New BCM After Lightning strike

[ShadwSrch]

We had a Lightning strike that took out our MSC...

We are buying a new BCM 400 with 3.7 on it. I know that we will have a new Media services card, and therefore a new System ID...How do I go about putting the licenses on the new system?

Can I use the old sysem, and just replace the MSC with the new one, and not lose our system setup?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[biv343]

Your vendor can regenerate the keycodes from the dead system to the new system. If the dead system was running 3.7, you can put the hard drive in the new system.

Was more damaged than just the MSC card? You can buy just a MSC. Seems kind of a waste to buy an entire system when you just need one part of it.

 

[ShadwSrch]

I agree whole heartedly...How can I do this?

I was told by my vendor that you can't get a new MSC without buying the whole BCM...(I don't want to bash anyone, but I am not very impressed with them...I don't trust what they tell me...)

Can I buy a 3.6 and just take the MSC card out and put it into a 3.7 system?

I have an option to buy a 4.0 system...Can I generate new keycodes on that system, or would I need to buy new licenses?

 

[acewarlock]

You can buy just the MSC, I would get a new Vendor. You better not trust them. If they are a Nortel Partner I would notify Nortel of there bad faith, and have Nortel give you the name of another Vendor. when changing the MSC you need the to nave the Vendor regen the Keycodes to the new MSC and then send the old MSC back.

How do you know the MSC is bad, are you talking the word of your Vendor? I would not trust him to tell the truth about anything.

I would hate to see your Vendor selling cars, If I got an oil leak he would tell me I need a new car.

 

[ShadwSrch]

That seems to be their approach...

I believe that it is the MSC because of the following:
After the strike, one of my DSM32+ was blown...when I turned the BCM on with it in, it would not power up...just a red light on the power LED

I pulled that out, and the one in there was functioning properly. When I switched the DIPs on it, I could get all of the digital lines, but in chunks, of course. They all showed the right info, and they all rang to the correct mail box...(yes call pilot was working).

Our VoIP phones worked as well...The only thing I couldn't do was get into "telephony services."

My vendor told me to upload core services (I probably have the wrong verbage, but I had to chose the Etiquette option). That told me all services were running, so an upload was not necessary.

I then ran "Initialize Universal profile." After that, the BCM would never load the OS again.

I read somewhere that NT loads services when initializing the MSC at startup, and if there are problems there, NT will not boot...I never get past the blue boot up screen...

I could still use the serial port,but when I tried the Initialization, it said that there is a bad PEC card...Isolate and replace.

This is when they recomended the new BCM at $11,000.00.

In case you haven't figgured it out, I am not a Nortel guy...I am a computer guy, though, and I have been troubleshooting for enough years to know that you should try to fix the error given before replacing the whole computer.

They did not have any PEC cards, and said that it would be 2 weeks before they could get some. I bought 2 from a vendor online ($1000.00 + S&H). Those came in, but there was no change.

The MSC card behaves the same way in a different Base services tray, so I am guessing it is a bad MSC.

My next step was to buy a new BCM because they said that the MSC was not a field replaceable part.

Unless you tell me differently, I will order the new BCM tomorrow. (5/20/07)

If I go with this as plan A, I have some questions...If I get a 4.0 system, can I take just the MSC out of it and put it in my 3.7 system...This leaves me the option to upgrade in a couple of months when I have to reprogram the whole thing anyway.

If I can do this, will there be a problem regenerating my keycodes for 3.7 with the new MSC, and then 4.0 when I upgrade?

Is there any aditional cost (other than the cost of the vendor actually generating those keycodes for me)?

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[TWISTEDAPP]

I'm in Toronto area with spare MSC Cards if it helps, but I think it could just be a hard drive problem.

 

[ShadwSrch]

Thanks for helping the Nortel noob...I am trying to make some descisions here...

Could you tell me why you think it might be the drive...

Some more info...When the strike first happened, I made a backup of the Telephony...I think I had one from before...I don't know if the installers made one after the original config...Hope so...The backup went through...

I could not restore the backup, though...When I tried using...I think I just right clicked on telephony, but I can't remember...It told me that there was "no data."

I then tried using the BRU, and had all of the boxes checked...all of the backup files expanded OK, and all of the restores went through, except telephony...It said something like "attempting to upload data to the Media Services Card...Attempt1" then "...Attempt 2" then it said that it was unable to load data to the card, and failed out.

Since all of the backup file manipulation seemed to go OK, I took it to mean the drive was OK.

I know that you are not supposed to buy and sell on this forum, but maybe if you give me a web site...I can contact you about the MSC purchase off Forum.

 

[biv343]

MSC cards have been field replaceable since release 3.0. It was possible to replace them before that, but Nortel didn't officially support it until R3.

I believe if you regenerate your keycodes to a 4.0 system that you also need the 4.0 upgrade keycode, otherwise KRS doesn't know what release your system is. When you buy a replacement MSC, there is no software on it - that's the purpose of the universal profile, to mate the MSC card with your system and software level.

Since you say CallPilot was working, your IP phones worked, and you can log into BRU and the telephony programming I wouldn't suspect a hard drive necessarily. The red light makes me think you could be having a power supply issue. It's possible you could have lost one leg of a power supply. I saw that happen once in the past. That's a shot in the dark though.

 

[Executor71]

The bad news is that the KRS knows the 4.0 SYSID and generate a keycode in a .lic file for the BCM 4.0....
So when you regenerate the keycode you have an invalid code for you 3.7 system....
I believe you have no need further keycode to upgrade the BCM from 3.7 to 4.0 with a programmed hard drive.
Here in Italy we have a couple of spare MSC... even if they are 3.0 the 3.7 system can upload the correct firmware to bring the MSC up to date.
I think that if you bought a new BCM 4.0 the best way is to reconfigure it, and regenerate the keycode from the old system to the new one.
I also think that, if i understood your issues, the MSC of the BCM was not damaged, you told about your IP phones working correctly, if so the MSC was still working fine.... (MSC provide the access to the lines and the conversion, media gateways, from IP phony to DTM lines...).

Bye!!

 

[acewarlock]

Have you tried another reboot?

You Vendor is ripping you off if you paid $11,000 for a BCM, A1Teletronics sells then for about $6,000 or less with a 2 year warranty and I have bought about 15 from them.
If Vmail is working, I find it hard to belive that it's a harddrive problem and if the IP phones are work then the MSC should be working.

Try reseating the MSC card as I have gotten the bad PEC error and I have never had to replace one and I have 60 BCM's in the feild.

a few times i use a different profiles to get it to take and then i redid it with Etiquette and did the INI.

 

[Executor71]

I agree with Acewarlock, just an info, here in Italy we sell nude BCM 400 STD for € 3.500=. 4.700 US$.
Bye

 

[ShadwSrch]

I ended up buying a BCM 400 Redundant on 4.0 from an online dealer for $3,600.00. I went to buy a 400, and they said that they would send it, but called me back and said that they were out of those, would it be OK if they sent me a redundant system...Uh...OK...

I called my dealer back, when the system was in the mail to get an appt for them to come by and install the 4.0 upgrade,and regenerate my keycodes. They said that they would be there, and the day it arrived, they called me and said that they would not help me with it because I did not buy it from them, but if I sent that one back and bought theirs, they would help me.

I had to go 50 miles away, but I found another dealer...

They will be here on Tuesday after Labor Day.

This whole thing sucked, but if nothing else, we have cut loose a corrupt vendor, and ended up with a newer better system.