atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Merlin 820D2 - Red Warning Light of Death

The battery was never an issue, the only issue would exist if I unplugged the system–it would just lose it's programming and return to default settings. Generators do not have a perfect sine wave which I think may be part of the problem, plus the fact that the system is old (like everyone else has agreed so far), and the fact that the electrical grid is jerry-rigged with a bunch of wire nuts and which, according to John, is "grounded to the house." I honestly don't believe that at all, and if it is grounded to the house, it probably isn't done properly.

I just find it too convenient that after a year and a half of perfect, problem-free operation that the system would stop working after about 6 days. I think that something either happened to it or it was tampered with and John doesn't want to admit it, because he just wants free stuff at other's expense, which is something I've learned over the years unfortunately. I'm starting to realize what a mistake this was to try and make an honest trade with him, too. He even had the gall to ask me to pay for shipping if anyone sent any offers on here, when he specifically said on the phone that he would be willing to cover the cost if it was a reasonable offer.

Like I said before, I explained to him on the phone, if he doesn't take care of the Partner system, he's SOL and can get his own phone system and figure it out himself. I've gone way out of my way and even broken my own principles by giving him a system he not only does not deserve but in the long term will not take care of.

Oh well!

So now you know what this business is like and why I won't sell or install used or refurbished equipment. You touch it and your name is on it and when anything bad happens it's always your fault.

-Hal

Beside friends and family are your worst enemys.

Telecom Guy10,
You seem like a good kid.
I looked and we have an old 410 (bread box) Merlin lying in the stock room. It's kinda dirty as it came out of a coal processing plant a few years back, but it was in working order when we took it out.
If you want to pay the shipping, it's yours for the taking.

PM me if interested.

I agree with you, Mike. What a nice gesture. I'd be willing to pick up the tab for the shipping if you let me know what it costs.

So often, we bash people who lack our knowledge. We often overlook the fact that they are young and have a genuine interest in getting into our industry. If we continue to do this, who will take over when we're done?

Our friend Jeff Moss tolerated our beat downs for years and yet he's still an active member of our family. He has the utmost respect for us and everything that he has learned here. I have equal respect for him.

We should all throttle back a bit and be nice every once in a while. We didn't learn this biz overnight, right?

Who's been doing the bashing?


You are quite right there. During Sandy many businesses set up generators for power. I had one customer who's UPS would constantly switch off line because of the poor power and the battery was dead. Wound up disconnecting the UPS and connecting directly to the generator power. Fortunately it did no harm to their server or phone system. After the storm I read an article about how the computer repair places were doing a booming business because of all the fried PCs.

To my knowledge only Honda makes generators that provide clean power. Those would be the models that have an inverter that provides the power from a DC generator. Unfortunately they aren't very big and are expensive.

-Hal

I don't mean to get all sappy, but you all really are a special group of people, and I mean that. You volunteer your time for free just for the sake of helping others figure things out, without really any benefits to yourself except knowing that you helped someone out, which is a level of generosity you don't see much these days (just drive on a public road for about twenty minutes). I just think it's awesome. The fast and reliable help I've gotten from this forum has been invaluable and enlightening, and it's been a fun ride so far!


Hal: I have to give credit to Paul/dexman for the generator sine wave idea. He mentioned it when I discussed it with him. My knowledge of electricity is limited but enough not to get killed or blow anything up... (lol)

mdaniel: Right now where I stand, I am waiting on John to seek out more information on some supposed "telephone stuff" at a local church that he used to attend. I don't want to cost anyone any money and time to ship something to us until I know for a fact that the stuff at that church isn't useable to us. If the stuff at the church isn't feasible or available, I will bring your offer to John. If we were to accept-I would put your Merlin behind the Partner and use the Partner as a PBX of sorts, this way I can create mock DIDs for each phone using ringing options and line assignments on the Merlin. That way each Merlin extension can have it's own extension number (other than ext 10 which rings for all of course) that John can use. If your breadbox has the paging/MOH module, we can use that too, or just use the Page port on the Partner and hook it up to the stereo that's already in place. Then I can just make one of the Merlin lines a hotline to Intercom 70 on the Partner. In addition, I can put a hotline phone in the house so that his parents can ring the phones out there if they get too loud, which is something that frequently happens. I'm sure they would be happy to have that.

Ed: a special thanks to you for being willing to do that for me. I can't thank you enough!

Thanks to everyone for everything so far in this thread, and for helping out in general whenever myself or anyone else has needed it. (even if they all don't say thank you)

Best regards,

Scott

Scott,

I think you are ready to tackle the SIP/IP products next!

Actually BTS01, until recently I had an Asterisk server with about 10 CallCentric DIDs on it up and running with a two port Cisco 186 ATA and an iPhone softphone. I had a conference line, a fake phone company automated menu system with call queues... I had it all, to say the least. But CallCentric seems to have DNS lookup issues or some form of registration problems, so the lines would only work part of the time. I ended up getting irritated after trying AsteriskNOW, FreePBX, and Elastix still to no avail. Since I'm packing up for the Navy, there was no point in leaving it set up when it wasn't working half the time anyways. Looks like I've beat you to it a bit!

Thank you for serving.