sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems NEC Telephones & Systems How old is the NEC Electra 616

I have a customer who is having problems with the old beast. The only thing I have done in the past is replace fuses. Can anyone tell me about how old these units are? This is the one with the metal cabinet (if that matters.)

I'm scared to look at it, as it may croak.

Thanks,
Larry

I have a NEC electra 16/48 manual sitting in front of me dated April 1983!! Still have 2 of these in my area.
Troy

dont power it down whatever you do.......

i went to move a 1648, powered it down and "guess what"...........

The 616 started in 1983 and was factory discontinued in 1989.
It was replaced by the "pizza box' 824.
The 824 programming layout is still the same one used by all succeding NEC BSD systems in production today.

The 616 itself was pretty good except for 2 things, the power supplies were notorious for dropping like flies after power outages of extremly short durations and the phones after a while the rubber buuton matrix just wore out.

A lot of locations had problems with techs that would try and pull dial tone on the data pairs of the sets and blow fuses or some installers using the metal tipped toner probes and running them down the 66 blocks.


DJ

[This message has been edited by Tipandring (edited July 18, 2005).]

Thank you all for the info. I've quoted them a new system.

Larry