atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems cannot get new station to work!

I have a basic knowledge of phone wiring.

I am working on a DVX I system. A new employee was hired and she needs a phone. She has been using voicemail box 117. So I want to have her phone also be ext. 117. no matter what phone I Plug in to the system right at the box and station 117, it works for about 1 minute then loses power. I can unplug for about 3 minutes and the same thing will happen when I plug it back in.

I thought it was station lock so that is turned off. No dice. any input would be a appreciated! I have a pdf manual, scanned in book and it's not much help, but it does have a mapping of the buttons for when I am in programming mode at station 100!

i should add that the phone DOES work at stations that are already working.

Sounds like you have a bad station port. If you have an extra port available, connect the phone to it and when it comes up, dial 636 + 117 and it will go dead then come up with that extension number.

Thanks Ed, I was afraid that the port was bad. So when I use 636+117, it will reprogram the "new" port to be 117 instead of say, 120?

Yes, that is what Ed is saying. The old x120 will become x117 and the bad port (old x117) will become x120.

perfect that works for me! Thanks you guys, i really appreciate all of you and this forum! I'll post back with my results hopefully I'll get to it sometime this weekend.

i wonder if my luck is this bad? I moved the wires to station 115, since that is one that we are not using as well. when I went to plug in the phone at the walljack, it started "boot up" displaying the phone info, and then it sat for about 30 seconds and just when it looked like it was going to work it started making lots of static automatically 'dialing' and paging other stations on our system. is this another bad port?

i did check the polarity at the wall jack where the phone is plugged in and it is correct.

Perhaps you have a bad card or a bad amphenol cable. You have tried plugging a phone in at the MDF, correct?

May be time to call your tech out.

At first I did plug the phone directly into the fisrt punch down block to make sure the extension 115 worked, and i was able to make calls as normal, etc. Perhaps it is time to call the tech out.

The fact that it started up as normal, then made static and began dialing on it's own sounds like you are either:

A: Connecting the phone to the second pair of the previous station port and the first pair of the next station port. X115 should be showing up on the red/orange and red/green pairs of the 25 pair cable coming from the KSU.

B: You somehow have two phones connected to one port.

Both of these will cause the problem you have described.

Agree with ED
Sounds like split sta. pair, or as stated two key-sets same pair.

Thanks guys. I will retrace then.

The company that originally installed all of this did in my opinion an awful job. unfortunately this station is the 2nd to last station at the end of 7 seperate, but wired buildings. I have to go to each one and test, so it is very tedious.

Well, here is an update. i am able to get the station punched down through 5 punch downs.

as soon as I plug any other pairs into the next block it dies. i am so confused. i know that the pair i'm using now black and orange are not used by any other stations, but as soon as i get that pair down it dies.

if i punch down just one wire the orange, on one pin, it goes bonkers. i'm ready to quit, and seriously call the professionals, but at the same time i can't just 'give up'.

You mentioned multiple buildings. The fact that there are so many cross connect points is already pointing to improper design to begin with. Any more than two cross connect points is not proper design.

I have to ask, did this extension ever work properly? If so, has it always worked since day one or was it recently added?

I am starting to suspect that you may be pushing the distance limits of digital station ports on this system. I believe that the maximum is 750 feet, but adding so many cross-connect points effectively reduces this by about five percent per point.

Another thing you may need to consider is that you may have a defective cable pair on a segment of route to your station. These phones will operate marginally with three of four conductors operational. A true test will be to utilize completely different cable pairs in an attempt to restore the station. Better yet, maybe you can take the phone and temporarily connect it along the way at each cross-connect point to see where the faulty pair is. The first point where the phone stops working will show you the cable section that has failed.

Is this something worth further investigation? It is really starting to sound like a distance limitation that was already being pressed to begin with.

Try to get us some details on the overall design of the facility. Maybe we can give you a few suggestions on getting things corrected. You mentioned that you suspect that the installing company did an awful job and I am starting to agree with you. Based upon the fact that there are so many cross connect points alone pretty much proves that the system and it's wiring wasn't installed professionally.

No phone system, regardless of the brand or vintage should be installed in an environment such as what you have described. You need to spend money on correcting shoddy wiring, not on the phone system. Phone system wiring is not a "connect the dots" puzzle like the inexperienced seem to find appropriate.

Ed, Promise me you'll have a seat before you read the rest of this post!

We have 7 buildings the wiring goes through. The distance from the two farthest points has got to be at least 2,000 feet. The distance between at least two of them is too far for a Network Data signal to travel over Cat5 cable.

