atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Mitel Telephones & Systems Need advice on making a bench system

Carl,
There can be a problem with the BCC if the MEM is in slots 5-8. Mostly seen it with the BCC3 cards.(I hate BCC3s)The MEM will cause the Bay to "lock up" from time to time. I think Mitel posted a TSN about the issue years ago.

Oh no, maybe it's why that site has gone through two BCC's in 8 years? Sigh. They think they can hang on until after Memorial day on the new restaurant cabling, so I'll put it off until then. Thanks for the heads up.

Some other thoughts for a "Bench system" -- Blue ONS (BONS) and blue DNIC (BNIC) are not interchangeable with white ones. White are generic, blue are limited to what's on the MOSS sheet. Again, you need that MOSS sheet, or you're screwed.

And when booting a MEM card, remember that it takes a hell of a lot longer than all other cards combined. So even after all the other cards are up, you may still have 5-10 minutes before the MEM is answering.

bda, you seem like a good guy, so I'm gonna be really frank here: The Mitel SX-200 is a great system, a lot of fun, and I love it. Having a bench system is a great idea. But there's a lot of "gotcha" in it also.

Even after training on the SX-200 D/L, I had a couple of moments when I thought I had completely destroyed the system (I still get really nervous if they take a long time to boot up). So if you really want to learn the system, get training on it.

Mitel will train end users, and there are third-parties who hold training classes. It'll cost the company to send you, but it'll save you a lot of head-scratching and maybe prevent a few "ох боже!" moments.

BTW, I'd go with:
(1) ONS/CLASS - white
(1) DNIC - white
(1) LS/CLASS
(1) MEM
and leave 4 slots to play with.

Carl, Mitel recommends them in the first 4 slots. I have found that getting in on the modem works better and hooking up locally through the serial port works better too. You don't get rejected when trying to connect.

Ok, I sorted it out all by myself.

Frankly, I did not look at this topic since my last post. I must admit that starting with MItel by reading first the manuals on SX-200 ICP was the wrong move. The ICP’s manual consist of kinda 2 parts: “how to operate the screws with screwdriver” and a written by embarrassing language full of abbreviations that perfectly makes it hard to see the forest behind the trees. None of really useful “how to”s. So this time I got the manuals for EL/ML which made it easier to get to the ropes. Then I:

1. Thrown away both Light cabinets as I was not going to keep them around; got 2 of microwaves – white (W) and black (B);

2. Tried and tossed the cards in the appropriate slots between W and B and eventually found that:

- W is dead, none of MCCIIIs in it would come to the point of flashing with alarm on the cards. I guess the chassis also has some chips soldered on its circuit board, apparently toasted;

- MCCIII-ELx also ain’t good: even though I can login to it there are no installed cards shown no matter which chassis I put it in. Strangely, it lets me login with “Installer” being in bad W, but there is no way in a good one;

- MCCIII-ML is all fine, no E.8 issue, I can get in, bingo. Good enough;

3. The flash card with LightWare v19 went into ML replacing the one with LW18. Nice little upgrade won’t hurt

4. All 3 BCCs seem to be working. One turned out to be made of much less chips which look more modern, so it stayed;

5. I guess ”VERIFY DATA” is not very comprehensive, and I will have to find out which circuits on the line cards are dead and which aren’t. Apparently, the CLASS cards are not supported on ML, or, at least without the DSP module.

I ended up with: Dig-012-001-NA (1 & 2), Blue Dig 012-002-NA (3), Blue ONS/CLASS 110-002-NA (4), Blue ONS 010-003-NA (5), Universal 005-000-SA (6), LS/LG Trunk (7), Messenger (8), Bay Control, Triple-FIM, MCCIII-ML.

As a last I have manually cleaned the configuration, and even though there are some alarms I got pretty much what I wanted. LH, you can close the topic, the weekend is almost here, time to go diving.

Sounds like a plan,bda. I'm thinkin' mohito's and NC beach sounds like a plan for this ol' reprobate!

If you knew how to read the manuals, they would make sense. IMHO

I know this thread is 'threadbare' but I was thinking about the NEC 2400 last night (DON'T ASK) and realized that bda's opinion of Mitel's manuals would improve by a factor of 1000, if he had to use NEC 2400 Manuals!

BDA,
Your config still has some problems.
Did you read all the previous posts?
I would relocate the messenger card to avoid problems.