jaseinatl

Because I figure there are several other people who are going through or who have gone through the same series of steps through which I am going, I hope that by posting my experiences, others will either gain some insight into the mess that I am facing or perhaps have some advice...

To catch up: I work for a small law firm managing phone, data, facilities, etc. Less than a year ago, without my input, my boss decided that the phone system at the office needed to be upgraded. He was probably right as the old PBX was on it's last legs and you couldn't buy handsets for it easily...

So he had his office manager call around and get quotes on a phone system that would basically provide 12 digital phones, handle voicemail, etc. The bid that came in was for the Comdial DX-80 with 12 digital phones, 32 digital ports (2 cards with 24 digital extensions), 4 analog ports, VoiceMail (8 ports), and 1 line card with 4 ports.

The person installed the cabinet right over the top of the old PBX and wired the digital extensions to the left side an antiquated, 66 pair block with the 4 analog lines on the right. Then he managed to somehow get each office punched down correctly though it is not clear how considering the lines were all over the place and the old PBX was still wired in.

On the logic side of things, he numbered the extensions 101-office manager 102-company president and then sequential moved down the office heirarchy to assign the other extensions. So a month or two ago, before we had some personnel changes, it was easy to see just how important you were...larger numbered extensions, obviously not that important.

So, when I inherited this mess, I tore out all of the station wiring, put in a 19" telco rack and mounted seperate Voice and Data patchpanels (RJ45 front-110 on back). I seperated the ports geographically so that all of the first floor ports are numbered between 1 - 12 and all of the second floor ports are numbered 13-24. I then wired the digital extensions and analog extensions sequentially on a seperate panel so that patching a numbered extension to any port in the building can be done easily.

Next, I wanted to make changes to the DX-80 database in the hopes of making the extensions match up with the ports better (thus eliminating the poor extensions numbering scheme listed above and making it easier to patch a new extension). I worked through the ridiculous manuals and was able to make some changes via the digital phone. But it quickly became obvious that I needed the PC-DBA software.

After unsuccessfully trying to download the software from Comdial (as it says to do in all of the support manuals) and after being told that my supplier would send me the software (but never has), I came to PBXinfo for help.

When I finally got the WINPC-DBA software from a kind gentleman who had similar problems with a DX-80 he inherited, I was psyched and thought that my problems were solved. No such luck.

I was only able to get the HW/SW revision levels for my DX-80 using the WIN PC-DBA software as the HW revision on my DX-80 was 33 and the Windows GUI for DX-80 database administration was only available on levels 39 and greater.

NEXT....contacting Comdial Again...