atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems Vertical Triad prib board replacement

Hey Guys

I've been supporting a Vertical Triad system that every so often has issues on the PRI that come and go. We wanted to replace the PRI card for troubleshooting, and ordered one that was as close a match as we could find. The one that was in the system was a Rev. A and the one we bought was a Rev. B. I set the dip switches on the Rev. B to match those on the Rev. A and swapped cards, but it didn't look like the Rev. B card was configured right because once everything was powered back up I restarted the adtran but the PRI didn't register as being connected to the phone system. I swapped back out the the Rev. A card and everything worked again.

First are Rev. A and B card compatible?

Assuming Yes, is there a special procedure to go through in order to set a new PRI card up to work with the phone system?

Thanks for your help

The dip switches don't really do anything except for two: one that determines if it is a PRI or a T1, that is if you have a combo card which fits in the slot of a Triad XTS, or Triad 1 and Triad 2 not a 3. The combo card has an RJ45 connection not a db 15.

Non combo card is SW2 which sets the clocking and should be on if using a single PRI.

The revs are compatible.

Combocard:By default, T1IB/PRIB dip switches 1-4 are set to OFF.
- When the card is used in a T1 mode, set switches 1-4 to OFF.
- When the card is used in a PRI mode, set switches 1 & 2 to ON
and switches 3 & 4 to OFF.



Which Triad system is this? Which card is it?
What kind of issues are you having with the PRI?

I'm not sure of the phone system Model (it predates me at this location by many years) system dump under parameters says Eng. V4.16 P02-FE3, not sure if that sheds any light on system model or just firmware version.

The Card is a combo card, which I guess narrows down the phone system a little bit.
here is a picture prib Card

The problems we've been having are sporadic.. might have issues for half a day to a day and then they go away again for a little while. The primary number routes to an attendant ring group. The two problems we have are A. the caller will hear as many as 8-10 rings before the system starts ringing, or B. The call will ring a few times and then be dropped. We've tried to work with our carrier to troubleshoot a bit, and in scenario A they see their equipment ringing the pbx as long as the caller hears it, and in scenario B. they are receiving a cancel signal from our pbx when the call "drops".

You have a standard PRI card...not a combo. The combo has the 8 pin connector on the card...not a 15 pin adapter. So that helps to figure our why the newer card was not recognized...there is no pri/t1 switch to be concerned about. The two cards you have should be interchangeable. The best way to confirm system recognition of the card is thru the maint mode with a laptop connected to the db9 port on the mbp card. You can also inspect the channels when in use as well.

I think the SW2 dip switch is red on one card and blue on the other. This should be set sot that the card gets its clocking sync from the provider. If in the correct position one of the red leds lights up. The wrong sync mode can cause the problems you described.

Who is the provider and what kind of central office switch are they using to provide the PRI? Is it a DMS, ESS or soft switch? It the last, well all kinds of bad things can happen with PRIs and older Triads on a soft switch. You have either a Triad 1 or a 2. The difference is the number of cabinet slots. I suspect it is a triad 2 which was the father of the XTS.

Derrick,

It sure is nice to have someone who got to know these systems back when all the info was available (or maybe I'm just looking the wrong places for docs :-)).

Yes I see it is a standard PRI card, I misread your description of the differences. Currently, as pictured sw2 is ON, which I would have hoped meant it was getting timing sync from the PRI, do you happen to know if this is correct? You said when in the correct position it causes one of the read lights to light up, so would it be correct to assume that I could switch it off and back on and watch the lights to see in which position more lights are lit?

Its a Comcast PRI, my understanding is that Comcast uses SIP over their network, from their cable box they run to an AdTran device (off the top of my head I don't know the model) which then delivers the PRI to the PBX.

I believe the system has 9 cards in it

Thanks again for all your help

If the provider is using SIP, then PRI is coming from a soft switch. Some of the really older PRI cards have issues with this arrangement. Clocking from the card and not the network can make things worse. And yes, when you switch the clock setting on and off you will see a light turn and and off with it.

Ok thanks for the help, I'll schedule another maintenance window and give it a go again. Will be sure to test to make sure the card is getting the clock from the network.

Other than making sure the clock is right... it should be as simple as shutting the equipment down, swapping cards and turning everything back on right?

Don't mean to muddy the waters here but I had an older networked XTS account with PRI that required me to use older PRI boards. I don't remember the specifics off the top of my head and if it was just the combo card I couldn't use, the but S/W level was 2.23. However, my problem was not sporadic and the incompatibility was only encountered because I was adding a new PRI circuit to the existing networked system. If your problem doesn't resolve itself, I will search for any notes I may have kept concerning that incompatibility.

Hey Dave, you can throw mud in the water anytime you want!

OK. I took a few minutes to confirm the incompatibility problem that I encountered. The system software was actually 1.16 and it was the combo card that I was attempting to add. Upgrading to 2.23 would have likely corrected it but since I had an old PRI board, the customer had be install it rather than upgrade.