sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems Swapping BFT in BCM 400

We have a bad BFT in one of our remote locations. Our supplier has a refurbished one in stock and from what I've read it should just be a plug-n-play job when I get there, just wanted to make sure. We had an outside vendor come in and verify that it was the BFT and they didn't say that the MSC card needed to be replaced at all. Just curious though, if the BFT needs to be replaced as well is that an issue where we'd need to contact Nortel to have key codes generated? Sites had no VM all week and I don't want to show up w/ the BFT and find out that we'll end up needing to get a vendor to come back out.

The programming does not live on the tray, so you shouldn't loose any programming. But we had a situation this summer where one of our sites lost the voicemail, we diagnosed the BFT and on the reboot after the BFT was replaced, she came up default. I think this was more of a case where the site had a major power issue, was struck by lightning. We have replaced quite a few with no repercussions.

Pay close attention to the new & old trays when you replace them. I usually get a new tray that I have to remove components from the old tray and put them on the new tray.
One is the modem jack to the front bezel.
The other is a small pc card that you better be very very careful when you remove it. You WILL bend the pins. And if bent too much or straighten incorrectly they may break off.

If it wasn't for these two components it would be a quick job.

P.S. - Don't forget to take your tiny phillips head screwdriver.

Thanks Nickels and NT. I'll make note of what you said and prepare for the swap if we do it.

Pay close attention to the colour of the capacitors - the BFT with green capacitors are known to give problems. I just replaced a BFT and they accidently shipped an older version with green. I sent it back. The new one had blue capacitors. Vm was not affected and everything came right back to normal.

Thanks. My supplier is supposed to be shipping us a refurbished board w/ the green caps swapped out. I asked them to confirm that the caps weren't green, said they'd be able to give me a definite answer Wednesday. Thanks for the heads up though.

so much for my advise - my new system crashed again after one month. The client rebooted and it
came back. I am not sure if it is related