sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Merlin Classic 1.6/VoSys VM lost it's cookies

Greetings,

Merlin 820 Classic w/Lucent Classic Mail Rev 1.6.

Was working fine for years before we got it, has been working fine for over 3 yrs in my possession. 2 Outside lines in (currently) and using 4 transposed lines so that VM access on Line 3/4 (C/D) on the 820 can be used as well.

Last mod I made was to go in and configure some extra boxes for various sales usage. I also set one in particular to dial me whenever any tech support messages were left for our products/services.

Saved it, didn't act strange when I did, but apparently a few hours later the VM box started to continually go thru the boot and self-init sequences. It scans all the lines every 5-10 minutes and refuses to answer any outside lines or respond to any inside attempts to get into the VM system (we'd changed the code to 7 vs. default * to be able to use the * features from the local Telco).

I've searched the web and best solution I could find was the reset via Diag button for 12 secs. Lights flash in random order, then it goes back to init repeatedly.

As it boots, light #5 does it's normal thing. But as it physically scans lines for a DT, I note that the first 4 lights now come on and stay lit from that point forward. Previously, those first 4 were out and #5 was on solid as it should be. The first 4 would only light up when port access for VM was occurring.

I'm stumped... Please skip the 'upgrade' comments, it's going to happen if I can't determine why this CVM system has gone south. Side question, when upgrading, am I looking for another Classic Mail or am I reading posts here that say the Partner VM would work? Since this KSU isn't the 820D2, I can't find any other compatible solution from Lucent/Avaya that works. Partner VM can't interface with the 820 Classic, can it?

Any help, espeically fast, SERIOUSLY appreciated!

Thanks!

Sounds like you got a bad voice, but you have probably already figured it out. When you say classic mail, I assume you mean the voysys product. You can't go to a Partner mail, they are not compatible with the classic Merlin. You best solution would be to swap out your KSU for a Legend system that has ATL cards so you can reuse your Merlin telephones. Then you can add a voice mail to it. I would recommmend a third party voice mail verses a modular card voice mail from Avaya. If you don't have many phones, then perhaps a migration to a partner system and whole new equipment might be justifed.

I'm assuming 'bad voice' means the VM unit's gone bad? And yes, it's Classic Mail which was later renamed to VoySys but was virtually the same thing.

Any thoughts on why it's gone 'bad' though? It's been a tough little bugger, but it seems strange to me that it should just up & die from updating settings in the system. Since I'd turned on the Outside Call Notification feature, I'm presuming it went to notify me of a message and that's when it flipped out, but I can't find any records of calls inbound that would justify that guess. I've used that feature in the past and it never had a problem...

Now the box is loaded a bit more than it has in the past, which means it could be writing to parts of the HDD that haven't been used in awhile and then cause a HDD failure. But without any real documentation from Lucent (etc) as to what the light patterns mean, what I'm seeing in the Diag mode, etc. I have no way of checking it out.

I'm to the point of cracking the case and inspecting the RAM and HDD, but if it's the HDD I have no software to restore from. And I've toyed with going in thru the Serial port to see if it even responds, but haven't tried that just yet.

Is there any way beyond the 12 sec Diag button hold to really 'reset' the box back to defaults and see if it comes back to life? It continually attempts init, but never gives a red failure light. And when you select a transposed line to get in the unit with *, it does sound like it's picked up and trying to play something from the HDD but then disconnects the line and gives up.

Could that possibly be the settings that control hang-up determination giving me fits?

Any ideas from anyone out there are appreciated!