I promise when we move to the big leagues away from WordPress, I’ll have a broader palette on subject matters! Meaning I can set the content and forget it!
A follow up from yesterday’s post from Andy in Missouri had contacted me at least several years ago, perhaps in late 2016, around the time of the Ugly Console theme. As you have seen; he’s got a lot of insight of ROLM, the leading vendor of PBX systems in the country – only for a short time. Thank IBM and their uptight attitude towards a wild but hard working group of people out on the Left Coast, where some of their ideas was the seed to what would become the standard well into the Facebook days.
I happened to reach out to him last fall to ask about the Redwood; ironically Joe The UCX Guy had posted an abandoned Redwood around the same time, however it was just pictures of that system.
As you probably know, ROLM’s demise has been perceived failure on support of IBM to finance the company effectively and a lack of leadership made them fall behind in evolving technologies (such as It Still Does Nothing or ISDN?), resulting a sale to Siemens in 1991, and basically took their existing American clientele, and fused some of ROLM’s technologies with Siemens. ROLM is well known for their bullet proof PBX systems. Your local Sears Roebuck store is probably using a system that’s almost as old as I with sets older than your’s truly. The rest is an adaptation of an email from him discussing the differences of a failed small end system called the Redwood and their flagship unit, the 9751 and the CBX as in the Computer Branch Exchange.
Like the last post, any first-person reference implies to Andy and not me.
The Redwood, like the old Dimension, was barely a subject that could be found on a search engine. Within a week of reaching out to Andy last fall, because I knew he had knowledge on the subject; Joe the UCX Guy posted an abandoned Redwood with some pictures. Unlike his site, that since April 2019, his site, domain and everything is down; Andy from Missouri was able to provide some pics and a pretty detailed narrative. The subject may get technical and may go back and forth between the background of the workgroup-grade Redwood and the carrier-grade PBX. Parts of this narrative is part of that email with Andy, some may have first-person references, and that should not imply me of course.
Today is March 32nd. I just wanted to be funny to make light of an ongoing depressing situation.
I’ve been meaning to post this for a long time. Took this in 2017. An acquaintance of mine had brought this in and I took a picture of it. Not sure what it is, but at the time the joke was a “Participation Trophy” before there was one.
In the mid to late 1980s, AT&T used what I would characterize as deathly commercials and using fear from alleged real-life experiences. Another part of this series was the AT&T Spirit system (see here)
“Turned out our new phone system hadn’t had the whole place intimidated. No one could make it work Supposed to make us look good, we were coming cross looking like a bunch of clowns.”
The style of the ad was very film like, with a tight shot and a loose pedestal so the camera looked as if it was a person looking at the individual. The last 10 seconds had a dark soundtrack with a stern warning “that your business phone is your business lifeline.”
From my knowledge, it is unclear what system or vendor AT&T was attacking (or attempted to mock). As previously posted, the AT&T Merlin was more designed for simplicity over any technical features, that may had not been available for all customers who would connect to the phone company for a decade longer. While AT&T is mocked by some, that marketed “Fisher Price toys” of phone systems; there is some sign that they had decent market of the US Small business market, leaving the others to the consolidated Japanese market as well as Nortel.
On a sidenote: I feel that such campaigns have not only been long gone, and since the advent and aggressive marketing borderline on backstabbing, “Cloud PBX” and Voice over IP have ultimately made business telephony less of a “lifeline” with no responsibility to defend it.
Since the 2000s, with Millenials and Gen Z coming to age, and their “Meh” attitude, if a call is dropped, they just move on, forget 5 minutes ago while they don’t have attention to realize why a call was dropped in the first place. (The attention deficit and the retention deficit that makes these people not function well in a real business world in 2019.) Not to mention they assume everyone has caller ID and insist a “missed” call is good enough for them.
I know my way around the switchboard better than anyone. But this new system we got here…well it’s so complicated no one can work it. It’s no wonder things are running amok around here. I think they should cut their losses and work from scratch.
