Sever lighting storm early in the evening last week knocked out a DX-120 and they called me 7:00 the next morning, in other words no one had any details on what happened.

Instead of troubleshooting it then and there, I swapped the unit out with one of my spare cabinets and programmed it with a back up from the original installation. My logic was, even after I tried swapping cards it still MIGHT NOT work, where as a new unit WOULD work.

At the shop I pulled all the cards and the unit booted up with just the mother board and CPU board. After I added that DPM8 card it failed. The test phone on ports 101 and 102 had dark displays. I replaced the DPM8 card and all sixteen ports worked.

I reinstalled the cabinet and found that ports 104, 108, and 112 had dark displays on the phones. I swapped the port/ext with some free ports.

Now line five has a distinct hiss on the line. I'll swap CO ports four and five to see if the problem moves. Telco tested the lines and it appears its an inside problem.

Since a lightning strike can cause a myriad of problem that may not be immediately evident, I'm going to replace the entire system and let his insurance company pay for it.

I don't think its going to be hard to explain it off as a lightning strike as his file servers got fried and the coke machine is dead.

We did figure out that lighting most likely hit the top of their 40 foot grain elevator as half the surge suppressors on the dozen electric motors were melted.

You think its a good idea to replace the entire system or let the owner make the choice?

[Edited to correct typo in thread title, for search purposes]

It looks as though you did a very thorough troubleshooting procedure and test session to determine all of the obvious problems. Given the situation (and the tendency of hidden problems to reveal themselves at very inconvenient times), I myself would probably have leaned towards replacing his entire system as you described. There's no telling what else might be wrong in there that you might not find till a few days later. Especially where lightening appeared to hit the actual building. Better to replace it all now than have to repeat visits to the client. Looked at this way, most customers should reasonably agree that one visit is better than 10.

I went back to see what the line hiss was on line five. It was their credit card machine. Unplug it and the hiss clears. Ordered them a replacement.

Also found out what else was damaged...several ethernet modular connectors were blown on their servers, hubs and the credit card machine. Its clear they took a hit.

He doesn't want to replace the unit, even after I told him his insurance should be able to cover it.

Considering he's so paranoid if the phones ring more than twice and no one answers, what will he do if the motherboard fails and it takes me an hour to get there and another hour to swap out and reprogram.

Two more station ports failed and so did one of the VM ports. I really don't think its the 7271C (Flash Card VM). Port 157,the first port in the VM UCD group, won't answer - is just gives unanswered ringing when you dial it.

I forgot to set the UCD for DISTributed answering and it always tried to call the bad port. Anyway, I took it out of the UCD and he said he can live with only three ports.

We junk all lightning damaged cabinets. Even sending units in for repair is questionable because of high failure rates upon re installation.

Since the cabinet cost is reasonable when purchasing in packages I believe that you are doing your customers a favour by replacing the unit at a relatively modest cost with less chance of future down time.

--Bill.

I told him to wait and see if more problems start appearing over the next two weeks on what was an otherwise stable system.

He said a wise businessman won't claim it on his insurance as it would raise his rates and there is usually a $1,000 deductible.

If he keeps having more problems, he's will to spend to just replace the system.

On a side not, the strike did clear up some problems with dirty jacks. As commented on before, upgrading to a new system while using the ten year plus jacks can be problematic. My thinking is the the strike wandered around all the house cables and cleaned the jacks. Not a far fetched idea, considering how many CAT5 8-pin jacks had burn marks on them.

On the lightning strike thread: we took a lot of area lightning but no direct strikes over the last few weeks, but particularly Sunday night 4 weeks ago. Since then we have had persistent customer complaints about not getting thru on our lines. The problem is definitely intermittent and may be getting less common now, after several Verizon visits, though the techs claim no faults have been found in the Vz "network". The most common customer description is that after a few rings they hear a rapid busy. Vz is perplexed by this.

Is there any way a Comdial (digitech/impact, older) system can cause a Vz rapid busy? Or is this just a smokescreen for a network issue?

Thanks!

JGH in VA

The fast busy (or reorder ) tone is generated at telephone company level. Can a customer premise phone system OR bad phones lines create a situation where telco returns a fast busy back to the calling party?

Yes, if the phone system for some reason answers the call or other wise trips the ring and then immediately releases the line, the caller get get a fast busy.

Its possible to have bad phone line (the copper part) where the 90 volt ringing voltage shorts to the other side of the pair or to ground, causing a trip ring back to the C.O.

In both cases, usually the calling party will simple hear some clicks and then silence, but with some C.O.s they may hear a fast busy.