sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Comdial Telephones & Systems Bad DX80 Flash Card

I've always previously been able to erase the contents of a DX80 CF VM flash card, and then "re-flash" it with factory settings and move my database back over.

Today, I experienced, what I guess, others have experienced with these. On a DX80 where the customer didn't pony up for a UPS, the CF took on enough errors that it would boot up, then shut down. I was able to recover pertinent files using my flash card reader (no errors with these files, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed), but then wasn't able to erase all of the files on the card, due to file read/write errors. I did end up getting it to format in FAT, but then the re-flash hung, due to the same read-write errors.

I didn't believe CF could be permanently damaged from power fluctuation issues, but I sure believe it now.

Needless to say, the CF drive for this VM is being replaced, by a larger one (was 64MB, replacing with 256MB).

The lesson learned: twist your customer's arm until they agree to put their CF VM's (DX80 or Debut) on a UPS, or they will soon regret not doing so!!

I agree entirely. Most of the time we require that if a customer has a flash voice mail they MUST have a UPS for it. If they do not we have ran into too many problems like you describe, this goes for Comdial or any other flash vm.

Steve

Oh yeah. I definitely didn't intend to single out Comdial. This just seems to be the nature of flash-based storage. Anyone using flash-based storage should heed the same warning.

I threw away 20 plus CF cards last week from a variety of voice mails that I could never reflash due to CRC errors.

For this first full-out CF drive replacement, I ended up with a 512MB CFII drive. According to someone I talked to, the "II" designation just means the card itself is faster, but is backwards compatible.

I'm just wondering if this has anything to do with the problem I'm having, now that I've installed it in the DX-80 VM II board.

I think I've seen this before, but can't remember for sure. What's happening is that the prompts are being cut off at the beginning, after pressing digit (DTMF). This is happening from the handset, but seems to be minimized if I press Mute. There's not excessive noise in the room where I've been trying this, so I don't think the transmit from the handset is covering up the playback of the prompt. I was just wondering if the faster drive is maybe causing this, and wondered if anyone has seen this. I tried putting "Playback Delay = 10" in the VM.CFG, just to see if it would make a difference, but the entry seems to have absolutely no affect. There is no delay in prompt playback, even though the book indicates that this entry should, in fact, correct this specific problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Hmm, aren't CFII cards a few millimeters thicker than a plain old CF card? Nonetheless, the card should fit in the slot fine (as is designed). It does sound like the timing settings in the vm are set to operate nicely with media of a certain speed - compact flash cards come in all different kinds of speeds, usually given on the box as a multiple number such as 8x. Since we know CFII is by default faster than CF, there should be settings in vm.cfg to tweak this. I'll play around with one in the shop here and see what I can find.

I'd try a regular CF card. I've done quite a few using 512CFs and they work well.

I'll have to do that. What's strange is that it's random. I can play with the Dialing Ratio/DTMF lengths all day long. I get different results, even on the same call into VM. The prompts are not always cut off, then the next time you miss the first three words of the prompt.

I'm going to guess, at this point, that it's related to the CF. This one is a Lexar Platinum II. I'll see if I can't get a regular CF and give it a try, as a comparison.

Duplicate post.

I tested the utility today and burned 2 cards, one a Platinum II and one a regular sanDisk both 512's - The only test I did was to call the hunt group and make sure it answered. The 80X Platinum II was 10 bucks less then the sanDisk. I guess it wasn't a savings after all. Post it if you fix it.
Mark