Norstar 7900 Touchphone -- not Meridian SL-1 M3000

[DominicUCx]

Has anyone ever seen a Norstar M7900 (pictured on the left) out in the field? Not to be confused with the SL-1 Meridian M3000 Touchphone from December, 1985 on the right.

I don't recall any of these making it out of BNR.

 

[curlycord]

There was few of them made, I think I only saw one out there but mostly Bell managers had them.

They still look slick today.

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[DominicUCx]

The Norstar M7900s? -- these didn't work on SL-1 or M-1, only Norstar, and not the first release. When I was at Bell, yeah, I saw a lot of M3000s, mostly busted.

 

[RLSbutton]

Hey Dominic, do you care if I take a screenshot and feature that phone on my blog "Two guys and their phones?" I love that M7900, the UCx guys should look at redeveloping it in my opinion with newer software and a high resolution display!

Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Emetrotel Consultant

http://www.joetheucxguy.com

 

[DominicUCx]

Feel free Joe. I don't think the 7900 made it out of Carling. It was context sensitive, just like the M3000, which sold for $695 in 1985. The lawyers loved them. I remember them at Bell all over the place. There was a infrared gadget to backup your personal directory on the 3000.

 

[curlycord]

The Norstar M7900s? -- these didn't work on SL-1 or M-1"

Well I did not they they did.

The Bell yards in Ontario used Norstar systems, I worked out of a few yards in Toronto GTA and played with one of those.

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[DominicUCx]

Why would Bell use Norstar when DMS did Centrex ISDN EKTS? Were they out of range? I always said Bell was, is, and forever will be, DUMB.

 

[RLSbutton]

I never lived in Canada, but I have a feeling Bell thought the Norstar's were cool and revolutionary, and probably liked that they did more features than a standard Centrex line. That little feature button was extremely powerful compared to a standard EKTS set.

As you all know, you could set up the Norstar to be in a Centrex configuration, where incoming 4 digit Centrex numbers would ring in on the CO lines on the Norstar and the I/C was solely considered for dialing within your I/C group. Am I correct or just making a bad guess?

Joseph Sus Jr. Nortel Emetrotel Consultant

http://www.joetheucxguy.com

 

[DominicUCx]

Bad guess -- sorry. That feature button was a pain in the .... I came from SL-1, and when I saw Norstar, we went from a context-sensitive M3000 to codes nobody could remember? Then the feature button became a satellite dish.

I'm like, OK, this is a dance remix of SL-1 because Vantage didn't do so well on the charts. They knew how to mux. They even called it Meridian Norstar. Meridian was like Oprah -- the name sold, so everything and its mother was called Meridian. It was ISDN underneath, and the protocols were very similar, yet intentionally made incompatible.

They made it look like a key system at first, but it wasn't, and then it slowly morphed into a PBX. I think the joke was that Norstar was Meridian for Dummies -- something like that.

Meridian EBS Centrex ... the M5xxx series (analog voice with a 1 kilobit/sec supervisory digital signal modulated on an 8 kHz carrier) and Meridian ISDN FULLY Digital Centrex (M5209TDcp, M5317TDX, M5317TDE) were different creatures also. They were above and beyond what Norstar could do.

Key behind centrex was for 1A2 -- there was no reason to use Norstar behind EBS or ISDN Centrex which was out at the same time -- you couldn't by then with the EBS and ISDN sets. I don't even remember the plain analog centrex.

The industry never really knew what they were doing

 

[MooreTel]

Why would Bell use Norstar when DMS did Centrex ISDN EKTS? Were they out of range? I always said Bell was, is, and forever will be, DUMB."

The answer is.....

Here in Sherbrooke, prospective clients would come into the local commercial office not long after Bell came out with the Norstar line. Clients were being pushed towards the Norstar line, yet many questioned questioned why they should purchase a Norstar system, when it wasn't even good enough for Bell. Bell picked up on those comments. I'm sure other commercial offices had the same experience.

 

[DominicUCx]

Bell made more money selling Norstar for small sites where Centrex EBS would have worked, but they weren't that bright. NT essentially had to tell them what to buy. Since they owned a good chunk of Northern Telecom, they both made more selling Norstar. NT pushed equipment sales to boost its own revenues whereas Centrex would only boost Bell's.

Norstar was a deception. It was a dumbed down version of SL-1/Meridian-1, which was much easier to set up. Lots of installers get scared of MICS and Option 11-81. Put them on DMS, and they pass out.

Whereas I liked BCM, I never liked Norstar -- the first version of it was simple, fine. That feature code BS, meant for analog set support, was a step backwards I felt. They called it a key system. Key systems by definition cannot switch a call from the CO to any station. Norstar time-switched calls. It was a switch that simply behaved like a key system (mostly) in its initial release. Everyone would pick the square template and I'd moan. When they got into 8x24 and target lines, PRI, BRI in CICS and MICS I really thought it should have just gone to an OPTION 11C MINI. Then it would be LD this and LD that. They'd be lost. Two systems with incompatible phones doing the same thing.

Bell using Norstar for internal reasons was silly, because they owned DMS-100s that were licensed for Centrex (Microlink ISDN Centrex for example could do Electronic Key Telephone Service (EKTS) and CACH - Call Appearance CALL Handling) -- I always say cache by mistake. The earlier version of "p-phone" Centrex (EBS) had all the same features. The only reason I could see Bell using Norstar itself for small offices was on a CICS or MICS where "lines" from DMS were limited, or where they had to buy DMS line cards for Microlink Centrex or EBS Centrex or what not. What each went for back then I don't recall. I doubt Norstar would have come out cheaper. Bell just wasn't that smart, and ISDN was much harder to set up.