This was taken at a local Kohls, just a little north of where I live. This is located in massively redeveloped area of box stores when it was just all trees. I can’t remember when it was built, I’m going to bet before the 2009 bankruptcy of Nortel. (Remember a similar post of noticing Mitel sets of their alleged “Do we stand by our man?” post bankruptcy mentality across any former Nortel sites.) Newer stores went with the “screw them” approach of building new stores with Mitel and older stores still run Avaya Blue.
I noticed this fine Avaya IP telset yesterday when I went to the historic ball park on the East Coast for the first time to see a Boston Red Sox game. I’ve been to the part a few times before for non Sox events. When I toured the place in 2005, I’ve noticed 6408s in the press box.
I have not shared my Lego creations or my passion on this site, but because it blends into this subject, I’m posting this.
I built this around 2008, about the time I finished school and had some time on my hands. In my grandmother’s basement (where I used to live) was where my Lego stuff was at that point in time. As with any bustling little Lego community, fire trucks, police cruisers, news gathering vehicles and street sweepers, construction vehicles and interconnect vehicles. (I own at least a hundred kits, at least a couple dozen “bulk” buckets and/or storage containers featuring Lego pieces and not to mention buying bulk pieces at the Lego Store – read below and acquiring early American pieces on eBay or thrift shops.)
This vehicle represented Avaya at that time. Most of Avaya’s support fleet were white colored Ford Windstars with the Avaya logo located on the side and back. Using Avery labeling, I printed them out that way. (I strongly suggest printing in photo paper on a photo printer for better results.
When I was about twelve, I broke a in house rule of keeping kits seperate to any other bricks I acquired separately. As a result many kits that I had as a preteen were already wrecked and rebuilt into other things. The reason was there was no Lego Store at that time and there was no such thing as Pick a Brick where you could fill up a cup that could look like candy and getting random Lego pieces. (Its not the bricks that matter, its the special pieces.
No foot long boards or Merlins living in the back of this truck sadly, mostly was driven empty.
As you could tell, the back were just regular 1×2 stud bricks attached on a hinge piece that I didn’t have many spares to. The vehicle is not even remotely close to a Windstar. But talking to professional Lego people, and employees of a local indoor Legoland, the “minfigure” scale is very difficult as they are by default 6 feet tall. (In recent years, they made petite size figures – ones with no moving legs, and finally other figures like infants have come to the world of Lego.)
The van has since been wrecked because a) Avaya has changed their decals shown here; and b) most minifigs in my little world don’t use Avaya or even Cisco, they have their own little vendor called Clicktel. They had already given up on Avaya way before the real world finally cried “surrender!”
Yesterday, I posted pics from my trip to Manhattan on Saturday. To my surprise I saw a lot of Avaya Red terminals despite Cisco selling VOIP sets like they are generic IP devices that corporate accounts pay little to none (allegedly) for.
The 8403 is a display-less set, designed for “walk up users” (to use a modern day cliche) or people who do not need functionality of a fully blown 8405 or 8410 terminal. The set supports up to 3 call appearances and if a user desperately needs features with indicators, one can program a feature (or two) but the set would act as a single appearance terminal.
It’s cousin set is the 7401, because it shares similarities to the 12 button personal features assignment. Someone can have up to 12 functions for abbreviated dialing, features, etc by hitting the Feature button and hit a single digit on the dial pad. There wasn’t a similar set till the late 2000s when Avaya released two sets, the 1403 and 1603 both for DCP and IP respectively, but ironically this require both to be run behind an IP Office, and not their enterprise PBX systems. It’s not to say one could reload firmware with the 1603 with some SIP firmware (which I believe it can work) and run it against Avaya’s SES services, and claim it to be a generic SIP set. These models furthers more irony because the 8403 was incompatible with Merlin systems anyways.
Update: 02-23-15 at 9:20 pm We’ve gots some problems… Presently tried to follow all the instructions but the board appears to be booting up but the ASA and even TUTTY (Putty + AT&T Terminal) clients are stuck in the BSOD. According to historic documentation, the LEDs are working as they should after boot, so maybe something failed at the connector side. I sure hope I didn’t “break” it…
So I got another surprise gift from Jason that was sent on President’s Day. I just received it a couple hours ago. This Definity AUDIX board is an integrated voice mail system for the Definity platform. These are no longer available and were designed in small environments. It was on the market for most of the 90s and probably up to 2001. The replacement would be an external PC or now a Modular Messaging running on a server class PC or an Aura virtual appliance. The beauty of this tiny board is it gave customers in small sites the power of the bigger AUDIX system. And hopefully I can hear the AUDIX lady once I get into the thing!
WARNING:Today’s post contains potential unfriendly and vulgar language. Reader Discretion is advised.
This site is a museum, a task to catalog history of telephony technology (and post the stuff you can’t find anywhere else on the web) to pass down to a dumb population who could care less about the time before they were born or understand where we got to today’s communication. And to accept the fact that the same device sat on a desk or hung on a wall for an a average of a generation, whether its right or not is up for discussion outside this site.
We have a zero tolerance for “bleeding edge of technology”, just because some new thing is in fashion, doesn’t mean its going to work right away, never mind be in vogue tomorrow.
