sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems Power Supply Serviceable on CICS?

A friend has a CICS in his small office that just stopped working after a bad thunderstorm. It was attached to a surge protector that also powered a CP and a copier (I've talked to him about this to no end).

There was a bad storm in the area last week and after that the CICS won't power on. I changed the cable after first swapping out the fuse but still I get no lights on the unit. I pulled the card and noticed that on corner it appears to have a section where the circuity looks dark/burned (about the diameter of a pencil eraser). I tried just powering on the unit w/ no card installed but it's the same. I told him that most likely he's going to need to replace the entire unit and buy proper power protection. I was just wondering if there were any other things to try or if I could remove the PS from the CICS and replace that.

Sounds like the power circuitry got fried on the motherboard. I see this a lot on units that take lightning hits. You'll need to replace the CICS.

Over the 4th of July I just had a CICS do the same thing. It blinks rapidly and you can hear the power supply starting, but no luck. It turns out that it took the flash card with it.

I told the customer it was cheaper to buy my upgraded maintenance spare (6.1 vs 4.2) and I'd repair it all in one service call than pay for a repair and return. I forgot to mention that I got a 7.1 out of it :-).

Carl

Figured it was something along those lines. I priced out a couple of units for him since he basically just wants to go w/ the same type of setup. Guess I'll be calling a couple of vendors today to see what I can get for a reasonable price. Thanks.

Just walked into one today, where the power LED on the CICS is flashing rapidly, and the MWL's on all phones are dimly flashing as well. My guess was power supply. Am I correct?

Thanks!

That's hit and miss. The CICS has to be the hardest piece of equipment to diagnose for hardware failure. I've seen that caused by bad main backplanes(chips usually visably blown), bad power supply, bad flash card or bad CO card. Usually it's a combination of 2 or more of the previously mentioned part. Each of those separately and in combination can cause the same visual indication. What may cause that at one site might not be the cause at a differnet site. Without a total disassembly and visual inspection followed by replacement of all parts with known good ones it's a total crapshoot.

Definitely hit or miss as RBF stated. I've had a little luck fixing CICS's with a flashing power light by replacing the power supply, but in most cases it will be blown chips on the motherboard.

For the time and effort, I unloaded my maintenance spare CICS 6.0 without trunk cards(stripped out about 3 years ago at wholesale) for a 7.0 CICS 4x16 non CID with a new Flash card and software and I broke even on the hardware and made my labor. And I have a new maintenance spare :-)

The repair of the CICS was reasonable, but I couldn't take the chance if the Flash was bad as a used 4.2 would have cost me more than the repair of the cabinet.

Carl

That's kinda what I figured, after reading the earlier posts of this thread. For those reasons, I'm covering my bases. I will have a replacement cabinet, SW PCMCIA, and DS card all in my hands when I go back to get it back in service, along with a UPS and surge protector (not installed, when originally installed by another vendor).

Looks like I'll be replacing the unit for the office. I don't get any lights at all on the CICS or the phones, that's why I originally thought it was just a fuse. Was going to take it apart when I first got there but I couldn't get to one of the screws (about 1/2" deeper than the longest screwdriver I had on me).