DK280

[djtt]

Ran into a client that from what I see is a DK280. The numbers I have are

Toshiba Strata CHSUB672A+PS cabinet using PRI and DID's with DKT3220-SD and DKT3210-S sets.

I am wondering what the max number of wired exts. are? They currently have 2 cabinets one on top of the other.

 

[donb01]

I'm doing this from memory, sorry....

Each PDKU (I think it's PDKU) card can support 8 digital phones. Count the number of those cards and multiply. There are a limited number of slots in the 2 cabinets. One will be the processor, there will probably be a PIOU I/O card, and the PRI card for sure. Taking 3 out of the mix leaves about 8 or 9 slots maybe. Depending on if there are any analog (RSTU) ports on the system and whether it has Stratagy voicemail on a card, there could potentially be 6 slots left for PDKU - which would give an estimate of about 48 stations.

Best I can do without the boards and open slots...

 

[djtt]

Thank you!

Yes, that makes sense. There are several fax machines using analog lines and there is voice mail.

There are two cabinets one on top of another. Are these networked and if so what is the max number of networked cabinets allowed?

I tried to get some docs on this system with a system description but I could not. Did you use to work on Toshiba?

 

[djtt]

Oh they have a PRI with DID. The voice mail has a pretty big lag in it's response.

 

[donb01]

I have a DK280 at the Civic Centre I support for phones. It's maximum capacity is 6 of those cabinets, but that's quite a stack. I'm trying to remember how the cabinets are linked together - no it's NOT via network, I'm assuming some kind of backplane cable. I de-installed it from my primary employer and had it donated to the Civic Centre. I know that all the station cards have an amphenol coming off the front of them, but I'm having a brain fart in my mental picture of how the cabinets are joined - it might be a ribbon cable... The other limit on how many cabinets you can have depends on what processor board you have. An RCTUA cannot support as much as the RCTUB/C processors.

Unless they have an external voicemail, the two big ones for that model were the Strategy from Toshiba and the Contact DK. The Stratagy uses a solid state hard drive, and the Contact has a mini laptop hard drive on it - I had 2 of the Contacts blow up before switching to the Stratagy, and that seems much more stable.

The system is administered using a DOS-based utility called 280admin, which also requires a red sentinel hardware key to be installed on the printer port. You can also administer the system using the phone attached to the lowest numbered digital slot by entering codes on the keypad and watching which LEDs light up.

You would still need to count the number of boards in the cabinets to determine how many phones it will support.

 

[djtt]

I took a pic of it. I will look at it and let you know. I do know that they have an internal voice mail.

 

[jknichols]

As donb01 guessed, the cabinets join with ribbon cables, I forget whether they're daisy-chained, or if each expansion box has it's own cable back to the base cabinet.

the processor will be in the left-most slot(s) of the base cabinet, the limits for each model are:

RTCUA - Base Cabinet only - 32 stations max
RCTUB - Base plus one expansion box - 80 stations max
RCTUC/D - Base plus up to 5 expansion boxes - 240 stations max
RCTUE/F - Base plus up to 6 expansion boxes - 336 stations max

Note that Toshiba has a chart relating the max number of stations to the number of CO Lines - as the CO's go up beyond a certain point the max stations go down, for POTS lines it basically gets down to choosing between an 8 line CO card or an 8 station card, not sure how T1/PRI lines affect that calculation.

 

[donb01]

I don't know how PRI works on there either. I know the voicemail card maps in as 8 analog ports, and how many of them are functional depends on what # of voicemail ports you paid for. I don't know if PRI does not map to any ports at all, or if it maps to 23 trunk ports so the system can keep track of the channels

Not that anyone's talking about it, but the other thing you don't want to do is rearrange the cards in that system once you have it setup and programmed. If you add a station card into an empty slot "to the left" of other station cards it tends to push all the ports to the right of it up to higher numbers, but the station programming does not move with it - resulting in the need to shuffle a lot of stuff around. It's OK to add on the right because those ports get stacked on top of everything else.

Anyway.... once you give us a list of the boards that are in there off your photos we can tell you how many stations it's set up for...

 

[djtt]

Thank you. Can you tell me is this an old model or was it ir Toshiba very popular. Any history I you have would be great for me so I can inform the customer if they should stick with it or not.

