I had a customer call in this morning telling me his SX-200 is dropping all calls (room to room and inbound/outbound). The calls all connect but drop after 3 to 30 seconds. He says the console isn't showing any alarms. He's 70 miles away and my Mitel tech is on his honeymoon (at 55 years old) in Austria of all places. Ideas on what the problem might be? I'll be heading out in the morning (booked solid with a man out for two weeks)and have plenty of equipment in stock. Just don't have time for 2 hours of troubleshooting. I've worked on the 20s and 50s years ago but I'm an ESI, Nortel, Avaya guy. I don't want to load a backup on another system and swap the whole cabinet if it's just a BCC or MCC.

Got to site early this morning the system was turned off and unplugged. I rebooted the system and watched for errors and alarms. NONE! System booted fine. I connected to the system checked the logs and other than a few minor alarms nothing. The system is currently functioning but I'm assuming it was a power supply issue??? I'm also assuming someone cleared the logs.

All calls being dropped usually indicates a common control problem such as a bay power supply, MCC or, more likely a flakey BCC-III card. How many bays comprise the system?

Rcaman

It's just a single bay. Just got off the phone with the customer it's started again. He said the BCC & MCC are now in alarm. The MCC is not showing any codes but it has rebooted twice.

since the rebooting twice are there any logs? Is the BCC a II or BCCIII?

I'm not currently on site. It's a BCC II

you can tell if you have remote access. MCC are normally fairly stable, maybe a BCC II or power supply.

My money would be on the BCC II.

Remember that, unlike station cards, the BCC is NOT, repeat NOT hot swappable.

Checked the logs they show "no alarm changed to minor alarm" and "MC restarted due to power up". Changed the BCCII now it (BCC) doesn't go into alarm but it still drops calls and the MCC shows alarm after it drops the first call. I took all the bay cards including ls/gs out and installed one at the time to see if it dropped station to station calls with just one card. It did. I'm leaning towards the MCC. Opinions???

You either have a bad MCC or a bad memory card. Call Resale Systems and talk to Fred.

Rcaman

Changed MCC & software card and reprogrammed the system and still drops calls. Replaced power supply still drops calls. The system has been reprogrammed 2 times and it still drops calls. System logs shows system recovered from software error about every minute or two. Damaged cabinet???

Remove all modules except one station module and trunk module. With all other modules removed (of course you can't remove BCC, MCC) make test calls. See if the condition persists. With one station module, you can check if station to station calls drop. If all tests well, start adding modules until you get a failure.

I have had this problem and it was a bad BONS card. It could also happen to a regular station or trunk module. All the Mitel modules have common logic controls on them and if one turns sour, it can bring down the whole system.

Rcaman

It does it with any card configuration. We tried just the digital line card and ls/gs. We've tried ons and ls/gs. We've swaped cards and slots. We've tried it with just one ons in different slots. I did just notice the log date and time aren't matching the actual system.

OK...I'm not trying to be funny here, but do you have a spare, working LS/GS module?

If you remove all modules except an ONS, and make a station to station call, do you have failures? If so, and you are sure of the integrity of the MCC and BCC and Power Supply, then you have a bad cabinet. It does happen.

Rcaman

We swapped the BCC, MCC, software, & power supply individually and all together. With just an ONS card in it, it still drops the calls. I figured it had to be the cabinet. Ordered a cabinet yesterday. Apparently the one that's been on the shelf for a year has disappeared.

I'd test that power supply.

We replaced the power supply same issue.

Once you boil the system down to one module and the control modules, and the problem persists, you have pretty much figured out the problem. I saw this exact same thing in a 2000 big iron. One bay brought the entire 1500 line system to it's knees. I spent several hours swapping and moving everything around. The problem even persisted when I toggled the other control bay. Finally, after doing just what was suggested in this thread, I narrowed it down to a bay that had nothing but ONS modules in it.

I was still skeptical when the new bay arrived. I thought, for sure, there had to be some other malicious "smoke depleted" integrated circuit that was lurking on a control module that was causing the problem. I replaced the bay, loaded the system and it worked, without a hitch for several years after that.

I had a 200 Generic 1005 ACD do the same thing. One entire bay went south and the only fix was to replace the entire cabinet.

Rcaman

Sorry I forgot to update. We installed the new cabinet and everything is working perfect.

Thanks for the advice.