Connecting Meridian 11C to LAN / PC

[phoneswitchnewbie]

Alright, so we have a Nortel Meridian Option 11C (release 2.11 I believe?) PBX which is currently connected to a VT520 terminal.
We are currently experiencing some intermittent issues with an external VoiceMail / auto attendant messaging system which sometimes just stops working for an hour or two and then miraculously comes back up again.

For troubleshooting purposes, I was wondering if it is at all possible to connect the PBX to our LAN via an ethernet cable (not seeing any ethernet ports on the Option 11C PBX though). Or possibly connect a different terminal (a newer PC running Windows XP/7?) to it that has better logging capabilities than our current VT520 setup... we are also scared the VT520 might just die on us at some point in the future since it's so ancient and has been running non-stop for the last decade or so.

Thanks!

 

[phoneswitchnewbie]

Ok, good to know, thanks!

 

[yyrkroon]

You might be better off, just using rlogin and connecting directly to the elan interface, provided the elan can be access from your network. If not, build a route to it.

 

[yyrkroon]

Sorry, forgot, you don't have the MAU on the OPT11C to connect it to your network...nevermind

 

[phoneswitchnewbie]

So I did some more digging... using our existing VT520 terminal, running:

ld 37
stat

I get the following output:

TTY 0 : ENBL DES: MAINTENANCE-2400 (currently connected through this one through the VT520)
TTY 1 : ENBL DES: MODEM
TTY 4 : ENBL DES: INFORTEX-1200
TTY 8 : DSBL
PRT 2 : ENBL DES: CDR (<----- This is the port I've trying to connect to using my PC)

Now, as you can see it appears I have been trying to connect to a connection designated as PRT, not a TTY. Is this a hardware issue and is the port 2 on the octopus cable only able to connect to a printer or something?
Or can it be "changed" to a TTY through the software? Or is this not even the reason I'm not able to connect to this port?

So when I unplug the TTY 0 cable from the VT520, I'm able to connect just fine with my PC (something I should've tried before). SecureCRT, Hyperterminal, minicom, kermit all work great...
Many thanks, these forums have been an amazing resource!