Merlin 820 upgrade to ATT 944 question 1

[distar97]

I have a friend that has asked me to help him upgrade from an old Merlin 5-button phone system with a 820 KSU to new ATT 944 phones. (He has 3 CO lines and 8 stations)

I'm thinking of using the existing RJ45 at each station and spliting it to 2 RJ11's for the new phones using simple RJ type jack accesories.

My question is can I use the existing 66 block without any wiring changes or must I pickup the CO lines directly and trash the old 820. I guess I'm not sure the 820 will emulate the CO signal voltages the 944 expects to see. Obviously I'm trying to use existing wiring as much as possible.

Any tips or things I should consider would be appreciated. I'm reasonable competent with phones but I've never worked on Merlin.

Denis H.

 

[TouchToneTommy]

You will need to remove the 820 control unit completely. If the station cables are punched down on 66 blocks, you will be able to jumper the CO lines to the station cables. The 944 telephones use 2 RJ-14 (Two Line) jacks per phone, one for line 1&2, the other for line 3&4. You would need to make up some type of custom splitter to get from the 8-pin Merlin jacks to this configuration, but there are at least 4-pairs to each of the exsisting jacks, so just either add a jack at each location using two of the exsisting pairs, or replace the exsisting jack with a dual jack, wiring each up as RJ-14.