This was one damn good ad campaign that ran on mainstream primetime programming. I mean when I was growing up Nortel and Avaya could only get their way on cable news. CNN was the highest they could go outside the 3 business cable networks. But with the rise of VOIP and other UC vendors out there that could be just as bad as 1987, you wonder if there’s another vendor out there that could do “Your Business Phone is Your Business Lifeline”
By the way: The System 25 while it sounds like System 75 is not. The System 25 was based on code from the AT&T Merlin but the catch here is could do light duty PBX. The “hybrid” boards used on the Definity PBX was actually designed for the System 25 for users upgrading from the 25 to the 75. Under 200 ports was the audience. System could stack up to 3 carrier cabinets, and the cabinets were recommended to sit on top of a desk or a filing cabinet and not on the floor. Many years later, the signature design of the System 25 carriers can be seen in modern day Avaya G650 rack mount carriers.
The System 25 didn’t have much of a roadmap. It didn’t last long as a new system and the recommended replacement was a small Definity G3 small carrier cabinet, could hold a System 25 in one wide carrier.
System 25 cabinets can be purchased on eBay. Without software it can’t do much, and to load them you would need data cassettes to load the software into memory. Yup it’s that old!
This is not confused to another 7970 that was in production prior to. As of 2025, the aging 79x0s do not age well and the set is physically broken.
This Cisco 7970 is different than one that I’ve shared previously. A close dear friend of mine had given this to me a while back. I don’t remember which to be quite honest the last four years has been a blur and at the same time vaporized.
The phone was given to me because her day job is a job trainer for people with developmental delays. I used to work for her and the company as well*.
The client had found this Cisco 7970 at a yard sale and thoguht to look like everyone else, he could literally Bring Your Own Device to the company. But as you know they can’t hook up any Cisco set that they don’t own and in order to hook it up, a license on their end would be required.
As a result the attraction was lost, and the set was given to me for the Museum.
This set is very old, firmware is just over 15 years old to the time of recording and it’s very likely this could’ve been a corporate phone likely at a New England Cisco branch office. I cannot confirm.
*To show how long ago, they were using a Cisco CallManager 3.1 that was still running off Windows 2000 Server edition. In the late 2000s, Windows 2000 was the default operating system in many enterprises. Windows XP SP2 was only 3 years old. SP1 was End of Life and the original XP was already EOL’d. (I tend to obsess on the technicality of the lifecycle of Windows XP, arguementively the last best Windows NT grade operating system from Microsoft.
Obviously their systems have been refreshed and I have been told they are using OS X Yosemite at the desk. (When I was there I was using a pre Compaq era HP workstation with Windows 2000 Workstation. Same with the Cisco CallManager.
This video shows how my Definity PBX can handle a fairly recent telset, the 9408. Surpisngly it works pretty well despite the labeling not working at all because the PBX release off a year before Avaya introduced screen phones in 2001. Release 9 was on the market from 1999 to 2001. The 2400s would be introduced to the market by the end of 2001 into 2002, and no one was really using them for a few years later. At that same time 7400s were still pretty common place.
I received this from my friend for Christmas, only because he disliked this model. I could imagine why. Screenphones isn’t for everyone.
I want to be clear with the lawyers or techs: this is installed at a home with a decommissioned switch. BY NO MEANS is this a commercial or used in a production environment. I cannot be held liable to anyone who runs across this page and thinks this is acceptable for use. One an R9 PBX probably shouldn’t be used, and secondly, using some very new set on an old switch would raise a lot of support tech’s flags. I have to mention this because this site is for educational purposes of historical sense and shouldn’t be used as a resource with current available products. A lot of things happen behind the scenes at The Museum legally, so just want to keep the boundaries clear.
The 7900 series IP Phones from Cisco has now been in the market for 20 years this year! These sets were the first after the acquisition of Selius Systems, the publisher of CallManager.
These are the classic, default choice for the true Cisco install base, while newer versions, the 6900, the 9900 and 8900 (and in the last couple years, the 7800, and 8800s, 6800s those “second generation” Cisco sets will appear at a later post.) Also this site attempts to conform to Plain English and so over uses of “79xx” will not be tolerated.
From Cisco’s website circa 2004 featuring most of the first generation of Cisco 79×0 series sets.
79×0 Series (1st Generation)
(where x indicates solely on it’s functionality, that latter “0” implies generation)
The first round of options at that time included
7902 (blank set), a display, single appearance (realistically);
7905 (a 7902 with a display) Both known by Cisco as “cubicle” sets
the 7910 (a black colored set, that looked like half the size of a full blown 7900s, but functions similar to a 7902 and 7905)
The infamous large screen sets known as the 7940, the 7960. The 7914 sidecar was available.)
