sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems NEC Telephones & Systems What are the symptoms of a failing ESI(8) card?

I've got an annoying problem devoping here with my Elite 192 system.

System's got 6 ESI(8) cards, and has been running perfect for over 6 months without any changes.

Within this last week, about 2 days apart, we have had a situation where all phones connected to 1 of the 6 ESI cards go blank on the LCD's. All other phones work fine.

The first time around, I replaced the ESI, and it came back working fine, no programming needed. Today, same thing happened, and I just pulled the card out, reseated it, and it worked fine.

My question, what's this problem indicative of? Is it the slot on the cabinet that's failing? Is it a situation of the ports being overloaded? The distance? or what? The one problem card services 5 phones located about maximum 200' from the cabinets.

Has anyone seen this problem before?

Thanks for any comments.

distance (at least in your case) isn't going to be a problem. minimum it should work is at least 600'. and i've got some on over 1000' with splices and different sizes of wire.

is it always the same slot on the cabinet?

Yes, both of the incidents were with on the same slot on teh cabinet, but with different ESI cards.

The first card that I replaced, I just tested it in an elite 48 and it worked perfectly.

So, I am more inclined to say that the trouble is more related to the slot on the cabinet itself.

BTW: This slot is #5 on the second cabinet, if that makes any difference.

The layout is as follows for 2nd cabinet:

slot 1: PRT(1)-U10
slots 2 - 4 empty.
slot 5 ESI(8) - this is the one with the problem.
slots 6 & 7: ESI(8)'s. both are fully functional, not affected by problem with ESI in slot 5.

Have you done a reset of the whole system.
What is your software level?

Yes, I have done a full system reset (power down vms, power down and restart whole system) with the first replacement of the ESI. The software level is S8000.

Didn't want to do a second initialization though, since that may do more harm than good, no?

ok........since slot #4 is free. slots 1-3 are being used for the pri.

try using sat to move the card from slot 5 to 4 or 8. then move all of your jumpers.

then see if it goes away or for some reason if it comes back, then it might be some sort of corruption.

i checked nec's tech support site didn't see anything about this either.

Hello Everyone,

It seems that I tracked down the problem to the PRT(1) card being in the number 1 slot in the second cabinet.

Apparently, each day, (don't yet know what time), the system shuts down that ESI card, and I have to pull it out and reseat it each time to make it work.

I found this out because over the last 4 days, I removed the PRT(1)-U10 card since the PRI wasn't yet installed anyways and that ESI card never went blank over that period of time. Yesterday, when the telco came in and drop in the PRI, I activated the PRT card, and sure enough, it acted up again this morning the phones on that ESI (- and only that one ESI(8) card) were blank when I came into the office.

I am waiting for a new firmware (4.0) for this PRT, maybe it will cure the problem. Although I will swap the card slots around tonight though (as per Chrislebeck's suggestion).

What does the PRT(1)-U10 (or the system) does each night that would have caused the system to shut down the ESI card? Interesting!

just a thought..........


check 1-8-11 and see if it's set for 4h (line key2 i think)


if it is change it to non (line key 1) and write (transfer)

-----------------------------------

see if that fixes your problem

1-8-11 is the system refresh timer. i normally set it to non (not to refresh). what this timer does is every 4 hours(default), if the system is idle, it will basically reset the system. i have some issues with this setting:

now if you have a vm card you are supposed to shut it down before you reset the system. well 1-8-11 doesn't do this. so it could cause data corruption in the vm hard drive.

if you have acd+ card nec recommends you turn it on. but same issue with the vm. i can get no clear answer from nec on this.

the volume settings will all reset.

when it does reset the system it takes a few seconds for everything to come back online. so every bodies phones will be blank for this time as well and no incoming calls will ring in, no outbound calls, as well as no did, pri, or t1 calls either.

new2nec>> did ya ever get it fixed??

Chris,

thanks for your kind thoughts. I forgot to update everyone.

I swapped the PRT card to slot 8, and left everything in their own respective place (too lazy to swap all of the station-side terminations). I also changed the setting for "refresh" as per your suggestions above.

It worked perfectly for the past 2 weeks. However, this past weekend, when my PRT firmware 4.0 came in, I pulled the PRT and upgraded the firmware, and reinserted the card in the same slot #8.

Sure enough, next morning, the stations on that first ESI card in 2nd cabinet went blank again. Pulling the ESI card and reinserting it cured the problem, and has been running perfectly for the past 4 days.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Now, I will start a different thread on what's really needed to get "call by call" going on a PRI. Looking forward to getting some good tips on making the most out of the 23 channels.