Ugliest Operator Consoles, part six

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You thought Avaya would be off the hook (non pun intended) right?

Nope! It would defeat the purpose of being the equal opportunity offender.

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Dimension Attendant Console, circa mid 1970s. NOT MY IMAGE.

This console was made in the early 1970s for the Bell System’s Dimension PBX (and smaller versions most likely for the Horizon system.) The console was a weird design consisting of a shoebox form factor.

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To the right of the set had only eight characters alpha numeric LED display. The console is filled with many indicators (the design at the time.) The console was very primitive for it’s time. No call appearances for overflowed calls. The buttons above the dialpad did act as such but they were referred (IIRC) as loopback lines.

Even stranger, as with many consoles at the time, would require a straight up, direct line from a special console port on the PBX to the location of the console. What was it’s connector? You guessed it, a 25 pair Amphenol plug!

While the Dimension console did in fact have BLFs with buttons, it was a seperate option and was located on the top, picture shown above.

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Not My Photo – Same Crappy Set a with new Look! (and more BLFs since the System 85/Definity G2 could support to over 30,000 extensions on a single node!)

 

In the mid to late 1980s, AT&T remade the set – took away the wood grain decal, mainstream of office telephones of the time, and made it jet black, to match the Merlin-like sets of the time as this console went into System 85 PBX line. If research confirms my out of experience of that PBX, the only attendant console, had to be one that was hard wired to the PBX. Unless with some reversed engineering, and some creativity, one could theoretically take AT&T’s ISDN console that was identical to the 302s, put it as an ISDN set and do it that way.

The Definity G3r succeeded the System 85/Definity G2 (aka a band-aid Dimension) in the mid 1990s. Release 5 was intended to be the combination of the 2 PBX systems, after all it’s core roots dates back to when the Bell System marketed the thing. Of the many fundamental changes, what retained were desksets, carriers, etc.; what went away was some of the user interfaces, the notorious MAAP to program the system, and the hardwired attendant console. A 302 could replace it via a 2 wire (2 pair if you wanted power coming out of the wall’s) voice drop and be affiliated in a DCP line over a dedicated attendant port. The only set that would continue with button caps at this point in the late 1980s lead into the 302 set to have similar clear plastic overlay for designation keys.

It’s strange the console given its “electronic” ability, could very well be mistaken for being some electrical box like an ol Call Director or 10 to 30 line set.

It’s one of those “I so just don’t want to remember this set”

Ugliest Attendant Consoles, part five

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NOT MY OWN PHOTO. No URL to trace where I found this around 2010.

Of the worst attendant consoles to exist on this planet, the vintage Northern Telecom would win hands down.

Joe the UCX Guy had featured this console and used it during his days while he attended Purdue.

These switchboards or consoles were tied behind a central office switch such as DMS series or the carrier grade PBX – the SL100 (which I believe is different than the original SL1.)

In short, central office services are much less feature rich and thats why it has little functionality.

But why in the hell it’s so honking big is beyond me. It’s one of the many consoles of those days that required a 25 pair Amphenol cable to function.

Ugliest Operator Consoles, part four

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This one is a little more tolerable, it looks like an ACD console, but it’s an operator console. Fujitsu marketed an F9600 PBX in the 1990s, some customers took advantage of their offerings. (The City of Nashua, NH is one of the local users I can name off.)

The BLF is rather interesting because it’s something you expect from a Japanese made Key Telephone System. The DESI-d buttons looks like an equivalent to the Hundreds Group Select.

What’s also common with many of these consoles is how “dumb” they are. The time of day is essentially a local desktop clock on a phone. Some of the consoles have those little buttons similar to your car to change the time. So they couldn’t pull time of day information from the PBX itself.

 

Ugliest Operator Consoles, part three

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(I guess I stay up late looking at my own screengrabs)

The Japanese are no angels ether. I guess since digital PBX systems were derivatives of the design of mainframes, the consoles that used to manage mainframes, were not based on CRT in the beginning. Heck even the first PC – the Altair, was filled of complicated LEDs and switches.

This console most likely is used for the NEAX PBX system (the equivalent to the M1, the G3, or SX systems.)

In the late 90s, early 2000s, they too got their act together, and had a sleek console with the user in mind.

Again not my pictures, was taken from an eBay listing.

Ugliest Operator Consoles, part two

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I won’t say this console is “ugly” in the looks department per se, but I believe the user interface is beyond “ugly”. From knowing a little of the old school Mitels (the pure TDM flavors), it had complex features, but accessing them were over simplified.  From my third hand research, I mean is that you had like up to 10 programmable features, then the softkeys, then the arrows to move the cursor around on screen.