 

[djtt]

Looks like this customer may only be looking for the cheapest price which is not me so I may not be their new vendor. I won;t take up your time with specs. unless she hires me on. I must have spent 6 hours on my survey of this place. I gave her my estimate then she said "oh I need to get another quote".

You know what that means.

 

[jknichols]

Well, the DK280 was/is a solid product, but it is getting a bit old - has been superseded by the CIX line.

Basically, if it still gets the job done, I wouldn't replace it just because of it's age. As far as expanding/upgrading, I wouldn't do anything major, but I would do simple things like replacing a flaky voicemail card or adding any phones that are supported by the current cards (since each card supports 8 extensions, you could find a card with only 2 extension in use and the ability to add 6 more extensions with only minimal wiring/programming.)

If there are free slots, I would probably add a card or two to add 8 or 16 more extensions (or on a POTS system I might add a CO card).

Although still possible, I would not waste the effort to upgrade the processor card to expand to additional cabinets.

 

[donb01]

I agree with jknichols - mine is solid, and you can buy the boards and phones on eBay for chump change.

The only thing in my opinion that really sucks is that the utility you need to manage the system (easily), 280Admin, is a DOS-based program, and once SP2 came out windows pretty much frags DOS-based communication software, so you're kinda screwed there. I have an old 286 laptop I found in a dumpster at work that I use for it - the battery is shot and I need to reset CMOS every time I boot it up, but it does the job.

There is new software out - DKAdmin, but I'm not sure it works with the 280 without a software upgrade, and it also requires a sentinel key so I haven't been able to try it. The non-profit Civic Centre I have this thing in can't afford the approx $300 for the software so that's as far as that idea ever went.

Otherwise the thing works great - it really has no moving parts to wear out, so I hesitate to replace it.

 

[djtt]

Thanks for the advice. Part of what she wanted was to link another building via underground conduit. This new office will have about 15 PC and telephone sets. I gave her an estimate for a 50 pair feed but she freaked out.

This is your typical big customer who has no idea how their stuff works and does not care to be informed but expands into more space and thinks that cable facilities will magically appear to provide service to her Com. Closet that by the way has only 1/2 inch conduit and all this for a few pennies.

She does not understand that the voice and data services are the heart beat of her real estate business.

 

[donb01]

Yeah - I work in a hospital, been there, done that!

How did you plan on sending Data over there - on the 50 pair feed? Phone wise you're probably good for 2000 feet on the phones if you don't skimp and put really light gauge cable in there, but remember that code also requires a protector on both ends of it so that's going to spike the cost up there too.

I cabled an adjacent building to one of my larger PBX's and I forget what we paid - it wasn't cheap. We ran fiber along with the phone cable to link the data. That wasn't cheap either.

A previous boss of mine who's still a good friend used to have a saying in his business: "We need all the customers we can get, but some customers it's just better not to have."

 

[djtt]

I was going torn Cat5 and use it for voice or data. Not sure of the distance. I have my saying "Not all customers are meant for me". Also i have a special charge for difficult customers it is called the PITA charge.

P=Pain
I=In
T=The
A=Ass

I just factor extra time I am going to have to use to deal with them and weave it into the cost of each item.

 

[donb01]

The official "maximum" run for CAT5 cable for data is 100m/305ft. You can "legally" extend that by running into a hub and then back out, but you don't want to do that too many times either.

That said, I have done some 'unofficial' CAT5 runs between 400 and 500 feet that probably have our IT people laying in bed awake at night, but I have had them work that long. I just try to buy a better grade of cable and a heavier conductor size if available. You might even want to try a CAT6 rated cable if you try for a really long run.

I would not expect such a long run to be error free, but it depends on your requirements I guess.

One more word of warning - I have run CAT5 cable within the 300 foot limit that has gone between buildings. I have found that buildings on different power supplies can have differences in ground potential that can actually have current running on your CAT5 cable. This can be especially troublesome during thunderstorms and I have fried router ports and network cards in the past. APC makes a special surge protector that goes on both sides of CAT5 run to prevent such an occurrence. I would recommend using them, and make sure you have the ground wires connected to a proper ground.

 

[djtt]

Thank you. These are simple internet access only work stations that are not networked. Just internet and email stuff for thei agents.