Did this station ever work? Answer: Technically no, this station was never wired. A new employee was brought in, and she needs a phone in her office. Unfortunately her office is in the *farthest* building away from the KSU. There were originally two stations in this farthest building 118 & 116. 116 is still there and working. 118 I moved to a new building that was built this past year, and it too is working.

What I have been doing is taking the phone with me as I go from cross connect point to the next.

I am going to put pictures here:

First, the KSU is here in a cabinet (this is the right side of the cabinet. Those 3 blocks you see are the stations each block has 8 stations going through them. you can can see some of the labelling of the station # pairs:

https://gallery.iametarq.com/photos/2006/spring/misc/IMG_4575.JPG

From the above picture the wiring all goes to here:

https://gallery.iametarq.com/photos/2006/spring/misc/IMG_4576.JPG

The lock on the lower right in this picture contains the wiring that then exits this building. Those Yellow and Black blocks, what are they? I have no idea, but they have DC Voltage Ratings on them. I am guessing they are regulators to prevent surges, but I don't know.

Now we come outside to the pedistool:

https://gallery.iametarq.com/photos/2006/spring/misc/IMG_4577.JPG

at this point, on the top cross connect, the station 115 i am trying to get to work, DOES work. Beyond this point, and no matter what pair i seem to use, it will not work at the next cross connect point. in fact, if i try to connect pairs with alligator clips OR punch them down to the connection points, like i'd like to, the station quits.

at this point I feel there is no point in me going any farther and they will need to call the people that installed the system.

I do the upkeep of the Data network and the computers on site. At the time we trenched and buried twin runs of Cat5 to all the buildings the 50 pair voice line was also run. The Data network works great, and that's what I'm familiar with. Before the digital phone system came in, I also did the analog phone lines, which were never a problem.

I don't believe that the phone system is at fault (minus station/port 117, which didn't work when I plugged the phone directly in to it) I blame the person who connect the wires to all the cross connects.

Thanks for your help, Ed.

Ed, seems like i read about a digital loop extender to extend the station which required a stand alone power supply for the digital station.
This was a vodavi product, or am i just dreaming it.? I would tie a short on a few vacant pairs, use my ohm meter and read the loop first, check loop limitations on system, and go from there.
Agree not a system problem but a Installation problem.
Lack of experience can sure get a guy in trouble.

usererror, you are fighting an uphill battle. You are trying to force the telephone system to do something it is not designed to do,such as push a signal over long ranges that exceed the capabilities of the hardware. Treat it the same way you do data lines.

TexasTechnician, perhaps then the system can only push signal for two stations, as far as it has, and the third is a lost cause!

I can honestly say that I have never seen such a pitiful installation in my life. I am not joking. Who in the world would install an indoor protected entrance terminal (and I use that term loosely with those punch-down toys) inside of a pedestal? Why is it that people think that they can just throw whatever is easy for them to purchase and call it an installation? I am really glad I was sitting down. Thank you for the warning there, Usererror. You really do have a mess on your hands.

TJ, yes they do have a loop extender unit but I wouldn't invest in any more harware until that wiring situation is done properly.

66 block terminations installed in outdoor installations have not been acceptable since the 1960's!
I thought the first picture of the KSU was bad enough, but that pedestal picture takes the cake. It almost classifies as "hall of shame" material.

You can't tell me that a professional telephone company performed this installation. It had to have been done by a novice.

You need to find a REAL outside plant contractor to perform the wiring to the outbuildings properly. That pedestal picture clearly shows that the installer had absoultely no clue what they were doing. Get on it now before you end up buying a new system the hard way.

Great pics. My head hurts now!!!

LOL Maybe. But until this mess is cleaned up you will have nothing but headaches and blame unless you run away from it as fast as you can.

Well guys, now I don't feel like a complete loser! I have stopped trying.

I don't know what company did the install since it was in 2001. after that outside pedistool there is 1 long punch down block in each building, with another one of those small blocks that has the yellow/black "towers" on them. A few years ago to get one of the stations working again for our Camp Nurse's station, I had to take that block out of that picture.

Our phone guy here thinks there is a major short somewhere and/or the installer miss-wired a pair, which would make sense, with all the info you guys have given me here.

Those blocks look like sugre protectors(gas tube?) and they might be blown. you can get replacements.

I can remember one the first jobs i ever worked on i had seen one of these blocks and had no idea what they were and it ended up being the gas tube protector and at the remote building the had blown.

Usererror:

I have to tell you that most of us go out of our way to come up with an answer for anyone who posts here. I personally flip pages in manuals to give the best answers I can on a regular basis.