One of the reasons why I’ve disliked Nortel was the they had a reputation for being Nerdtel, whom nerds would be interested in telecom. Just like in the PC world, you got those nerds, who will throw tons of TLAs down your throat whether you like it or not or just throw buzzwords without even being questioned. Some people in the PC industry also believe in Political Correctness, you get the “group-think” mentality if you don’t subscribe to the future of technology, you get a similar treatment of “you’re a racist” if you question an African American in power.
Today I’m showcasing my newest phone (prior to the last post) that is the Avaya 8410 Voice Terminal.
I’m not that creative in naming gadgets in cutesy names like dogs or cats like how people name servers, but I’m calling this one The Donald. As in Donald Trump. That guy was a long time user (to this day) a user of the 8410 terminal. What’s funny is the phone still has an AT&T label. He also uses his Spokesman speakerphone adjunct to have clear handsfree communication, even though the integrated microphone does well too.
This was courtesy from Jason, who gave me his old Definity PBX. The terms of the transfer did not include an 8410 set, which came to my surprise. He told me through email that he threw it in because there was space in the large package. More on this at a later time.
The side view with the option to adjust the desk mount a degree higher/lower
The 8405 and 8410 had integrated wall mounting with no additional mounts. Screw openings were exposed in the center part of the set. the microphone (exposed) can be seen on the bottom left of the set.
A closeup to that mic.
8410s were originally sold by AT&T, then sold by Lucent and then to Avaya. First generation sets were made in the States (likely at the Shrieveport Works – where most of the enterprise sets were made); when the End of Sale was issued by Avaya around 2003, the terminals were made in Mexico, despite plastic molding stating it was made here.
Avaya (now my most hated telecom company, or should I say hated “telecom” company) is continuing to loose their roots. The very liberal, and extremely progressive technological company (that will never go public again) is now comparing office phones to “cord cutting”.
As he defines it “the practice of canceling or forgoing cable television subscription or land line telephone connection in favor of an alternative Internet-based or wireless service.” Try putting salt in the wounds of victims of Hurricane Sandy or Irene who wanted their copper service because the damn thing works, without having to install UPS to technically inapt people. While this publisher admits POTS and copper service can be expensive, user choice should be an option. But options are limited as “the consumerization of IT” allegedly gives the user better choices (read inferior quality.)
Don’t shoot the messenger (that is me!) This is what their marketing people believe in.
Avaya Thinks your 8434’s cord should be cut, or so says Steve Forcum!
On a Linked In post, a “systems engineer” (whatever that means in today’s standards) makes weird claims that 89% of employees mobile devices connect to the corporate network, and another claim at a third of enterprises will no longer provide devises for their employees by the year 2016.
Another disturbing thing this alleged engineer says the following:
A lot of ink has been spilled proclaiming the death of the desk phone. Most of the authors of these obituaries proclaim that the new hub for business communications is the desktop computer. But this approach flies in the face of the reality that the time spent at our desks is declining. The devices employees are choosing to use are not their personal computers, but mobile phones and /or tablets. In a recent survey, 70% of responding employees preferred to use their mobile phone in place of their desk phones. Employees WANT to cut the cord. – Steve Forcum’s Linked In page.
Really?
I don’t want to cut my cord.
Ask every employee in this country and come back to me.
Stop with the lies.
Again this marketer type is giving some really weird numbers. My high school job was working at a semiconductor company supplying chips for the iPhone, doing accounts payable. I cannot, and say cannot do such work on my iPhone let alone my own laptop. There are laws like Sarbanes Oxley and other rules where we really need a PC. The phone on the other hand wan’t used often, so maybe eliminate a phone in that department could be plausible.
I think the Politically Incorrect approach, is how companies have no understanding or caring about the working class people. People need phones or PCs in some environments, whether its a fab or a place that does clerical work. Avaya’s out of touch marketing factor with an extreme anti-establishment, anti business agenda is murdering the desk phones for no reason. Avaya’s corporate ancestors (Lucent and AT&T) had strongly innovated for and by the end user. Nortel and others required a PhD to administer their PBX or even their deskset. This company is quickly getting destroyed all in the name to be hip and relevant.
I’m no longer on both the Avaya and Nortel list, but those list represent the majority. Some want the hip features, some like the cost effectiveness and some use it to make calls. Again their marketing department is tone deaf.
I am making a stand to boycott Avaya forever! I never thought in a billion years, I’d give up on one of my favorite office phone vendors, but Avaya lost us, they are too into sl*tifiing their company instead of being a utilitarian IT provider. And lot of this is part of the Nortel Enterprise unit, of the alleged innovation, progressive and destruction of the same ol. There is more job losses in Avaya Red (native) than Avaya Blue (Nortel.) They should call them for what they are, they are the modern day Nortel enterprise unit.
A detailed review on the 4424 and how it only works on non Enterprise Avayas plus the difference in TUI between the Magix and IPO in a future post in 2025.
This picture shows a phone in my own collection. This is an Avaya 4424 Digital Telephone. This phone was originally used in the Merlin Magix series of KSUs. They look like their other digital phones, the difference is the form factor, where the built in microphone is located (on the lower right where there is two holes), and its ring tones. The “menu” keys may appear to use a similar TUI like in the larger systems, but it works differently.
That’s if you have it tied into an IP Office system, and then it works just like the larger PBXs.
