Hello,

Customer has a Partner ACS 308 R3.0.3 processor (slot 0) with a 308EC R3.0 (slot 1) and a 206E R3.0 (slot 2) in a 5 slot carrier.

A couple of years ago I had proved a C.O. line trouble to a defective 1st port (L1) on the 308 ACS processor card and switched it to the 2nd port (L5) of the 308EC card. Port 1 (L4) of that card already had something plugged into it, so I decided to leave it alone. I then removed L1 from all of the sets and programmed L5 in its place. So the phones were then programmed as L5, L2, & L3.

It's been fine up until the other day. The customer indicated that by power cycling the Partner system it would clear the trouble. Yesterday, while testing it, I couldn't find anything wrong. BTW, this line is also tied into the alarm panel, so I suspected that it might be intermittantly turning off the "house" side of the connection. In an effort to cause something to happen, I kept accessing the 3 active lines (L5, L2, & L3) in the system and was lucky enough to have it fail. There was a red led on L5 on the phone and no dial tone. I immediately ran upstairs and disconnected the alarm panel from the line. Back at the Partner set L5 was still the same. I then unplugged the line cord from the 308EC card's 2nd port (L5) and checked the line for dial tone. It was good. The Partner was still locked up. With that, I moved the line to the 2nd port on the 206E card (L8) and removed it (L5) from all of the sets and programmed L8 in its place. Everything seemed to work fine after that.

I should also mention that at one point prior to this I reseated all of the cards as a precaution, since I wasn't able to find anything wrong at the time.

Then today, I received a message that the line has gone into trouble again. I'm not sure what to check next since, at this point, the line has been physically connected to each of the cards in the system at one time or another. The only other common denominator would be the backplane of the 5 slot carrier. I don't want to arbitrarily change out cards only to have it fail again.

Does anyone here have any pointers on how to pinpoint this trouble?

Originally, I suggested to the customer that I swap C.O. lines 1 & 3 (L5 & L3 in the system) and that if the trouble stayed on C.O. line 1, it would indicate that the card was at fault, but that if it moved over to C.O. 3, it meant that there was a problem with the line itself. Unfortunately, the customer found that too confusing, although I don't see why. After the scenario that I described above, it didn't really matter anymore.

Any help in finding this trouble would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance to those who post a reply.

Peter.

In your 3rd paragraph, where you said "The customer indicated that by power cycling the Partner system it would clear the trouble", you never said what the trouble is that is being cleard by a power cycle.

But when you say "There was a red led on L5 on the phone and no dial tone", that means that the line is in use by ANOTHER extension.

If you can consistantly duplicate the problem, put an Auto-Intercom button on your phone for every other extension in the system (including 76, 78, and 79), and see what extension is grabbing the line.

I totally agree w/TTT one of your extensions is grabbing that line and the best way to find which one, is program auto-intercom buttons. When L5 goes red, so will the extension button that's grabbing L5.

Touch Tone Tommy,

Sorry for not being clear about the trouble.

Power cycling the system clears the line from being inaccessible and having no dial tone.

I'm not certain that I can consistantly duplicate the problem, but I will give it a try.

As for the Auto-Intercom buttons, I will have to temporarily install a 34 button set in order to cover all of the extensions in the system. There are 16 extensions plus 2 door phones. I had also already checked to make sure that there are no C.O. lines assigned to them.

If there is no voice mail card in the system, do I still need to be concerned with extensions 78 and 79?

Thanks to you and blklabs for taking the time to read my post.

Peter.

I would still look at them, just because they're in the hardware of the system. You may be able to spread the auto-intercom buttons over a couple of phones, or wait for the lockup, program as many as you can, check for in-use, then reprogram for the next block, etc.

In keeping with forum policy I'm moving this from Installers to the Avaya forum.

-Hal

I suggest to mesure a Voltage on that line. As I understud you moved that line to 206 card and problem still exist following the line. But maybe you are telling that Line 5 lit up without cord in the card anyway? I've seen that happend to ACS card.

I would also try swapping lines 2 and line 5 and see if it stays with line 5. I have seen alarm systems do some strange things.

I would also try swapping lines 2 and line 5 and see if it stays with line 5. I have seen alarm systems do some strange things.

An alarm system is BEFORE the phone system so if the associated line goes off hook you WON'T have the line buttons on the phones indicate that it is in use.

This is either a bad phone, problem with the wiring, some device like a computer modem on the station side or a bad system module. I'm leaning towards a bad phone or module. Temporarily creating DSS buttons for all extensions like Tommy suggests will tell you where to look.

-Hal

Let me take a wild shot in the dark...
Are you using MLS sets on this system? If so, your only problem is that one of your phones has a failing keypad. Do as the gentlemen above recommended and find out which station is seizing the line and get it fixed.

I have had the newer Euros do that too.

-Hal

Agreed, but not nearly as common
I hate to say it, but I miss all of those MLS keypads and the business we got from it.

Just wanted to follow up on this.

Due to various scheduling conflicts, I wasn't able to install a 34 button set and program all of the extensions on it until yesterday.

Hopefully, should the problem reoccur, the customer will be able to determine which extension is causing the problem.

Thanks again for everyone's input.

Was it a restaurant or a machine shop?

It's a private (2nd?) residence.

When I installed the 34D set the other day, the customer mentioned that they are now able to clear the trouble by pressing the C.O. line button instead of power cycling the Partner system and that sometimes there's a strange ringing on the line when off hook. I didn't see any of this for myself so I'm not sure of exactly what is happening. However, I suspect multiple troubles are occuring.

I received an update from the customer yesterday stating that they now believe the ringing that they are hearing might be from their alarm system. So I advised them to have the alarm company check out their panel. I had suspected the alarm panel at first, but didn't have any proof that it was causing the problem. As I said, there may be two different troubles here.

The customer also mentioned that they haven't experienced the original problem since I installed the 34D set. Granted, it's only been a day or two, so that's not proof positive.

Another point to consider is that the phone that I swapped out with the 34D set was located on the kitchen counter in close proximity to the sink, although it showed no signs of having been wet. If it turns out that this clears the problem, I'll suggest wall mounting the set on an adjacent wall instead of leaving it on the counter.

Thanks again.

The alarm guys old battery back up failed... Seen it 100 times


Now it's a house. Maybe a big old house with JK Double taped. half way to china..?

An electrician cant fix this.

They only see electricity and not variable frequency.

They cant use a Simpson Meter. It's not there Style.

Restaurants and machine shops. The rest is easy.

A few old timers will laugh about what I just said.

Polaroid went bankrupt.