Telephony – Junknet.Net

April 7, 2023April 6, 2023

Telephone Collectors Show 2022

A couple days ago I was rooting around in the garage for something, and came across a box of stuff I didn’t recognize at first. After digging in I realized it was my loot from the Telephone Collectors show! Stuff that I had to bring back and immediately stash due to a crazy week of plans that didn’t have any time for tinkering or nerdy stuff. I guess I didn’t need the stuff that bad 😉

Despite being wedged into a packed couple weeks in my early summer calendar, I managed to get over to the Lancaster area to attend the 2022 Telephone Collectors International (TCI) show, something they haven’t had since before the pandemic.

November 4, 2022November 4, 2022

Another Patch Night, another Long “it broke” night

It seems every couple weeks when I schedule some downtime to do updates and go over things, almost 50% of the time I get stuck on something where a patch or update breaks something, and often in some crazy way. With virtualization, there’s an easy fix: snapshots. But what happens when you test something, looks good, and delete the snapshots? Oops.

August 29, 2022

Telephone Collectors Show 2022

April 12, 2022April 12, 2022

Aruba CX, IP Phones, and PC Ports, oh my!

I’m still getting used to the Aruba CX switches, as they’re definitely humbling me despite me not being a network “expert” per se. One interesting battle I had recently was trying to get the “PC Ports” on some Mitel IP phones to work. In my case I’m messing with Mitel 5xxx and 6xxx series phones, and while the phones themselves work fine, and the PC ports are enabled, they just…don’t do anything!

The PC ports on these phones are basically a daisy-chain port; they allow an IP phone and a computer to share a single network drop by basically daisy-chaining the computer through the phone.

January 10, 2022January 9, 2022

Telephony Home Lab Part 2 – Mistakes Were Made

SO…buying any kind of old computer gear or technology can either be considered buying collectibles, or throwing money into a fire pit. In other ways its all about the experience; nobody is buying a $4k Altair to run Crysis; they’re buying $4k video cards. Since I’m not sure how collectible an old PBX will ever be, I’m considering it the latter, so the idea is to minimize the amount of spend as much as possible. That said, sometimes it makes sense to look at the big picture and try to find something that best fits your ~~needs~~ wants, instead of trying to find “the cheapest stuff possible”.

Why a Merlin PBX? In Part 1 I mentioned that I saw a ton of Merlin stuff get scrapped back in my childhood days, and the 1980s retro-futuristic (or perhaps space-age) look of the hardware has me on a nostalgic kick. In addition, after reading up on the Merlin stuff, I find it has some relatively interesting features, including the ability to “live behind another PBX” (like Asterisk), and handles a venerable plethora of connectivity, including POTS, T1/PRI, IDSN (including BRI!), and supports several generations of phones from the old space-age devices to 90s-rific Avaya 44xx series phones. So long story short, I wanted one for both nostalgic reasons, as well as even a few practical-ish ones. There are MANY MANY other PBXes, some of which may even fit all my actual needs (see my notes below regarding ISDN), but for now I just wanted a Merlin.

Read on to find out what I ran into buying/building an old PBX. These nuggets can be applied to other things in life as well, and I’m humble enough to admit my fumbles. Buckle-in as this is a multi-part…part.

The Devil is in the Details – Research EVERYTHING.

Telephony equipment varies a LOT when it comes to standards, and even devices that LOOK similar, from a similar era and even the same company, may not be compatible. For example, At&t made a variety of those space-age-looking phones, that while looking identical, some were not compatible with the Merlin systems; they were for the Definity family.

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January 10, 2022

Merlin Legend PBX rejecting PRI calls

As always, if I find a really obscure answer, I try to repost it here to make sure it’s findable down the road. This isn’t quite part of the telephony lab series, although related to it as I work on and fiddle with stuff, but I ran into a doozy of an issue and AMAZINGLY found the answer, that would have likely taken me forever to figure out, if I ever figured it out.

January 9, 2022

Telephony Home Lab Part 1.1 – Use cases and Justification

Before I get into the mistakes made part, let me take a moment to talk about the telephony home lab, what my thoughts/ideas were behind it, and why I chose to include a vintage PBX into the mix (short answer – because I felt like it).

In some cases, IT people like myself often run “home labs” (or homelabs if you prefer), basically small (sometimes not so small) IT setups in their home, partially just to tinker and have fun, partially to learn or TRY things , and sometimes providing useful services to the household in the process.

January 7, 2022January 7, 2022

Telephony Home Lab – Part 1 (featuring the At&t Merlin Phone System)

Well, after December 2020 was quite a doozy of a month, December 2021 said “hold my beer” and blew away whatever crappy stuff was happening in 2020, to the point where for the first time in my life (since I can remember), I actually did not celebrate Christmas with my family. More on that later, but long story short despite having more projects than I know what to do with, my ADD brain led me to hyperfocus on telephony; something that I hold dear to me as exposure to most of ma bell’s refuse (equipment, phones, switches, computers, etc) in my childhood is what led me to technology in the first place. I had access to a ton of gear (even just seeing some of it) through a family friend that owned a recycling plant near my uncle’s house, and got to bring home some stuff like old phones (2500 sets) and tinker with them.

One thing I distinctly remember were many “Merlin” phones; and of course getting a nostalgia kick, I found a couple “analog” Merlin phones that had that silver/sleek 1980s futuristic look I remember, with membrane buttons and the At&t logo.