Mitel SX2000 Card Swaps 1

[JMarine0811]

Unfortunately, after almost 25 years of faithful service, we are switching our hotel analog phone system from the Mitel SX2000 to a Cisco VG450. Mitel SX2000, 16 rooms per card and reflects that in the punches on the blocks and Amphenol cables... we have the female/male adapters for the Amphenol cables to plug into the VG450 system which has capability of 24 "numbers per connection."

Rather than waiting for the new system to be installed and punching these blocks down floor by floor in off hours, they want me to make the adjustments ahead of time so it can be plugged in with "minimal downtime."

I am tasked with "cleaning up" the blocks and the nodes and make the adjustments... here is my issue.

Cab 6 shelf 1 slot 1 Programmed Card Type DNI Line Installed Card Type DNI Line. (110 block has Amphenol cable, nothing punched on the wafer leading outside of the room)
Cab 6 shelf 1 slot 2 Programmed Card Type DNI Line Installed Card Type DNI Line. (110 block has Amphenol cable, nothing punched on the wafer leading outside of the room)

Cab 6 shelf 1 slot 3 Programmed Card Type On Premises Line Installed Card Type On Premises Line. This continues to slot 10. Slot 11 shows no card obviously because there is not card in the slot.
(I have punches on the blocks/wafers starting at Cab 6 Shelf 1 Slot 3 leading to jumps to the hotel rooms total of 300 rooms and the blocks have spaces like this because of different cards in the cabinets)

There are multiple cabinets with slots that are like this. There are 6 operating cabinets with numbers scattered around... basically a mess. I have 300 rooms and a few odd numbers to consolidate.

I cannot pull a DNI LINE CARD and change it to an ON PREMISES LINE Card because it says "Device is not deassigned". HOW do I "deassign" the card? How do I make it so I can assign an "ON PREMISES LINE" Card to replace that slot?

As for the slot 11 subject, I put in an extra ONS card into that slot and it recognized it, BUT it said "there is no more room for new records". How can I fix that?

OR...... Would it be less of a headache to simply punch the pairs down as we swap out the system? There is going to be a total of 3 VG450 devices.

It seems to me that it would be less of a damn headache if we just punch them down at the beginning of the block and program it in the new Cisco system.

THANKS IN ADVANCE.

 

[Lundah]

If you're wanting to just move the existing Amphenol cables from the Mitel to the Cisco, that will be fun because the Mitel pinout spans 3 card slots, using 2 25-pair cables for each set of 3 slots. So, off the back of the SX-2000 cabinet, J1 and J2 each feed slots 1-3, J3 and J4 are slots 4-6, and so on. As your pic shows, the first 8 ports on each card are on the odd numbered Amphenol connector, and the last 8 ports on each card are on the even.

For being unable to change a card from a DNI to ONS, there must be a DNI station programmed on that card. You'll have to look in the programming for it (run a "sta 6 1 [slot]" Maintenance command, that should tell you what port is programmed for a Superset device), remove it, then you should be able to go into Card Assignment and successfully change the card type for that slot.

The "no more room for new records" error means the system dimensioning for whatever you are trying to add is full. You may be able to get around that by using flexible dimensioning, but it's been so long since I've done that on an SX-2000 (they went EOL in 2012-ish) I can't be sure I'd be giving you correct information on how to do that.

Every hotel cutover I've ever done we would wire out the new system to new 110 blocks, then half-tap new jumpers onto the new system out to the station cabling. So you'd run a new jumper from the old PBX blocks, punch down (using the non-cut blade of your punch tool) on the new block, then terminate at the station cabling. The 25-pair facing the new system stays disconnected until you're ready to cut over. Then at cutover you remove the Amphenol connectors from the old system, plug in the new PBX, and then cut the side of the jumpers facing the old blocks (having a 5-pair 110 tool makes this go much faster). Then run around like a madman and test all your room phones.

 

[JMarine0811]

THANKS for the response Lundah.

This should be interesting. I had to order out the male/female adapters for the VG450. Those things stand off so far that they don't screw in and the velcro tabs aren't long enough to completely secure it tight. I was told to glue another piece of velcro on to hold it in place. Gotta love it.

My experience with any of this Cisco stuff is running pairs directly from a block with an RJ11 end to plug in the back of a couple VG400's.

Any other words of wisdom and something from yours our anyone else's experience and bag of tricks is greatly appreciated.

I most likely am going to purchase some new blocks and do as you suggest by your experience. I wondered why they didn't want to do this in the first place. I figured it would be easier to start with fresh blocks and punch down at cutover.

Again, thanks for the information.