atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems Call Director 636CAM1 Questions

Good morning, all. I started to get my old call director set fixed up. When I received it, the cord was just snipped about 5 inches away from the phone, unfortunately. Last night I finished pigtailing it together, and now just working on 'cleaning up' the splice. I realize now after splicing and taking the phone apart what I've heard in the past about the Violet wires not being used on call directors.

I had a few questions about it, though. Here's a link to a few pictures:

[img]https://www.dropbox.com/sh/z3lrobm0j0ewu8z/AAB-792VsnTq-enw_1TmtlR7a?dl=0[/img]

1. Someone ran an extra 4-pair wire after the fact, using 3 of the pairs. It's connected as follows:
W/B L1
B/W 14
W/O 5
O/W 8
W/G 53
G/W 50

Anyone may have an inclination what that wire was run for? External speaker possibly? I figured with all the extra capped wires they would've used them instead of running a new wire if it was something internal. (There are 11 extra wires on Blue bundle, 7 on Orange, and 10 on Green)

2. Buzzer--What appears to be a buzzer is connected to Terminals 22 and 27. So that would be something internal that wouldn't need an additional power supply? Would a button be dedicated to activate that buzzer, or would a number be dialed, or both are possible?

3. Bottom of the unit has the sticker that says:

R
RT
DT
KT
F

With an H written. Was curious to what that sticker meant.

I did find some call director BSPs and will be reading them to investigate, but figured I'd tap into the wealth of knowledge all of you provide.

Thanks so much!

Bob-O

Well it's a crime that someone cut the cord, but as I recall the Bell System once advertised on TV (The Wizard of OZ, maybe?) that people could just cut their cords and move their phones themselves. The assumption was for Single Line Phones. Apparently there were a great number of keysets clipped that caused unending problems.

The external cable is wired to the first line on the phone. Sometimes people wanted a Single Line "Courtesy phone" for someone in the room to pick up. Ideally a separate cable should have been run for it. Sometimes it wasn't practical to run a cable hundreds of feet and the installer cut corners and tapped off the existing multi-line set. Not good, but I'll be honest, we all did it - at least once.

As far as the buzzer....It's a standard AC buzzer, usually connected to the Y/O pair (Though sometimes to Y/BL or even Y/Gn). Designed to be hooked to a DICM or a Manual ICM.

I'll have to think on the label, at the moment it doesn't ring a bell.

Good luck!

Sam

Sam...could it have been for one of these.

Perhaps...

🤣

i tried to read this account, remain quiet and simply move on. the more i thought about it, the more i realized that
even as an admitted very low class installer, this image will not let me rest easy tonight. what has been done to this call director is definitely a crime and would upset stomachs in a lot of good technicians.

It truly is a shame. I don’t know why anyone would cut it, especially cut it so close to the phone! But I loved the phone and bought it as is, so trying my best to bring it back to life!

I wonder if another cord is available somewhere. Possibly some trashed phone somebody is selling for cheap.I would keep my eyes open.

-Hal

Dean -

That's a definite possibility.

But here's a blast from the past that relates...sort of. If not, it's a good story anyway.

I did a job in Bond's Clothing Store (a large NYC mid level mens clothing store) home office in Midtown Manhattan in the early 1970s. They had an ITT TD-400 (?) PBX installed by ITT. My firm had installed the PAX board (an OKI XBar) about 15 years before (pre interconnect). All the PAX phones were SL sets scattered across all their stores and buildings. The chairman of the board decided he wanted his PAX extension appearing on his KV set. The work order went to ITT who installed the (OPX) extension on their Key equipment and I had to convert the 500 set to A-Lead control.

I went into the chairman's office took his 500 set apart and found that the Black and Yellow wire of the mounting cord were wired to a little module inside the set. I had no idea what it was so I called my foreman, who grumblingly, came over. He saw the module, turned white and called the head of Security for Bond's.

Yup. A bug. Fit nicely inside the 500 set and used the black and yellow wires as an antenna. Broadcasting to......who knows where?

I found another one in the 10 years later at Doyle, Dane & Bernbach (Big Madison Avenue Advertising Agency). This time I knew what it was.

Sam

I hadn't heard of Doyle, Dane & Bernbach but I DO know BBD&O, courtesy of one Allan Sherman!

That was my first thought too, an answering machine.

I'm starting to think that this external four-pair cable was for some form of automatic dialer. These often took the tip/ring from the keystrip output as their input. They sent the tip/ring back out to the set's network. What I'd suggest for testing purposes is that you connect the tip of the white/blue to the tip of the white/green pairs temporarily. Do the same thing with the rings of each off those pairs, so you end up basically connecting the white/blue and white/green pairs together. If this restores operation of the phone, at least you'll know what it was and you can move the factory wiring back to the proper terminals by emulating the connection of these pairs at the screw terminals.

Effectively, you want the solid green wires from the key strips to land on terminal F1 along with the blue dial lead. You then want the solid red wires from the key strips to land on terminal 9 along with the blue/white wire from the flash key.

The white/orange pair is likely for A leads, so you can probably disregard it for testing purposes.

That's the easy part. Replacing that cord is another subject.

I fixed it!!! Thanks to Ed! So they moved the blue dial to an extra contact at 53, and the blue/white to that external 4-pair at an extra at 50. After jumping those two contacts inside phone, problem solved!!! Moved them back to where they are supposed to be And my first row works well now. Now back to figuring out everything else 🤪

Well done!

Sam

So as per my last message, on to the next problem. So I wired up a female pigtail for the 'orange' bundle, second row of buttons. First row works great as before, but second row is posing issues. When I hooked up an outside line to one of the lines, when you lift the receiver there's no dial tone. If you touch the w/o, o/w pair together on the punchdown block the light for the line will light up, but not when just lifting the receiver. Is there anything that jumps out as to the problem? Is it related to the previous problem as someone moved some things around internally? I checked the 400E card, twice, with different phones, and I have a dial tone when hooked to a working phone. And it even works on the same line on the first row of buttons, so it's definitely related to the phone itself and not any external equipment.

I'm not sure what the procedure is that you're using, but remember that there is only one "A1 GROUND" coming into any 1A2 phone. If you don't have the first finger plugged into the first row of buttons, you're missing the A1 ground. It comes in on the orange/white lead of the first cable finger, and is used for all of the subsequent rows of keys. The 2nd, 3rd, etc keys do not have their own A1 ground feed. So, shorting them at the block will work, because you're probably getting the ground from the KSU wiring, but you need to supply it inside the phone for proper operation.

Hey art. I sent you a PM by the way. Also, yes the first button of the first row is connected and working. All 5 buttons of the first row are working, but none on second row when tested. Tried each. Probably internal phone wiring at this point? Would they have messed with that?

Fixed it! Operator wiring error!

Good deal! Well done!

Sam