sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems NEC Telephones & Systems Old NEC Systems

I used to do a LOT of work with NEC systems, but the most recent was about 25 years ago (before the 2400). I worked on the NA-120 & 409, a little on the NG 403 (all of those were X-Bar), NEAX 12 & 22 - in all of their flavors VS, S, SA, L (those were electronic) and the NEAX 21 & 31 (those were mixed sytems - they had CPUs with Xbar switching matrices). Also on the Electra 28 & 100 Key Systems.

I can't imagine that any of those systems are still out there - but you never know.

Anybody here ever see any of those babies?

Sam

I have 2 12A's that the customers will not get rid of...and 1 409 still being used, along with several NA-120's that are taking up floor space but not being used any more. Its fun to send a new tech that only knows the newer system out to work on the older systems.

Well I know that the 409 will survive the apocalypse (you couldn't put those down with a fireax!) but it's got to be 30+ years old! There weren't many spare parts that you neededs for that beast, but where do you get them these days? And they must have 1A2 sets backing it up. What kind of operation is it - Got to be either government or a hotel.

And the 12A's - if I remember correctly you could program it either from the operator's console or from a maintenance terminal the size of a suitcase (later version) or a steamer trunk (early version).

Amazing. Some very determined (and probably versy stubborn) customers you have there!

Sam

Ahh the old 12A's and the 22's.... Always something going on in those beasts,not nearly as finnicky as the old Electra 100's and the darn tape drives to load the maint. programs!!

The Electra 28's with the double digiting keypads and the super heavy power supplies.

Man now I really feel old!!

we have two Neax 12 L & five Neax 12SA systems working in diferent areas in Jordan,they are working perfectly and we have always been able to fix and repair any card that becomes faulty, cause replacment parts "ICs" are always available..
I am NOT sure that these pbxs will be replaced soon.

Lee -

Changing IC's on a NEAX 12 - what a memory! As I remember every feature had it's own EPROM. I remember when we went to 1+ dialing in NYC and put in a request to NEC for 800 chips. They gave us a 6 month lead time! What to do in the mean time? Tokyo's reply was to unrestrict every phone! Needless to say, the customers screamed.

In the end we bought a chip reader, a writer, an oven and after a little practice, 1,000 blank chips and got the customers up and running. I think we violated the warranty on 800+ systems, but we got the customers up and running.

Sam

You can find all of ours in Hotels owned by a patel and as long as we can resurrect them they will never replace them.

Smoom -

Were they originally installed by UCS (Universal Communications Systems) out of Roanoke?

Sam

Sam,
"I think we violated the warranty on 800+ systems, but we got the customers up and running."
Just curious to know for how long the warranty is valid !!! It is not for ever, is't?? thanks to OLD technolgy we can always find a solution !!

All the systems we have where put in by TSS (Telephone Sales and Service) out of Harrisonburg, VA

Smoom -

Thanks. I worked for UCS back in the '70s and that's what we did. A lot of X-Bar in Hotels.

Also hospitals and stadiums, but that's another story.

Sam

Lee -

Absolutely! With old technology, there was always a way to make it work. With the new stuff out there, if it isn't in software, it ain't happening.

Sam

I used to work for a company that had rewritten the admin software for the 12 series so that we could do work from a PC. For those of you who remember doing a cross point check on the 12s, you should see the system light up when you run it from a decent speed pentium laptop!!!!

Fortunately I no longer have to work on them, although I do believe I still have the gear stashed somewhere.

R4-

Sounds wild! I don't even think that the TRS-80 was out when I did 12s.

How about programming the old PBXs- Neax 21s and OKI Discoverys in Binary & Hex. That's what we thought a computer was in those days.

Sam

Not nearly as old, but the 1st NEC2400 I had to deal with, our company had an NEC APC. (Advanced Personal Computer) 8 & 1/2 inch floppies! Stick 'em in the drives, turn on this 1-piece monster that had a 3 foot by 4 foot "Footprint" and the drives took off. Ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk. And 10 minutes later that computer running CPM (!) was ready to go to work, at 300 baud. Finally got taken out by THOR. Bought a DOS computer (486), scrounged up some DOS 2400 software and got nowhere. Finally the NEC helpline tech said, 'wait a minute, did you say you are running blabla release?' "Yep" 'Well there's your problem, it was written to run on an IBM XT, Maximum hard drive space 20K. How big is your hard drive?' "80K" 'You're going to have to partition it into 20 and 60. Call back if that doesn't cure the problem.' So several quarts of midnite oil later, after I had hosed the computer 3 times and bailed myself out, I'd finally learned enough about DOS to partition the drive, load the software, and actually did some remote programming! Then I had to go see the Doc about putting my shoulder back in place after I threw it out patting myself on the back! Next time I'll tell you abou the NEC 1648 I had in my house in KS. John C. (Not Garand)

Sam,
UCS did all of the hotels on Hotel Circle in San Diego and my company took the contract to replace the sets in the rooms. Oh, what a pain that was.

