cracked, or burnt/charred components that I can spot anywhere.

So aside from the obvious, I don't know what I might be looking for. It seems to me that if this unit DID fail because some retard didn't heed the warning on the back (although, seriously Nortel...you couldn't fuse the terminal ports? really?), then that failure mode (and thus the repair of it) would be a commonly-known thing amongst Nortel service and repair technicians. What component likely got zapped and now needs replacement?

...not to mention, how likely is it *really* that mis-attaching a KSU line to one of the terminal jacks would blow both of them? I'm DEFINITELY no EE, but from what I can tell, nearly 90% of the components on this board have an exact duplicate. There's nearly 2 of everything on here! I'm guessing that except for the shared microcontroller and ROM, the design really was intended to be two discrete digital KSU interfaces tied to two discrete analog terminal ports. I really don't think there is much shared between them, so I don't see how BOTH could be dead! (Unless previous owner was a bigger retard than previously guessed.)

Thoughts, anyone?

Finally, recommendations of reputable outfits I might be able to send this to for evaluation/testing and a quote for repair would be appreciated, too.

Thanks again!

-- Nathan

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