And the 7970 (a Java based set with color and other goodies would roll out later in time; not available originally.) The LCD display had very low resolution, with a display for text; and graphics were primitive icons. Worse, these sets age, they don’t age well, due to its black and black display (I can’t say white per se, but the reader should understand.)
Cisco strongly sold these sets for their Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP or Skinny), as SIP and MGCP were available for downloadable firmware as an option. The SIP versions of this generation would not have the visual straight lines to separate appearances or features like Skinny, instead looking like softkey buttons. Also a SIP icon appeared on the top right with the S resembling a snake.
When the 7970 was released, it was a luxury set for executives or conferencing; as time would go one, each little feature in the 7970 would become standard in newer models with lower entry points. This “screen phone” was running with a Java applet to allow it to surf the web and do other fancy things.
Regardless, from the start, they licensed Polycom’s conferencing technology, according to archived pages, which was probably the strongest selling point of the Cisco IP Phones. In fact Polycom wouldn’t make VOIP sets till after the year 2000, of course they had the great sound quality on crappy software and flimsy hardware.
Cisco sold their 7920 mobile set, but the set wasn’t well used because of its dependence on WLAN, later WiFi. Wireless LAN at the time went so far, and could carry much less data and to extend the signal would be cumbersome. Many opted to stay with DECT (despite it being politically incorrect in the world of Cisco – because anything “digital” was deemed “analog”) ether using analog sets or IP (such as SIP) as the base unit. It wasn’t until 2013, Cisco settled on DECT – but offered such sets to the small market.
The 7980 was a video phone designed for the conferencing market. The set’s label on the front of the display indicates it used Tandberg technology, of which they acquired the company years later.
Formerly owned this 7960 which failed to register in a Call Manager Express. Partly because I didn’t realize “TFTP” in the Cisco world refers to the PBX/IP KSU the system will reside on.
79×1 Series (Second Generation)
(where “1” indicates the newer generation where the x indicates the set’s functionality as previously described.)
As time went on beginning in late 2005; Cisco introduced:
The 7941 and 7961 sets. Other than prettier text, and tri colored LEDs for lamp status, the set was in fact based on Java; of which was a critical difference unlike the first generation, except for the 7970 and 7980. This gave developers the ability to make your desk set check the weather, a package from UPS, etc. Whether it was widely used is debatable. Around this same time period, the 7971 was released, with slight improvements. A massive issue if you are not fully familiar to managing servers but managing traditional phone systems; was the inability to use the local Corporate Directory out of the box, requiring Cisco IP Phone Services server to run such feature as an app on some server or gateway and some experience in coding.
Gigabit models were available if you asked for a 79×1-GE part number.
The phone supported Power over Ethernet (POE) or Cisco’s Inline power standards natively.
Introduction of the 7912 set, similar to the 7905 but it runs the Java operating system to run the phone’s applications and services.
Not my Photo – Cisco 7961 with a 7915 Module
Cisco also introduced a graphical sidecar as well. The 7915 was a grayscale and the 7916 was color
Cisco 7975 with the 7916 sidecar
79×2 (3rd Generation)
Where “2” indicates the third generation where “x” indicates the type of sets in the series
In the mid 2007, Cisco introduced the 7942, 7962 and a new set 7931.
A Cisco 7931 taken at a local Nashua, NH Staples. This replaced a Vertical Networks solution which used 24 button sets. Most Staples on the East Coast had already dumped Norstar systems with Vertical in the last 7 years. Cisco originally sold these and marketed these sets for the retail market.
In 2008, Cisco released the 7931. It looks like a traditional Key or PBX set with the old fashioned desi key strips, most likely responding to a shock to the system of end users who wasn’t ready to let go of the tried and true solution of paper designation strips. The set can support up to 24 lines/feature/URL keys and cannot support any sidecars.
The 7942, the 7962 sets had bitmapped display (that could handle graphics similar to the 797x, just in grayscale.)
Model of a Cisco 7962 taken at the NH Telephone Museum in their modern day collection. This can run bitmapped graphics, Gigabit Ethernet and Power over Ethernet.
Given the “cubicle” version of the 7900s, Cisco went back 1 digit, and introduced the 7911 at this same time. In short, the Cisco 7911 is the “latest” generation of the “cubicle” line
The phone has a large, 4-bit grayscale graphical LCD (Figure 2) that provides features such as date and time, calling party name, calling party number, digits dialed, and presence information. The crisp graphic capability of the display allows for the inclusion of higher value, more visibly rich Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications, and support for localization requiring double-byte Unicode encoding for fonts.