DN27 - UCS was owned by American Motor Inns (who had a Holiday Inn franchise). The story I heard was that they were paying a fortune to the Phone Companies for monthly rentals and decided to try Interconnect. They liked the idea, but didn't like their original contractors, so they went into business for themselves. Of course they specialized in Hotels. Then they started doing Hospitals (a very similar business model).

I ran the Bronx VA Hospital for them. It was a brand new building - we put in a NEAX 31 - there were 11 in the whole world. It was a switch that had a CPU (8K of RAM!) and used a x-bar matrix for switching (a 4 stage matrix - not the usual 3!). The switch was a real powerhouse, redundant everything, but technology had passed it by. The hospital was about 3,000 lines - mostly 1A2 since there were no patient phones.

After that they got a contract with Gulf & Western to do their Business system installs - mostly OKI Discovery IIIs and 1A2. I did that for them for a while and then moved on.

Funny thing about the NEAX 31- There were very few of them, but they had attained an almost mythic image within NEC at the time. I remember attending a class at NEC and the instructor asked us which switches we had been trained on. When I mentioned the 31, he said "Ah, NEAX 31, Number ONE PBX - ICHI-BAN" and then bowed to me in front of the class! Pretty wild.

I worked for UCS in the late '70s. They were very nice people and I've got nothing but good things to say about them. I understand that they were bought out by Bell South when they went into the Interconnect Business. I don't rally now what happened after that.

My only complaint about them, was that they paid us (in NYC) out of the First National Bank of Roanoke, Va. In those days the banks made you wait about 3-4 weeks (17 business days?)to clear an out of town check. We almost starved till we found a bar that would cash our checks for us.

Then all we had was the problem of driving home......


Sam

John C-

I remember getting a 30mb hard drive and having to partition it into a 20 & a 10 because DOS 3 wouldn't recognize anything bigger than a 20!

When I was with GTE, we were standardizing on DEC Rainbow computers running CPM. Then we tried XENIX machines. Then I became a big proponent of OS/2.

I still think OS/2 is better that Windows, but who cares. I'm here typing to you on an XP machine.


Sam

Interesting note about the 1st IBM PC's. They would boot either IBM DOS OR......... CPM. That's right boys and girls, obsolete, underpowered CPM! CPM could only directly address 64K of memory so that was what IBM figured was a good starting point.IBM wasn't too sure if anyone was going to jump on the DOS bandwagon with all the, at that time, CPM software available, so they made it dual bootable. DOS 2.11 is the point where that stopped. CPM was actually a pretty 'robust' o/s and there was a lot of software for it. Some of the current word processors and spread sheets were ported over from CPM originally. They've been enhanced a LOT since then, needless to say. I didn't use it to speak of, but I understand that most programs were made to 'overlay' the o/s, because there were several different versions that were brand specific. So, you bought the software and the 'overlay' that was specific to your version of CPM. And, apparently the 'overlay' wasn't critical, it just enhanced the operation with your version. John C. (Not Garand)

My father worked for UCS in all the hotels in San Diego when I was kid.

I worked for a real gentleman at UCS named Dave Dragan. He was a class act, and I hope he went on to do well. I haven't heard about/from him in almost 30 years. Anybody ever run into him?

Sam

How about checking out our new "Telecom Reunions" thread started at the top of the Phone Booth category? We've already seen some success with old friends connecting again despite the fact that the thread has only been present for a few weeks. Give it a shot. You might be surprised!

Thanks Ed, I will.

Sam

Um, I need support on a Patrician?



Man, I remember riding with a guy at my 1st Interconnect job for an NEC dealer & he was the only one who knew how to work on those Electra 100's & Patricians...

He always made me stand "outside" the equipment room when we were on a 100...said they were VERY tempremental...

I cut my teeth on the Electra 616 & 16/48's......

If I remember correctly, the Patricians were like Tie 1030s and the early Iwatsus - almost 1A2.

The Electra 100s were tempremental -I seem to remember resolving a lot of the problems with them by running shielded cable for the station wire and grounding the shield at the equipment.

As I recall, the 16/48s were a real improvement, but i don't remember working on them much.

Sam

616 and 1648 were pretty good systems in their day. Heck, I had a 1648 in my house in KS. This happened in mid 90's and they were being thrown in the dumpster, but it just gave me PLENTY of spares! John C. (Not Garand)

Any of you fellas know someone who could help program an NEC Nexamail AD 16 voice mail system in the Winston Salem, NC area? Thanks, Tony

pm sent

Sam,
A somewhat belated reply to your comment about Dave Dragan from UCS.Just got an email last month saying he was retiring, moving from Atlanta to some mountain in West Va with no cell service, no land lines, no catv. I started for UCS in 1973 also and worked for Dave. I remember when the Bronx Va was going on I was doing the VA in Augusta, Ga. Bell South did buy them. Were you ever involved with St Lukes/Roosevelt Hospitals install with IBEW#3?