OT: Toshiba XXe Key Phone System Info?

From: Sellam Ismail <foo_at_siconic.com>
Date: Sun Nov 19 23:42:51 2000

On Sun, 19 Nov 2000, Bill Richman wrote:

> We (my fellow techo-packrat housemate and myself) were recently given a
> Toshiba Strata XXe phone system and about 35 EKT-series phones by his
> company when they got a new system. It was working when disconnected, but
> we received no installation manuals - just phone user guides. It's all
> there, with (from what I've gathered from various web sites) an HCAU (CPU),
> an HCBU (aux CPU), two HCOU (central office) cards, an HINU (intercom) card,
> three HSTU-2 and one HSTU-5 (station cards), and an operator's console, but
> when they removed it, they just hacked off the 25-pair (or are the 50 pair?)
> cables from the HSTU cards, so I've got no way of knowing which pairs go to
> the phone jacks. Was wondering if anyone can point me to some information
> about this. Several hours of web searching has turned up some tantalizing
> hints, but nothing I want to risk blowing something up by trying. Any help
> would be very much appreciated. I found one company that will sell me a
> manual, but it's a weekend and this phone system _really_ wants to be hooked
> up! :-)

They're fairly easy to hook up. I believe this system uses three pairs
for each station (phone): one for analog voice, one for digital signaling
data, and the third would be for power. This might be a more efficient
system though, using maybe only two pairs, or even one if it's really
cool. The pairs would then be arranged in sequence on the punchdown
block, and you'd hook them up to a jack in standard order.

Standard order (for those not in the know):

On jacks with red/green/black/yellow wires: green/red is the first pair
(or line) and black/yellow is the second. This is a traditional phone
jack, mostly found in older homes and stuff. Green and black are the
positive (or "tip") side of the line, and red and yellow are the negative
(or "ring") side. Polarity generally matters a great deal on proprietary
phone systems with digital sets. It used to matter on regular telephone
lines too but generally not anymore, although the PBX I have in my house
will not seize a loop start trunk if the polarity is reversed. It's
either a feature or a bug, depending on how stringent or how lax you are.

On jacks with blue, orange, green, brown and slate (grey) wiring, the
order is exactly as I have listed. The common color will be white. So
the first pair will be one wire with mostly white, and the other wire will
be mostly blue. The second is one wire that's mostly white, and the other
mostly orange. The mostly white wire is always positive (tip) and the
other wire is negative (ring).

A 25 pair cable has a standard color scheme. The "primary colors", as
previously mentioned, are Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, Slate (grey). A 25
pair cable is split up into 5 groups of 5 pairs. These are the colors for
each group of five pairs. Each group also has a different common color.
The first group is white, the second is red, then black, then yellow, then
violet.

So basically, as the 25 pair cable comes out of the phone system, the
white/blue-blue/white pair represents the first line of the first phone.
The white/orange-orange/white pair is the second line, etc. What you
still need to figure out is how many pairs each set requires. Say they
require three, then the first three pairs (blue/white, orange/white, and
green/white) would be connected up for the first phone. The second phone
would get brown/white, slate/white, and blue/red (see how we just moved
into the second group of 5 pairs? the standard grouping of the colors has
no bearing on how the phones are hooked up...at least I've never seen a
system that would do something as lame as this). And the next phone would
get orange/red, green/red, brown/red. And so on.

You generally will not find any sort of manuals for phone systems on the
web like you will old computer manuals. Phone guys are archaic. Knowledge
is passed by word of mouth or by hard-copying manuals. Nobody has ever
thought to scan any of these old manuals in and post them online in an
archive like the computer hobbyists do (although many times I wish someone
with more time than I have would do so). Mostly this is because nobody
tinkers with old phone systems as a pasttime. You only need the manual
once, usually to install and configure, and then after that it gets tucked
away somewhere. You memorize what you need to know. Also, nobody wants
to post something online that they can charge money for :)

Anyway, all that being said, if you can't turn up a manual anywhere else,
I'm almost positive we have one for the Strata DK in our library at my
office. I can run a copy for you.

Contact me at <sellam_at_vintage.org> if you're interested (consider this an
olive branch ;)

Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
Received on Sun Nov 19 2000 - 23:42:51 GMT

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