UNDERSTANDING MLX PORTS

[SYQUEST]

I'm servicing a Legend 6.0 system and have some MLX port problems. When I check for alarms none show up for the ports I get complaints about. The problem is calls being cutoff or the phone being dead, no red/green LEDs. This is intermittent! Both modules are 008 MLX-Us. I have swapped phones, checked wiring and jacks. Is this a characteristic of these modules? Since this system has been out a while, does anybody know what kind of quirks these modules exhibit or is this indicative of the port slowly dying. I also have a 408GLM-U that has a dead port. What is the best way to reset this system or module, doing it with SPM or pulling the power cord, counting to ten then plugging it back in. Since I am not totally versed in the Legend when you do a reset using SPM from my office how long does it take and what should I expect? Are there any "gotchas"?
Also I can't find any description of the MLX line cord jack pins as to what the 8-wires are called or their functions in any of the manuals for R6 or R7? I have noticed most of the line cords on the MLX phones in the system I am servicing are 4-wire, not 8-wire. Any idea what I should read if I put a volt meter on any of the MLX leads??(for testing purposes)
Lastly, can I replace a 008MLX module with a 408GLM? Do I have to renumber ports or something? The system has one expansion cabinet all slots are full right now.

Thanks for any help in advance!

JIM

 

[ScoTTeL]

In answer to your question on calls dropped. Sounds like a wiring issue to me. How frequent is the problem? Could be internal to the phone if plant wiring looks good. Try a new phone, or swapping with a like station and see if problem moves. This is also what the troubleshooting guide says on intermittent phones.

The wiring scheme of the MLX ports are two pair. I believe it is pair 1 and 3 with the 856-B scheme. Blue and green pair on punch jack. (better double check!) Blue for sure, but either green or orange. It just wont work if wrong. On the Control unit side, the middle four wires of an RJ-45(3,4,5,6) 4,5 to blue pair-3,6 to green.

For the dead port, from the console menu, maintenance, port, station(extension), ext #, status.
Check to see if port is buy out/maintenance busy, if so follow above but select restore instead of status. See if that works.

If you replace 008 mlx with a 408, you need to do a system board renumber. This will mess up your trunk line numbers if any cards with trunks is to the left of that one. I am not sure what the 408GLM is. Any body else know? My gut feeling is it is the older module for multi line analog sets and hence not compatible. However, I have seen a system with 2 408glm modules shown on the inventory and they were definately MLX. They may be the newer board. Help on that one from the other guys!!

 

[TouchToneTommy]

The 408GLM is 408-G(round start)-L(oop start)-M(lx)

It will affect lines to the right of where it is installed. If there are no T1 cards to the right, but cards with lines to the right, I would just move the connecting cords over by 4 ports.

The MLX phones use the brown pair (in the 568-B configuration) for power to the DSS and MFM. If you're not using these, 2 pairs are fine.

I have seen the situation of no LED to indicate the next button to be used on an idle phone, even with NO headset administered. I don't know the solution however; the last customer was under Avaya maintaince, and they replaced the MLX card to solve the problem.

 

[redphone]

The problem you are having is called "sleepy sets". It is a quirk with the R6.0 and R6.1 versions of the Merlin Legend. There is a QPPCN ussued by AVAYA to upgrade the processor to an R7.0 V11.

 

[Rainman10]

There could be many reasons for the sleepy sets if not a software issue. Condition and total length of wire are common issues. Dirty power is common ... sometimes leading to permanent equipment damage. Improper grounding is common. There are test leads to measure DC voltage on power supply (less common but does happen). I have even seen pairs split when the building was wired by a hack, and years later finally affected the MLX set's ability to transfer data to the system port years after the installation (EMI is why we have twisted pairs).

If money is no object change the packs out, throw on an online-ups, make sure grounding is as dedtailed in the user guide (and properly bonded), AND the system is on a dedicated electrical circuit with a dedicated hot, neutral, and ground (should be anyways), double check to make sure no pairs are split (EMI). A quality installation would have done this prior to install anyways. If you have any extensions traveling out-of-building that needs to be addresses sperately.

 

[SYQUEST]

Thanks to everyone for your replys. It looks like grounding could be my problem. After reading Rainman10's response I decided to check out the system ground. Well lo and behold, there wasn't ANY!! Not a one on either power supply! This system was installed in AUG1998 by Lucent!! This is not good.
It is kind of surprising that Lucent would forget something like a GROUND. Is it not part of system setup to test the ground? Anyway the customer is remodeling I am going to have the electrician install a bonded building reference ground on a #6 AWG to the phone room in conduit. In the meantime I will hookup a temporary ground, which is better than nothing! Then I will see what problems disappear. I did do module tests remotely last nite, but no errors showed up. Everything I tested passed. The only wierd thing that happened today is the message waiting lamp on the phone I have had the most problems with would not turn off! Yesterday I swapped the MLX5D with an MLX10D to see if the same problems would occur. They did not. So today I swapped the phones back and noticed the MW on. I asked the person who uses that phone if she had any problems with it and one problem was the MW lite would not go off and her vmail box was empty. Any ideas or could this be "ground" related.
We'll see what happens next!

