sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Samsung Telephones & Systems DCS Compact/SVMi-4

After moving stations at a customer site the SVMi-4 fails, no longer going to AA and no longer able to fetch messages, although message waiting still shows, where there are messages. This was after I moved the stations and after I showed a user how to set up his mailbox, so the work was already done, I was just getting ready to pull out when all incomming calls started ringng the 500 group.

Run MMC 746 to shut down VM, then MMC 740 to restart it. Nothing. Plug in the PC to find the VM at a C:> prompt. And watched it attempt to reboot. And fail, dropping to a C:> prompt. And do it again. Down the system, restart, same result. Running warmboot from the prompt didn't get anywhere, only 1 in 10 tries got to the status screen, but only for a moment before it dropped to DOS. Card won't default, generates errors.

30 minutes on the phone with tech support and they pronounce it dead. Pull it, order up another, and head out. Return a few days later with a new SVMi-4E. Install it and... same thing. Tech support decides the flash is corrupted (won't start, won't default normally). Not the first replacement I received that was non-functional. Off I go again.

Bring in ANOTHER one today, tested good at the office beforehand, and same thing. Okay, the system is messed up. Pull the cards in the system, power up, no luck. Disconnect the MDF cables and try it, no luck. Default the Compact and the thing works. Install the original SVMi-4 I had pulled and it works as well. Spend the next hour re-building the programming.

Any one have any idea why that happened? I figure the system was feeding it bad data on boot up, but why? And why did defaulting the Compact work? I've installed and serviced a lot of these, both the Compact and the SVMI-x, and never seen that before. Tech Support was baffled. System and VM installed late 2001. Maybe running to the end of it's life cycle. Customer thinks it was something I did, since I was there when it happened. I think it was bad timing on my part :-)

Great board, great group. Thanks!

How did you move stations, in programming or swing jumpers? What other programming did you do?

I ran into a problem like that once. It sounds like a fluke to me. The database in the compact became corrupted and defaulting it fixed the problem. I wouldn't bang your head about it. It's a very uncommon thing to happen so you'll probably not see it again. There were problems on the older compacts with the svmi in the second or 3rd expansion slot but that got fixed years ago.

RCA - I just hopped jumpers to move the stations. No other programming was done at that time.

benb - the SVMi-4 is in slot 3 of the cabinet. The software is 01.06.01 v2.6, so first rev of v2.6, which went through 4 revisions, and the current version is v2.8. I should probably upgrade the s/w, but since it's running again now I will probably leave it be unless the problem recurrs.

Thanks for the responses!

Catfish,

I had the same problem one time. Next time that
happens go into MMC 806 and make sure that all the
slots have the right cards in them.

D

fone32 - I've already done this, it's the first thing I do when I add/change/remove cards in a DCS-flavor system. Since the thing ran for 5+ years without any real issues I guess I should just be happy with so few problems. If it recurrs the software will be upgraded first. It sure would be nice to know *why* it happened, though, in case it could be prevented. My hunch is it's a bug in the software, v2.6 went through 4 revs, so Samsung was apparently addressing an issue or two if they went to that kind of trouble

Thanks

I doubt you will ever get an explanation as to what exactly happened. Like others said, it was corruption in the DCS database and probably wont happen again. I hate those kinds of problems. I am glad you got it all fixed though.

We've also been running into an issue with a Compact w/ SVMI-4. The system is providing for two different companies in the same office, so things had to be split.

What was basically done was two separate station groups were created. For the second station group we created a blank voice announce mailbox that would forward callers to their AA menu. About every 6 months it seems, the voice announce mailbox that does the transfer to AA menu disappears. No explanation as to why, but the secondary company was so pieved about it they are switching back to two-lines with an answering machine.

SVMi-4 strikes again. That system problem I had that started this thread now has a new problem. As of two days ago the voice mail box at 201 lost it's mailbox. Deleting and adding it back didn't correct the problem. So I am off to jump that extension to another that has a working mailbox. Perhaps that system is running to the end of it's life, but right now they don't have money to do much about that.

We have another customer with the Compact/SVMi-4 who gets the mailbox full error about once a year, even after I have them delete any saved messages they may have. I have to go out and manually run the maint program to get it to come back, even though maint *should* be running nightly at 3am.

These days I'm encouraging the Compact/SVMi-4 customers to upgrade to the iDCS-100/SVMi-4E as the odd problems start ocurring, even if we end up selling them the hardware at our cost. I have very, very few problems with that platform and happier customers.

I have more problems with these than any other system I touch. Two different ones had the voice path on the SMVi-4 card go out in the same week. Everything was opperating as it should have. You just couldn't hear the prompts. That whole system seems very buggy.

I also encourage customers to upgrade.