sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Samsung Telephones & Systems Adapting 7000-series 8-pin Mod out to customer's 66 blocks

We have never felt good about a lot of the solutions we have used.

The 25-pair cable with 8-pin crimped ends, even when dressed up with heat shrink in 1/3rds over three cross connect 8-pairs, etc, always looks tacky.

It took a recent installation one of my techs did on a 3-cab 7400 to come to terms with how ugly it looks. It has been a while since I looked at one of my installations and sighed.

From now on we are going to use Cat5 (just basic panels; cheap), Neatpatch or Panduit cable managers and 1' to 2' Cat5 cords to patch everything out to 66 blocks to adapt to the customer's existing voice only wiring.

It costs a little more but looks so much more professional. I will be doing this at the 7400 account also so I don't have to look at those ugly 8-pin mods ends every time I go there.

Maybe the 8-pin solution for wall-mounted 7030, 7100 or 7200s in certain circumstances. For rack mount installations that are prominently seen we are done with the cheesy route.

Noisycow
Here in uk we seem to use or i do cat5cables if going on to 1308cable to a box conn or if going on cat5 just use cat5 cables

Sounds like a plan Noisycow. I feel your pain. So far lucky for us our 7400's have been rack mounted and connected to existing cables already on patch panels. 7100 and 7200's are a different story.

What about using pre-manufactured 8p8c single strand cables with wire management. I can't find a link to one right now but it looks like a piece of cat3 or cat5 with the pairs broken out and plugs already on the ends with heat shrink. That would look a lot better I would think.

That is what I am talking about - I think it looks like crap, especially on a larger job.

Express Comm used to make cables that had heat shrink on each individual pair, right up to the mode end. That looked OK, but nothing looks as clean as patch panels with cable management like Neatpatch.

Will take some pics of each way of terminating when I have a chance.

I think the reason 8-pin mods off single pairs looks so tacky on a 7400 is just the distance the cable runs across the face of the cable from the top or the bottom.

The patch panel, cable management, Cat5 cords are purely cosmetic; all the changes are still done on the 66 blocks in these cases.

We did a 7100 with a Neatpatch and 48-port patch panel, 2' cords, last week. The first thing 2-3 employees at the installation said was how nice it looked. That makes the little bit more expense in materials and time worth it.

The alternative to the patch panels is to use hardware 8-pin jacketed cords like Sandman sells and still use a cable manager like Neatpatch or Panduit. A patch panel and actual Cat5 cords looks better though imo.

I see your point. It's tuff on a 7400 to make it look presentable because the cabinet is so tall in the rack. Cords that are plugged into slot 0,1,2 have to go up or down to the cable management making it look sloppy. I'd like to see pictures to get some idea's.

Yeh in the UK rack mount kits (that get wall mounted) to old cw1308 cable is usually done by using a 1 or 2 metre patch lead cut in half and punched down onto krone strips in a distribution box.

Not ideal on large kits but much better than the mess i can imagine using a 25pair cable and rj45s

In these cases, we just use cat5 patch pannels with 25, 50, or 100 pair cable from the patch pannel to the krone blocks on the frame.

Nice and neat patching with cable managers every 2 patch pannels in the rack.

We've done this for a couple of customers upgrading from multi cabinet 500's (or DCS's) to 7400's.

***EDIT***

On the smaller systems, we just use a roll of solid core cat5 and crimp the 8p8c ends on each of the pairs and punch the other end down on the krone blocks on the frame.
Nice and neat as we get the exact length no guessing how much we need or coiling up the excess behind the frame/in the wall.

Thanks for the tips. I think you guys agree that the 8-pin mod ends off a 25-P looks pretty bad. It has its place I guess. A wall mounted cabinet in a telco closet that no one sees; that sort of place.

Front and center in a nice data room not so much.