They never sold special BLF modules for the console. The same PKM-12, 24 or 48 modules used for the SuperSet digital sets – would be plugged into this console. The ones originally used for the SuperSets kinda had consistency but if you had the 5448 or something of that generation it would look like a hodge podge type of deskset if you still are using these types of consoles, because even the most recent IP-based console is completely a carbon copy of the digital cousin.

The handset retainer is misleading, because (correct me if I am wrong) there is no switchhook, and functions like other consoles, you must initiate by pressing a line key.

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Ugliest Operator Consoles

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As we are going into the spirit of the Christmas season, I thought to spoof “Ugly Christmas Sweaters” to do a similar thing to operator consoles.

Today’s will be img_1692

This is a Mitel operator console. Before they were seriously electronic, the set was bulky, I believe metallic or heavy duty and the Busy Lamp Field would literally mean a field of lamps with no button access.

They stopped making this around the late 1980s, but wouldn’t be surprised to see these installed in SX 50, SX 200 or SX 200 Superswitches.

PICTURE IS NOT MY OWN. It was snatched by an eBay listing

Phone of the Day: Cisco 7841 – Local School

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In 2025 I stand corrected. It’s the 7841 series set. In 2016, there was no 6841 yet. The following year. Cisco opened up their fancy phones to customers who had no intentions to use it against a CUCM. The 6800s was planned to replace the SPA series VOIP phones and fully deprecated the SPA by 2020. 

But then the 7800s were open too. Cisco would then market both the key based 7800 and 8800 screen phones for Third Party Call Control or 3PCC or now it’s called something like Multiplatform Phones or MPP.  Forgot Aruba was the brand for HP’s networking at that time. 

I spotted this overpriced telephone in an elementary school during a late fall craft fair. It had a nice turnout, to the point I want to be a vendor and sell geeky fashion items! I say overpriced because this is located in a community where it’s ultra-conservative. The town I live in is extremely frugal in finances and keeps the government small. On the town government, the board would zero-out any proposals to their IT department, which is lead by a “coordinator” that grew up in the days before IP, Windows Servers, etc. In the world of compliance and technical adherence, they run the town side like a mum and pop shop.

The school district’s offices (a seperate agency) is housed in two ranch houses, near the local high school that are commercially zoned. This is most likely where their CallMangler (I can’t help to resist) is located. I’ve spotted a 7900 series in one of the offices when I walked by in that same school.

I’ve seen on the town side using Cisco 7940 sets and 7960 sets since I moved in 2010. The town to kinda leak my location is the largest single voting place that got national attention during the primaries last winter  if people who don’t know where I live.

I do not follow municipal matters as much anymore, but a cutover to VOIP in the school system occurred sometime in the range of fiscal years 2011 to 2013 because the previous phone systems were end of life. I do not know the systems prior to because I didn’t attend school here. What’s ironic is there is an Aruba wireless access point shown here plugged on the PC jack. The town’s fire department had a consumer grade Linksys plugged into their PC port on their Cisco sets…

In the town I did grow up, we had TIE systems in the late 1980s-late 90s then went to Telrad in the school district. The elementary school that I went to got their Telrad in 2002. The Telrads were still there when I moved out of town in 2010.

3-1-1 Boston Ad – August 2016

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img_7922 This was taken in Boston, when I visited Fenway Park for the first time to witness a Red Sox game. This ad on a public trash can touts Boston’s 3-1-1 citizen service hotline. For many years, there was a ten-digit number – 617-435-3500 or something remotely similar. In the late 2000s, the City of Boston implemented a CRM – that is a Constituent Relations Management software package similar to Customer Relations Management in a private sector customer support line. Despite upgrades to VOIP and a CRM, Boston never switched the three-digit number until the late Thomas M. Menino didn’t run for his fifth term, and sadly passed away a year later. The hesitant to change most likely came from the very top, since Marty Walsh has been Mayor, Boston has seriously moved forward in the operations sense. Since then a similar service is delivered on smartphone apps.

Regardless of the limited fanfare of the number change; Massachusetts is known for (or to encourage) frivolous 9-1-1 calls as well as local conservative talk show hosts mocking 9-1-1 to report post election “hate crimes” which I feel is so inappropriate on so many levels. It is unsure if the mockery is a joke, or dry at least. But there are really some naive dumbos living in the Commonwealth that could follow a talk show host to call 9-1-1 for a hate crime and another hopeless citizen may be put onto another queue to report a life threatening house fire thanks to the talk show hosts being smart alecks. This is the very same reason why 3-1-1 (or other non life threatening calls) was implemented in the first place.

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