sundance-communications.com Forums Member Forums Phone Booth The worst system ?

After reading about the problems that could happen with the Premier, it reminded me of when I used to work with the Eagle 1 systems.
These were programmed by any data terminal, but at a very slow baud rate (1200?), and could cause system-wide havoc if you typed a certain wrong entry.
The switch cards were used in a matrix configuration, and were not even fused. If one wire shorted between two certain connection points, 8 stations would go down(I better not say which, in case any government agencies still have these beauties). This happened very often... usually on weekends when football was on!
Then there was the cross talk.. the temp fix was to solder a capacitor across all the tips and rings of the station card ports.
Sold as "made in the USA",to the government, they bought a ton of these, which we also connected to Stu 3 crytograph phones, for more challenges and excitement.
In my mind, these beat out even the old Bell 2A business interphone as the worst system.

Oh..and when I picked up picked up some of these government accounts, guess who cheated on their bill? (of course it wasn't the agency- but some dishonest person inside the IRS agency- did!)

Magnetic hookswitches and dip switch addressing, yes they were pain!

I remember the keypads and the 10btn strips. When you pressed a button the cover and label would fly off over you shoulder. I always thought it was a ripoff of the TIE system. All the phones are probably brown by now. It was the first system with a clock on every phone.

My Choices in Order of Year, the Worst Systems:

1: ITT 801, 701
2. Intertel GMX, GMX152D, Phoenix, Hitec,
1648, 824
3. Tie 516, I still love the Ultracoms...
4. Extrom


The Best & Still KING of All Phone Systems from Yesteryear...The Merlin 820D2

Every phone system is a POS! Some are just worse than others. (sigh)Maybe it is time to go back to bartending

The tops on my list for worse are any TIE system and the Omega III.

I think to top my list would be the executone GATEWAY.

better know as the GETAWAY!!

There would be a tie at seconds place with Intertel DX and TIE systems.

Thompson Opus this is absolutely the fugliest phone I ever had the misfortune of dealing with (Thompson is a french company).
Southwest Bell made a small system called the Freedom phone. It was a short-lived piece of junk.............

Are you kidding. I still have SWB FS246 in service today. Must have put in over 1000 of these. When these came out you couldnt touch the price and the features it had. Music on Hold was huge then and 20 speeddials what a bargin. They even had a Door Phone.
I had to chime in on this one I let the Eagle quote earilier get away. But it was another system I liked and made lots of $ on. It worked great in the executive suite business. I think worst is a state of mind. You hate what you dont understand. I am a Telrad dealer and have been working on them since the late 80's. Yes they had some crazy ideas then and now but its also a great system. I dont do NEC or Nortel so I think these are the worst systems I am sure someone will dissagree.

The Freedom phone POS. Poor quality, Tandy could have made those things. My dislike has nothing to do with understanding how they work. It's a phone system not rocket science. Making a lot of money has nothing to do with quality; look at MacDonald’s. They made a ton of money.

[This message has been edited by SST (edited July 01, 2004).]

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