pitter patter on the keyboard

I wasn’t going to write about the Meridian I adopted way back again because I planned on cleaning it up and selling the system. It turns out I have had better things to do. One night recently I decided to reward myself for being productive by dicking around with it for a bit and managed to get it working on a VoIP line by way of an ATA. I was so impressed with the quality of the audio I decided to keep the system for personal use. There is a subtle irony to having a three metre analogue bridge between two perfectly digital systems and all this fire-retardant 1990s-beige/grey plastic is getting to my head.

The POTS interface is generally terminated with a 25-pair BIX (Building Industry Cross-connect) block. These require a punch-down tool. My only punch-down tool at the moment has automatic snippers on one end which is useless as the position of the terminal teeth alternates from top to bottom.

I jammed the pairs in with the attached blade tool which is strongly discouraged as you invariably weaken the teeth and risk cracking the (especially ancient) plastic.

I, however, am a rebel.

The KSU had been unplugged some time and defaulted. Interestingly, the dialing mode defaults to pulse which, intuitively enough, doesn’t work with my ATA. It turns out you have to go in and set each line to tone dialing individually.

m7324: I rode this phone into Germany during WWII and rescued some POWs.

It took me forever to find out how to do this so pay close attention, I’m only going to remember this once:

• Punch FEATURE **CONFIG
  • **CONFIG is **266344
• The password should be CONFIG,  if lost will have to be reset.
• Press the top-rightmost indicated meta key, the display will read:
  • 1. Trk/Line Data
• Press the top-rightmost indicated meta key again. The display will read:
  • Show line: _
• This prompt expects three digits. To configure line one, press 001. The display will read:
  • Trunk data
• Press the top-rightmost indicated meta key once then the bottom-rightmost twice. The display will read:
  • Dial Mode: Pulse
• The rightmost display key will read
  • CHANGE
• Press the CHANGE display key and it will toggle between Pulse and Tone.
• Press Rls to exit the menu

Above you can see the data and software cartridges for the M8x24; one fits into the other which fits into the cabinet. If your KSU loses all of its settings when the power goes out you need to replace the backup capacitors mounted on the data board. They are 1 farad and 5.5 volts each.

These appear to be a very common capacitor configuration for data backup and shouldn’t be hard to find at a reasonable price.

Something neat I learned in my travels is that when these 24V phones are subjected to the ring voltage on a POTS line (90V in NA?) they tend to blow. What they may lack in ruggedness they more than make up for in ease of installation however, as their all-digital signalling makes their ports polarity agnostic.

I recently partook in a pleasure which I have not indulged for some years. I went dumpster diving.

I noticed a company was tossing out their old Meridian phones and made plans to return at night in hopes of scoring the whole system. These phones, unfortunately, are useless without the ICS or Integrated Communications System as they have special power requirements and communicate voice data digitally.

A little background information from wikipedia:

The Meridian Norstar, later called Nortel Norstar was a small-office digital PBX introduced by Northern Telecom (now Nortel). It is based on the same internal design and instruction set as Nortel’s earlier SL-1 and DMS systems, allowing it to support features such as integrated voice messaging, automatic call distribution and other features, but can support a total of up to 192 phones and has limited processing power. In the United Kingdom it is sold by British Telecom, rebadged as the BT Norstar.

I’ve had the pleasure of using these old Norstar phones for years. They can survive torture and their speaker phone capability is still among the best 24 years later.

They are also badass retro. I had to have my own.

I went back at night with a 6 foot long yagi antenna and fished out a dozen black and beige phones. Much to my relief the ICS was also in the bin – intact – along with a 16-line copper trunk expansion module and FlashTalk voicemail/automatic operator module.

I will be writing about my adventures playing with these units in the coming weeks. Until then, enjoy these snazzy photos:

This badboy was hecho en mexico in 1987

The 8x24 series has built-in support for 8 copper lines and 24 digital phones

Inside you can see the DR5 KSU software module and a two-port copper trunk expansion card

The 16-line expansion module plugs into the copper trunk expansion card.

This unit lets the Norstar 8x24 system serve a total of 24 POTS copper lines

The FlashTalk module provides features like voicemail and DTMF menus

I like how all of this equipment uses excessive amounts of plastic. It all looks very "serious business."