partner mail locks up troubleshooting tips

[skip555]

I have a customer with 4 port stand alone partner mail.
twice the VM has locked up and won't answer calls powering up and down clears it the two eposides were about a month apart customer has heavy call volume.

customer reported today that when it locked up there was no light on the card for port one . He said port one was dark ports 2,3,and 4 had green lights

when he reset's (power down ,then up ) the lights came back down and everything worked.

the way I see it either the card ,port 1 is going out or softwear is corrupt.

the only thing I can think to do is to swap the cards so that whats now port one becomes port 3 and see what happens

can't think of any way to check the software

Any thoughts ?



thanks
Skip

 

[drewmich]

Skip,

The Partner and Merlin Mail Standalone voice mails can be tricky at times. You have 4 components that can cause problems - (1) the hard drive can have intermittent voltage problems or corrupt files, (2) the power supply can be producing erratic output which causes major problems with the hard drive, (3) components on the mother board can be failing or the system bios chip programming may be corrupt, (4) the Brooktrout voice cards can be defective.

Let me know if it is still giving you intermittent problems and we can help you.

Andrew Roach
President
Drew Communications
Drew Telecom Group, Inc.
Lucent Voice Mail and Component Repair Specialists
Lucent/Avaya Telecom Brokers/Resellers
drew@triton.net
616-498-9213

 

[skip555]

update

I went out last week and swapped the two voice cards so now the card that was port one is now port 3 and the card that was posrt 3 is now one so I guess this will tell us if it was the card

talked to the customer today and everything has been fine this week so we will see

Andrew ,I will keep yo in mind thanks for the offer

skip

 

[drewmich]

Skip,

That is very strange!

The Stand Alone Mails have special dip switches on the Brooktrout voice cards that assign the ports to the card and have to be put into the proper slots to work correctly.

The voice card with DIP switches set for ports #1 & #2 should go in the farthest outside ISA slot on the main board and the card with DIP switches set for ports #3 & #4 should go on the inside slot beside the first card.

Maybe someone switched these around originally before you got the PM R3.0 - 4 port and now they are setup correctly???

If they are not setup correctly, port #4 which is the port that signals the processor for MW - message waiting transactions, will not work properly.

Let me know how it all works out! Andrew Roach
President
Drew Communications
Drew Telecom Group, Inc.
Lucent Voice Mail and Component Repair Specialists
Lucent/Avaya Telecom Brokers/Resellers
drew@triton.net
616-498-9213

 

[skip555]

Andrew

I changed the dipswitch settings when I swapped the cards, Guess I should have been more specfic. the switchs were correct , i did check them before I swapped them.

so far no lockups but as I said earlier it has been 3 to 4 weeks between the two times it happened so far

thanks for the response
Skip