its a small office, I went back through the vm setup and now mwi is working right, however I don't get prompts on the phones anymore. I connected vm com1 to a pc with hyperterminal and see the prompts coming from vm preceded by ascii characters like spade symbol, if I connect to any com port on the DSU there's no response to carrage return.

Another odd thing when we were testing AA is whatever exten is option 1 gets a call from vm while the AA greeting is playing, when the phone is answered vm says "call for you" but doesn't connect the call