By this point Cisco shipped these sets with dual image firmware of Skinny or SIP, as many decided SIP was the future or “standard”, but massive tradeoffs occur when going to SIP. In these versions, the SIP and Skinny screens are the same (horizontal lines separating the line/feature keys.) Tradeoffs include, a half-duplex speakerphone, the ring tones sounding tinny and the voice quality isn’t like talking to a sea shell compared to using SCCP. But you can’t fix stupid with everyone defending “open” systems.
79×5 Series (4th and Final generation)
Example of a Cisco 7965 set at a Citi bank in New York City, taken in Midtown Manhattan in April 2015 by this publisher.
The 3rd generation and 4th generation was release concurrently. At the same time, Cisco released the 6900 series. When Cisco released the 79×5 sets in late 2007, they basically giving everyone a 797x, but on a smaller footprint. You can set up applications similar to the 797x on a similar size of the 796xs and 794xs. Gigabit Ethernet was standard. The sets have full color and touchable screens, multi colored LED buttons and a 4 direction with a center OK button in the middle. The 7975 reflected that latter change, as the 4 way buttons before had no center key. Also the last generation of the video conferencing set, the 7980 was released under 7985 (but end of life notifications for that set was settled in 2015)
The sets were not seen in many desktops till the teens, perhaps enterprise cutbacks due to the Great Recession and the 2008 Financial Crisis, of which Cisco had taken a direct hit, as many UC customers were in the financial industry
In short, as time would go on, the only “7900” sets one could order and acquire a license was:
Cisco IP Phone 7945
Cisco IP Phone 7965
Cisco IP Phone 7975
Cisco IP Phone 7985 (End of Life circa 2011)
The End
Remarkably, the millions of 7900s came to an end in the summer of 2018 where Cisco announced the End of Sale. The final End of Support will occur in 2022. At the time of the E.O.S. announcement, only the “4th generation” except for the 7985 was still on the market.
The reasoning is the age. Inside the Cisco 7900 IP Phone is a specialized computer designed to make and receive telephone calls. The original CallManager, was essentially as primitive as a consumer POTS service. The Cisco 7900 Series IP Phones have used H323 to make the phone tick. However SIP is software based, and a lot of it’s magic lives inside the phone, and for SIP to work effectively it needs more memory and CPU cycles. This isn’t to be officially known to the customer, all VOIP set makers just tell customers to upgrade to later generations, and as time went on Cisco added more processing, Flash memory, etc to handle a desktop smartphone for the lack of a better word.
Perhaps the makers of the hardware are ether no longer making chips, resisters, etc., or perhaps issues with licensing with those companies; leading Cisco to move onto different lines concurrent to the lifespan of the Cisco 7900s:
Cisco 6900 Series IP Phones
Cisco 8900 Series IP Phones
Cisco 9900 Series IP Phones
But lately Cisco has focused on a few newer models
Cisco 7800 Series IP Phones
Cisco 8800 Series IP Phones
Cisco 6800 Series IP Phones, as they are a bit more open to allow customers to buy phones and run them on their own call platforms (or phone systems)
Most importantly Cisco has focused on security. While the 7900 Series was “secure” in theory using firmware and secure versions of CallManager, the newer sets focus on using “signed” Cisco firmware that cannot be tampered by third party or companies outside of Cisco. With this scheme, the lifecycles could be shorter given how “certificates” have certain shelf life, so no one can try to tamper with the secure code.
Despite these newer offerings the 7900s are still very popular and sell well in the thirdhand market. These are perfect for hobbyists, home users, small businesses that depend on phones still and can last a long time. Security wise, shouldn’t be a serious issue till a few years after 2020, but a well designed multimedia network should be based with security in mind. Even though these sets are extremely overpriced in the firsthand for what little it can do, it’s has become a status symbol just like how AT&T was the status symbol with the Merlin (small systems) and 7400 (the large system) sets (albeit more superior!)
Hello Direct is a Nashua based reseller of mostly headsets and POTS accessories. Early on, they competed with Polycom with headsets. In fact I do have one that is in my pile of junk. Their own products had 3.5mm plugs and jacks, while Plantronics had their RJ-9 connections.
