Hello. I run a small biz and own a Vertical SBX IP 320 system. Due to forum guidelines, I understand you cannot provide step-by-step instructions.

My goal is to share my situation and get feedback from the group as to whether you think this might be a motherboard issue or possibly some other problem.

I've had the system since 2010. 3 incoming lines (2 in rotation + a fax line that can be accessed for outbound calls), 5 stations (one is an ip phone that i keep at my house which mirrors my extension at the office), auto attendant/voicemail.

No major problems until about 2 months ago. The ip phone at my house started getting kicked off the system frequently (1-3 times per week.) To fix, I would physically unplug the system while at the office and the ip phone would be reconnected by the time i got home.

Couple of weeks went by and I lost the time and date on all phone stations. Stayed this way for another week or two.

Then I unplugged the system one day to reboot b/c my home ip phone was disconnected again. When the system came back up, I had lost all programming. (Ring assignment gone, no auto attendant, no extensions, etc.)

So I got my local tech guy over and he was able to reprogram and get the system back up. Things like the auto attendant were able to be reinstated without recording a new message. So some parts of the programming were saved and just had to be turned back on.

A couple of more weeks has gone by and the system is still having problems. 2-3 times a week I notice my ip phone at the house has become disconnected from the office system. In the past, the system at the office would still be functioning properly. (Receiving calls > routing to extensions > collecting voicemails.

That's no longer the case. Now when my home ip phone has become disconnected it means that my office system is down and needs to be reboot.

Now I get to the office and I find that my handsets all appear working correctly. They display proper date/time/ext #. But incoming calls do not register on the system. Incoming calls do not ring at any station. No station LEDs light up to acknowledge the call. the Auto attendant never picks up. The inbound caller heres the line ringing and ringing and ringing, but the system never picks up or acknowledges the call.

You cannot make outbound calls either. Stations will not pick up an outside line. You initially get a dial tone when you pick up the handset, but when you press 9 or press the line button you get a busy signal and the station displays "Access/Deny."

I can get the system working again by unplugging and replugging the main power cable at the UPS.

I've contacted my tech guy several times. Up until today, he said he has no idea.

Today it happened again and I pressed him for some kind of idea. He responded that he tried to access my system remotely and could not. He says it seems something wrong with the mother board itself. In that case, he says I should consider replacing the main unit.

Does this sound appropriate? Maybe something else?

Can the motherboard only be replaced at a lower cost.

If replacing the main unit is solution, I wonder if my current handsets are compatible with a newer model like the summit (which I believe will email notifications when voicemails are left.)

Thank in advance for you time and expertise.

Mitch

It sounds like you have several issues going on and it very well could be hardware related, but I would have to ask how much troubleshooting has been done? I have seen in the past where accessing a line says "access deny" is caused by the line not registering the proper voltage from the carrier. The SBX is very sensitive about this according to tech support. The IP phone issue could be caused by many different things such as carrier loss of signal (on either end), IP conflicts in the network, improper networking in general, bad VOIP board, corrupt database, old software etc... Has the system experienced any sort of power surges? Have you recently changed carriers or has the network settings been changed at some point? Your vendor may have checked on all of this and more and should be trusted to lead you to the best solution, but if you don't feel confident in their solution, maybe get a second opinion from another authorized dealer. One thing you said "So some parts of the programming were saved and just had to be turned back on", tells me that something happened to the database. It should have been reinitialized and reprogrammed with a good backup or from scratch and it sounds like this wasn't done, but maybe it was. I'm sure someone else will chime in, but this is just my 2 cents. Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

To determine if its a hardware issue you definitely need to reinitialize the ksu, reprogram and see if the issue is still happening. Just the other day I had a SBX system where all speakerphone function was lost. Turned out to be a bad database and the reinitialize fixed the problem.

First thing is to make sure your ram battery on the motherboard is turned on, switches in the correct position and voltage is good at 3 plus volts. Until you do that any reprogramming of the system is not safe. Remember a UPS does not protect the system memory during a power outage only the battery on the motherboard does that. It has been my experience that when that when the ram battery starts to go south, unwanted things start happening to the SBX as well.