There simply isn't an easy way to assist here. I will be happy to lend you a spare box of protector modules that you can try using to trace the problem, replacing them one at a time. The problem is, there should only be a protector module at the beginning and the end of the pair.

That's why these protector "panels" are referred to as "terminals". They don't belong inside of pedestals ever. The fact that they are designed for indoor use only could also be your problem; there could be collected moisture inside of them.

I think, and hope, that you simply have failed plug-in modules. If so, the spares that I can send you will at least work you toward a process of elimination.

Needless to say, the original installation is way outside of industry standards, so I won't beat you up on that subject any more. If you want to PM me, I will arrange to send you a box of replacement modules that you can borrow just to see if that is the true problem. If they work, you can pay for them, if not, you can return them to me. We need to get this problem resolved to restore service.

Looks like to me he has spares, only pairs punched down on the one he is saying is the pedistal are pairs 1,2,3,4&11 leaving coils in pairs 6,7&8. So each location will have 3 spares..but they all look like the same picture to me, same V/SL on the 3rd pin and same green stripped grd in each pic. Looks like there's spares on his first pic of the other protector also. Just take a volt ohm meter and read tip to tip and ring to ring to make sure they aren't open and then tip to grd and ring to grd to make sure they aren't operated.

Bill, I think that a surgeon is needed to correct this installation; It is clearly a case of code blue. The only thing missing is the string and cans.

I think that the original poster is trying to find a simple solution and let's face it, plug-in modules and 66 terminations in an outdoor environment are asking for trouble. What I would like to see is that he simply tries replacing all modules, camus-wide, to see if anything changes.

Despite the temporary solution, it might buy him some time until they can locate a professional. Unless the cable is knicked or cut, terminations really don't change much on their own. From what appeared to be a final post, it seems that dragging a meter out will be out of the question at this point.

The whole thing is such a mess that I fear that other than trying to replace modules might do more harm than good.

You're so right, he seems reluctant to get the help he needs for some reason.

Well here's the update!

The professionals were called in and they were here today. Unfortunately I could not be here also since I have my 8-5 job to attend to as well.

Apparently the guy was here ALL DAY. He concluded the from the point where I had the phone working (which was on the outside pedistool at about the 4th/5th cross connect panel, which is also pictured above) to the next building was completely useless.

Luckily, when myself and our old maintenance director trenched and ran parallel runs of Cat5 for the data network I have and the 25 pair phone cable, we had that spare run of cat5. The guy who was here ended up using my spare cat5 line to get the phone working up at the last building (the one that is about 2,000+ feet from the KSU building.

While he was here he was also able to take care of some other button programmings and things on the menu we needed changed that would have taken me years of reading our pdf format manual and tons of posts here to figure out!!

thank you all for your support here. i really wish i knew why that 25 pair line is dead, and why the 5 stations that still run through it work, and none of the other pairs...

there was some construction done a year ago, maybe they botched something since it was very, very near the conduit that has all wiring running through.

*sigh, at least i did find out that i was NOT crazy and those lines really were BAD. =)

Man, I wish you had been there. Too bad, because I would love to know what acutally happened. 2,000 feet is REALLY pushing the distance limit of that system. Despite the very unprofessional installation, I don't think it was entirely the culprit. Yes, some stations worked, but I have seen situations where another ten feet of station cable was all that it took to kill a phone.

As for the mystery of the remaining pairs in the 25 pair, I can only speculate. I should keep my mouth shut though.

As for simple button programming and things like that, always come here. That's the whole purpose of this joint in the first place.

I really wish they had told me they had called them in. The only thing I know they still want setup is having calls forwarded from their desk phones to a cell phone. But I don't know if that's possible?

Also, can anyone here make and send me new labels for the phones? =) How much do they cost? I'm tired of hand writing them. my writing stinks!!

Desi! go to www.desi.com

you can get the software and the labels there.

Go to dezi.com and download their free templates and order the blanks. I sure hope they let you get your cabling done correctly, it will save a lot of grief in the long run.

DANG:: If I didn't have to run everything through spell check and reread it 10 times I could beat you guys once in a while.

Usererror:

You definitely want to use the labels from Desi.com. They have the software and labels available and they are very reasonably-priced.

Yes, you can forward extensions to cell phones through station or system speed dialing bins. In order to give you instructions on this, we will need to know what version of sofware your system has. Go to the receptionist's phone and dial 605 on the dial pad without lifting the handset. Jot down the information on the display, check back here with it and we can tell you the steps necessary to make it happen.

i'll check that out! thanks for the link.

I'll get the software version we are running and post back in a new thread. don't want to hijack my own thread. i'll do a search first, to make sure it hasn't already been covered in here first, though!