NEC Electra Elite 192--Three slots in cabinet dead

[NiceRing]

I am working on an NEC Electra Elite 192. It is ancient and has an ancient VSR voicemail attached. I thought the VSR had crashed when the VM extensions would not pick up anymore. But the problem is that the extensions are dead. In further troubleshooting, I found that there are actually 20 dead analog extensions. The extensions on cards in slots 4, 5, & 6 are dead. I reset the cards and the one in slot 6, an SLI 4 port card sparked, smoke, and blew one of the components. Great.
Anyway, I thought for the hell of it I would plug in another amphenol cable to the 4,5,6 position on the side of the cabinet. I have only seen an amp go bad maybe once in 25 years, but worth checking. So I just plugged the amp in to the cabinet and stripped the 25 pair back and just clipped on with my butt set to the pair that was the lead extension (102) for the VSR. It had dial tone so I went ahead and punched it down and cross-connected the extensions. But then when I tested at the 66 block with my butt sett, NONE of the extensions worked again!!
I think possibly the cabinet is damaged? I do have a couple of spare cabinets, would you recommend me swapping all the cards to another cabinet and trying that?
Slot 4 has an SLI w/that second 4 port card piggy-backed. Slot 5 has the exact same cards, Slot 6 had the SLI 4 port card. Again, all extensions on those 3 slots are dead.
Before they all died, 2 of the extensions had really loud static/hum/voltage(?) when I clipped on to the 66 blocks with my test set.
I can order a replacement SLI 4 card UB-10, but in the meantime, I need to get those other ports back up.
Help!
(Please)

 

[belevedere]

Since you have a spare KSU, you are better off replacing it. It's probably damaged (water, debris), etc. You could move the cards to slots 7 and 8, but remove them in programming first so you won't run into capacity issues.

 

[NiceRing]

They have OPX cards in them. This system is maxed out!! If I change cabinets, am I taking a chance of losing all the programming??

 

[belevedere]

Programming is retained by the battery on the CPU. As long as it's still good you should be ok. A system that old may not have a good battery. You might consider replacing it hot. I believe they are 3.5vdc on a pigtail.

 

[NiceRing]

Can you hot swap these cards?

 

[NiceRing]

I asked that before I saw your reply. So you are saying that I should plug in the new cabinet and plug in the cards while it is powered up??

 

[NiceRing]

I am having trouble finding a replacement SLI -4. If I plug in a single card SLI-8, considering the system is completely maxed out with the 192 ports, will that cause an issue or will the system just recognize 4 of the 8 ports on that card??

 

[NiceRing]

I should have said: So I should power up the back up cabinet and then plug in the CPU and all the cards while it is hot?

 

[belevedere]

You cannot unplug/plug in the CPU hot. All others you can, just look for a busy out slide switch on the front edge. If there is none, then you can do it hot, but NOT the CPU.

 

[NiceRing]

I didn't think so, thank you! I am just terrified that if I swap out that CPU and the memory gets lost, I am screwed. All 192 ports are programmed and I do not know how to reprogram from scratch, no way. I have learned to do quite a bit of programming, but not from scratch!
At this time they have 20 analog ports down and I do not even know where all of those ports are, I am sure I will hear some screaming about that when I get back there today. This thing is 20 years old, a new VOIP system is in the works, but I have to upgrade the cabling in 7 more buildings before they get that. So for today, this is it!! oy vey!

 

[belevedere]

If they have an MIF card installed, then you can connect with the SAT program and get a back up. We used to travel with one and temporarily install it for that purpose. Although it would take some time, you could step through the database and create a job spec.

 

[NiceRing]

Got it fixed. The spare ksu did have a CPU card in it so I was able to test the SLI cards in that system.
It turns out there was the fried card, and one of the other cards was also bad. I found 2 spares on site.
So everything is working now. I think that the other bad card may have been shorting out something on the mother board(?). Once I was able to determine which cards were good and reinsert them in the working ksu, all 20 ports came up.
Then.....the OPX card in the last slot was having a problem, but got that fixed too. I don't know how much longer I can Band-Aid this thing. Probably ad infinitum, as long as I have spare parts.
Thanks for your help.

 

[NiceRing]

Got another trouble call today, 8 ports down again. The one remaining SLI card that was in the ksu when the other card fried had failed today. Sensitive, those cards!