atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems ESI Telephones & Systems Impressions of ESI

I'm new to ESI; my company took over about 35 S-class systems from a company that went out of business about 2 years ago. However it seems like there is a lot buggy glitches and strange things happening. The s class systems all have frozen or locked up at one time or other;time and date changes but system will not function at all....only fix is to power cycle. We have upgraded all system to latest software...it fixed some..but some are still locking up.

We are also getting some problems with dropped calls, phantom rings and transfer and hold buttons not working at times. Another question is has anyone ever felt how hot an s-class gets inside the KSU? I can't believe there isn't a fan or better ventilation. Why don't the power supplies have a grounded plug?

If we continue to have these problems I may be forced to change these systems out with a Inter-tel or Norstar. Just too many problems for me.

I have had a few lock up but it has been after a power surge or after power outage.Do these have hard drives or Flash cards.Are these systems older? Are they all grounded? Since you didn't install these systems ,do you know if they were initalized prior to the install?

Tech support can tell whether they were initialized, by dialing into them.

The transformer isn't grounded so the system can remain grounded whether the power is connected or not. That's how it was explained to me. One ground means one ground reference, which should reduce problems.

I'm betting most of the problems are due to installation-specific things. As mentioned, are they all grounded? Were they initialized? Very important: if they use CF for their memory module, are the systems behind decent UPS (battery backups)? Is the dial tone coming from channel bank?

Also important: are you trained/certified on these systems (by ESI)? The reason I ask this is because sometimes people unreasonably complain about systems when they are actually just not familiar with them or trained to work on them.

You can actually use ESI access to see if they were initalized or not, Log into the system and go to reports, check system programming report(I believe it is checked by default)click on start reports. After it is done it will show what day /date/time it was initalized on , if it was

I FORGOT THAT THIS DOESN'T APPLY TO THE S-CLASS

The grounding post is critical. I can't stress that any better. Absolutely critical that the system be properly grounded. If it is grounded properly no need for ground prong on the power supply.

Second thing is clean power. A cheap APC 350 or larger for the S-Class is sufficient as long as it is the Modified Sine Wave version.

Never had a heat related problem.

It appears that you have hands on experience with telephone systems but may not have ESI experience. If you don't have someone ESI certified within your organization you need to develop a relationship with one. Coming here was an excellent move.

Question: Since this is your original visit to Sundance Tech-Talk, was it because we are the only one (I know of) that has ESI technical knowledge?

I connected to an S-Class and the report shows time and date of an initialization. It was even an older 42S. Surely ESI didn't do away with that on the 56S/FS2's?