JIM

 

[ken07734]

A good test is to take an extension that sleeps, and plug it directly into the port overnight to see if it falls asleep, this will rule out or in the wiring. I have seen one cable wired wrong and it brought the whole card down. also the ports are wired as 568A pins 4,5 and 3,6 4/5 being blue and 3/6 being orange on the 568A, usually the block or termination is 568B so we swap the orange and green pairs or just punch the secondary leads to green. It is not a good idea to unplug the legend and count to 10, if you have more than one carrier you should power down main first and then sec, third. when powering up you turn on last carrier and then sec, main. Grounding has no effect on the MLX ports, grounding is needed to protect the equipment from exploding with a lightning strike and also absolutely needed for ground start trunks.


If the system is not grounded Avaya will not honor any type of warranty. hope that helps......

 

[BobbR]

We updated several phones from analog to digital (re-using old cabling). A couple of MLX phones were flaky, intermittent lights, etc., so the tech assisting lifted the orange pair of the pigtail on the 66 block, problem solved. He did it so matter-of-factly that it had to be something done on other jobs. I surmised the orange pair was defective somewhere along the line and locking ports. Never got a chance to follow up on this but our practice now is to punch down only blue and green pairs of pigtail onto the block.

 

[SYQUEST]

redphone,

I went to the Avaya site and tried to find the QPPCN section, but the only ones that showed up had to do with MLS sets and the 016 analog module. Where does Avaya hide their archives for QPPCNs?? I also tried using the search, but that just gave me a lot of junk for the GSA!

JIM

 

[Rainman10]

Don't get hung-up on any one thing. My posting was intended to help you with your overall system protection and funtionality not just that one problem. In the grand scheme of things I would worry more about having a truely dedicated circuit than proper grounding. Grounding is a close second though (especially if you have an integrated voicemail card). Make sure when you ground the carriers you do not daisy-chain them. This is just an FYI but [technically] Avaya doesn't support MLX sets that arn't wired with all four pairs because some grounding does occur between the set and the control unit (but they are good at overlooking this and helping you anyways). It is hard to enforce this when their own techs use 2 pair jumpers. Yours are probably wired 2 pair and that's ok.

Don't put too much faith in the board testing. It is not like the definity product line at all. Too many times I have seen a board pass all tests that is dead. Sometimes performing all the tests can wake a dead port up though. Checking for c/o line voltage is ok though.

Like Ken mentioned isolate the problem through frogging phones, ports, and even jumpers. Bypass the wiring and eliminate that.
If you had a maintence contract, Avaya would swap the pack and the phone and tell you if it happened again it's in the wire.

You should still get your proper install squared away though to protect your investment (make sure all copper c/o lines have primary and secondary protection (sneak fuses). And everything that touches the control unit is plugged into the same surge suppressor the switch is plugged into.

P.S.-There is a manual feature code in the book to turn off the message waiting lamp. If the light stayed on with both phones the light can also indicate someone accidentaly sent that person a text message from their MLX phone, or they have a second mailbox assigned to them.

Goodluck.

 

[SYQUEST]

Hi Rainman10,
Thanks for your response. I try not to get sidetraced. But you were right along with the others. I think I found the problem. It is either the line cord or the station wire. I had changed it before, but noticed no change in operation at the time. So I put the cord back and moved the jumper back to the old wire, but left in the new house pair. The other thing I did was reset all the MLX modules. I found the problem w/ the message lite. When I was performing the MLX test, I inadvertently sent a message to the phone somehow. Once I cancelled the messages, off it went! I also had a constant flow of alarms on the 100D T1 module which I finally got to reset Sunday. Don't know if that had any influence on the other problems.
In reference to the grounding, I ran separate 14AWG wires from the ground bar to each pwr unit. This system was originally installed by Lucent in 1998, but their practices are not to thorough(my impression). They ran 2-pair pigtails on everything except the console! And 2-pair line cords to boot. That kind of brings me back to one of my original questions. Do the 8 leads have names and are they polarity sensitive? Because I discovered one thing the D8W line cord is pin-for-pin where a regular 4 lead line cord is reversed. Both work! If you are using an MFM the power for it uses pins 7 & 8. I have never used 'sneak fuses' nor have I ever seen them installed in southern California in all my years in telephony. Just how important are they? Who makes them? Are they a good investment?

Let me see how this week goes with the Legend.
.......JIM......

 

[Rainman10]

Sounds like you have done an excellent job surrounding your problem. Sneak fuses are just one example of secondary c/o line protection. When used on a split 66 block they replace bridge clips while obviously offering additional protection to your PBX. Avaya uses ITW Linx sneak current protectors. They are 350mA 600V. The factory's phone number is 1-708-667-3370. However I have found other brands work just as good, are less expensive, and can be purchased at your local voice/data supply store. If you have frequent lightning problems they also make other fuses than can actually be bonded to your primary grounding (which should include bonding to your telco's grounding source). If you have everything on 110 hardware avaya sells a 50 pair fuse panel that connects via amphenol.

 

[Rainman10]

Correction ... avaya sells a 25 pair sneak fuse pannel not 50 pair. Sorry for typo.