atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems STS resetting

Hi everyone
Today I went out on an STS that was down. It's 5 yrs. old and configured as a 12X24 with a flash vm and modem. When I got there the KSU was chattering up a storm. I removed the cover and saw that all the cards were resetting at a very rapid rate save for the vm card. I shut down the system, let it set for a minute, tried it again, same thing. I moved the power cord off of the battery back-up to another outlet; same thing. I pulled out the cards one by one, leaving the vm card in only because it's light were normal. I left the caller id card in. With basic ksu and modem connected I had no chatter but when I would shut the system off the KSU would click about three times. I took the modem card out and the system came up ok and shut down ok. I left the modem card out and added the two co and sta. cards; chatter. I took out all the cards except for the vm card and started adding them one at a time, shutting off the system each time to check conditions. After adding the last card the system acted just perfect. I know I didn't solve the problem, but at this point I have no idea what the problem can be. I know this is a long post, but if anyone has any ideas, I'd sure like to hear them.
Thanks in advance, ted

Yesterday I had a two year old one that nothing worked on. Tried a bunch of stuff, but ended up defaulting the system. I'm hoping it was just a corrupt data base, time will tell.

A sage ol' Vodavi dealer told me when the memory battery starts to go bad the will do weird things. Also that there was a time period it seemed there were some bad batteries.

Bill & Ted,
I would almost guarantee that the battery is the issue. We have had several of these same issues and when we sent them back for repair it was either a battery issue or we would get it back and it would work for a couple of days and boom it would do the same thing and they would end up replacing something else which i can't think of at the moment.

Is there anyway to test the battery? Like maybe turning it off and seeing how long it holds a charge? Or would that not really prove anything? It would be nice if there were a way to see if the battery is bad or not.

All you have to do is turn the system off and put a volt meter on the battery. If you don't get 3.5 volts it is no good.

That's easy enough. I was thinking more of a flacky versus totally bad thing.

So when you've seen this problem they are just totally bad? Also couldn't you do the same thing just by turning the batt off so no charge was going to it? That way you could at least keep the customer up when testing it.

Too risky, if your volt meter probes touch something they shouldn't you could damage the system. And yes, usually when this happens the battery is dead.

Thanks for the input Derrick.

Hi Everyone, I just got back to my computer. The next day the same thing happened. I took out all the cards; problem went away. I started adding cards and when I got to the 2nd CO card, the chatter came back. I had picked up a new KSU, so I slapped it in and the problem went away. No call backs yet so I assume it was the KSU. Oobie and Derrick, I'm not clear on the battery thing. I brought the KSU back to my office. I let it set over the weekend and, yes, it did lose all of it's programming. I had personally thought that I had a bad power supply. If the system is kicking out power from a electrical outlet and the battery is only for backup memory, why the heck would it be chattering like it wasn't gettting enough juice? I'm going to install a new battery for fun. Unfortunately I don't have enough cards or traffic to duplicate the problem and I'm sure not going to put the customer through another week like last week.
Thanks again for any ideas.

In my past experience with the predecessor of the STS, the infinite Mach 1 or the Triad-S, they also had mystery problems that were directly attributed to the memory battery. These systems would not even start up without the memory battery switch being turned on, or if it had failed. There's no doubt that the system monitors the voltage output of this battery in order to operate.

I think that it is safe to assume that Vodavi had a bad lot of batteries in the manufacture of these systems. Keep in mind that a bad lot on their assembly lines can result in thousands of systems out there that are demonstrating these problems. I'd guess that just one day's production could amount to over a thousand units. LG is a big company and this product is likely marketed worldwide under many product brand names.

In a way, I suppose that this is a good thing since you get a warning before the system loses the database upon the next power outage. I just wish that they would make this process a little bit more graceful.