Merlin Legend T/R cards (012,016)

[31LDog]

I worked at a customer's site yesterday that has a Merlin Legend CKE4 with R7 upgrade. They are using Merlin Mail R3. The sys. has two carriers with (2) 408 GS/LS/MLX Modules in slots 1&2 and the rest of the system contains 012 T/R cards (8 if I remember correctly). They have older PS 391-A1 with ring gen. When calls are made (outside and inside) to any single line set the end user only hears the phone ring 2 sometimes 3 times. I could stand by the phone and call it from my cell and I would hear it ring 5 times before being covered by vm. It seems that the rings lagged behind the rings that I would hear on my cell phone. Group cov is set to 3 rings and though they have no primary or secondary cov. these are set at 2 rings. I guess the other 2 rings are from transfer return? This is at a school and does not allow the teacher enough time to answer. Is this normal operation? Should I change my Group cov. or transfer return time to allow for more rings? This will cause the person placing the call to hear more then 5 rings. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Wes Taylor
ProtoComm, Inc.

 

[SYQUEST]

It could be a bad or intermittent ring generator. I would take a single T/R station NOT covering to VM and plug in a 2500 set then call it and let it ring and see if the ringback tone matches the phone ringing. Also measure the ringing voltage across T/R leads when it is ringing. It should be 85 - 95VAC I believe. Now I have not verified this, but the ringback tone should be in synch with the phone ringing, so when you hear ringback tone the phone should ring also. You might check the programming for the Group Cover Delay, Primary Ring Delay, and Delay Forwarding. These timers can interact and cause problems if not understood and the values are wrong. For your software version each station has its own set of timers. You will need to check them. If the power supply is bad I would replace it with a 391A3 or 391C1, these are better units and can handle loads better than the ancient 391A1.

Hope this helps!
....JIM....