Electronics power supply urgent help

[fizzy]

1st post after coming back off holiday and going down with flu!

Our phone system in work died Friday 13th - so apt! We have 8 phone lines down at our busiest time.
The phone company are useless so trying to fix it myself.

Internal PSU appears to be down. The 30V line is ok but the +5 and -5V lines not working.

Computer PSUs have +5v and -5V - can I use that to power the system? I am mainly concerned about the ground. Can I just tie all the ground together from both power supplies?

From what I can see the 30V supply powers the phones - they are working - but the main circuit board in the phone controller isn't getting power so the system won't work.

 

[richie00boy]

You need to ascertain if the 30v supply is supposed to be isolated from the +-5v supply or not. If not, you should be OK if you connect the 0v ground of the +-5v PSU to the 0v ground of the 30v PSU.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

What phone system is it, we maintain a wide range of phone systems and have spares sat on the shelf.

 

[fizzy]

What phone system is it, we maintain a wide range of phone systems and have spares sat on the shelf.

I never thought welders and phone systems went together!

IPLDK-20

Obsolete now supposed to be changed years ago - can't have a VOIP system as BT totally refuse to upgrade our cabinet despite only being 1 mile from the main exchange and also 1 mile from a huge new university. Fibre optic lines running everywhere and we can't have one!

 

[knighty]

I think you can use a computer psu...

to power up a computer psu, look at the main 24pin connector, there's a green wire... join that to any of the black (negative wires) and it'll power up/turn on

I expect you'll need to join the grounds together

good idea to join the grounds, power it up, then put a meter between the old 30v line and the new +5v line... make sure it reads 25v... then between the 30v and -5v and make sure it reads 35v


you can use VOIP phones and systems in your office but have all the incoming/outgoing calls over the standard phone line... I've half got that set up at work right now but not finishing it off till the new office is sorted... running asterisknow on an old (cheap/ebay) server... might actually pay someone to set it up to be used because it's a bit of a pain... but it's pretty impressive

does all the normal incoming/outgoing calls, answer machine (and it can email you the recordings of answered calls) press 1 for option 1 etc, queue systems, call recording etc... and about a million other things which are of no use to me!

all the software is free... which is shocking... a quick google and there's giant call centers etc. running the same software :-o

 

[Wendelspanswick]

I never thought welders and phone systems went together!

IPLDK-20

Obsolete now supposed to be changed years ago - can't have a VOIP system as BT totally refuse to upgrade our cabinet despite only being 1 mile from the main exchange and also 1 mile from a huge new university. Fibre optic lines running everywhere and we can't have one!

LG's offering, I will have a look but it wasn't a popular system, I think I've only ever seen one site with it on, so I doubt we've got any bits.
I'd try a computer PSU as you suggested, hopefully you've got a backup if it goes pear shaped.

 

[fizzy]

Thanks for the comments - I gave up in the end - found someone selling recon ones for £40! Trouble is delivery Tuesday. These things are a nightmare to configure and I was scared of blowing the board - at least now on Tuesday hopefully I can just swap out the psu and be up and running. IF it is just the psu then it will be still be configured as there is a backup battery. If not the fun starts!

Thanks for software tip Knighty will look at that.

 

[fizzy]

I had just finished migrating our servers onto new hardware - that was a big enough job and now this!

 

[Wendelspanswick]

You can go down the VOIP route and keep your analogue lines by fitting a FXO gateway, basically a box that you connect your lines to and give it an IP address.
The phone server software then routes all the traffic through the gateway.
You also don't need a massively fast internet speed for voice traffic, each voice channel uses 64k so for 8 lines you need 0.5 Mbs.
What you do need is reliable internet, if your internet drops out or you have no QoS (Quality of Service which gives priority to voice traffic over data) you lose your phone lines.
When we upgrade a critical site from a traditional to a VOIP phone system we will keep a few of the phone lines as a fall back measure unless the broadband supplier can guarantee a 4 hr response time.

 

[GW8IZR]

That’s interesting, So some systems are now installed with no analog fallback?

I only ever interfaced with 999 lines and the criteria for that meant they had to be analog fallback but I always felt that if they had to use the analog phone it would be so disconnected from the rest of the call taking requirement that under most circumstances they would be far better off handing calls off to a neighbour Agency.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

What we tend to do on the smaller sites is get a VDSL/ADSL circuit put in with a voice component, exactly as you would have at home.
The data and the SIP traffic work on the broadband and any fire/burglar/BMS*/lift alarms go out on the voice channel.

*Building Management Systems although most of these are IP based now.

 

[fizzy]

You can go down the VOIP route and keep your analogue lines by fitting a FXO gateway, basically a box that you connect your lines to and give it an IP address.
The phone server software then routes all the traffic through the gateway.
You also don't need a massively fast internet speed for voice traffic, each voice channel uses 64k so for 8 lines you need 0.5 Mbs.
What you do need is reliable internet, if your internet drops out or you have no QoS (Quality of Service which gives priority to voice traffic over data) you lose your phone lines.
When we upgrade a critical site from a traditional to a VOIP phone system we will keep a few of the phone lines as a fall back measure unless the broadband supplier can guarantee a 4 hr response time.

That is the problem - not reliable. We are using a system called airband - basically a microwave link. The sort of thing they would install after a war in Iraq! The Welsh assembly thinks it's great and have given them a grant..............
We get 40mb down and 20 up with a 14ms ping. Pretty good but it drops 4 or 5 times a month for a few hours. As a fall back we have our ADSL - 5mb but the contention is awful.
I have written to the local council - local mp - nothing is done about it. I live in a remote rural area and I have better broadband.

 

[GW8IZR]

What we tend to do on the smaller sites is get a VDSL/ADSL circuit put in with a voice component, exactly as you would have at home.
The data and the SIP traffic work on the broadband and any fire/burglar/BMS*/lift alarms go out on the voice channel.

*Building Management Systems although most of these are IP based now.

Yes that makes perfect sense.

As a small aside, we used to put dual diverse routing into the building and it was amazing the number of times that the telco provider thought it was okay to put the two circuits over the last drop wire :-)

 

[500e]

Have one of these from phone system if any good carriage & small donation to charity
PM Me if required

 

[Wendelspanswick]

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