My Collection: Mitel 3300 and IP Phones!

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This sudden surprise came to me from Jason, the same one that gave me his old G3 PBX. This time it was a Christmas present for me. I really appreciate it. I got less than a 36 hour notice a package would come via UPS to my doorstep, to find out he had an extra Mitel system.

Without going into details, the system arrived Wednesday, the 2nd. I got a completely full fledged system capable of voice mail, auto attendant, analog trunking and what seems to be a dozen IP phones.

I decommissioned a Nortel POE switch I had for over a year to get a Cisco POE switch (since you know its best to have “Cisco all the way” – especially when I’ve made an aggressive move to use VLANs.) Simply put, to reduce manual labor of programming VLANs on Cisco Phones, it’s best to use a Catalyst Express 520 and enable CDP at the Cisco router so the PC traffic can talk to the other 12 ports and the VOIP talk to the other 12 ports. Makes life a lot easier especially when I’m introducing internet hosting to the network (next year’s project.)

 

The package came on the day that it happened to rain for the first time in years (sarcasm implied.) The UPS folks were too lazy to put the system in the proper baggy, and the package was damp, and the control unit (on the bottom) was about to break open. Factor the raw cold air, I left it downstairs for a few hours.

Using an old laptop bag for packaging material is pretty genius! (And you can’t have too many laptop bags!) On the bottom is the rack ears, which I may actually bring the Mitel over to the server barn (i.e. a small rack in the family room.)

A bunch of Mitel IP phones, I had some extra handsets, wonder if they can work on the headset jack for “training” uses, you know, hehe?

The basic Control Unit, without digital boards (in the front panel.) I’ve yet to open up the system because I believe its screwed shut, and I just found time to blog on this – as I haven’t gotten into the inside – yet.

Not sure if I have the formal OK to post this image from a private email from Jason, here is an inside of his he took for me to see.

This looked a little artsy.

I did get more handsets than telsets, and the box could’ve held about 12 Mitel IP sets. Mitels are cool in the design because the way they made it low profile. The sets are heavily curved, so a 7″ deep set of a modern Mitel equates to a 8″ of a traditional boxy telset. (These in fact remind me of the Merlin style believe it or not.) This also comes from the same vendor that made some really odd looking sets in the late 80s, ones I haven’t taken photos of. Mitel also made some really odd looking first gen screen phones. I don’t have a picture handy, and I think it’s best to try to let it rot and not put it on the Web.

Setting up the Mitel was really easy, given the dependency on an old version of Internet Explorer (the admin is about a decade old when IE 6 ruled the world – don’t blame me for vendors creating apps just for Microsoft!) and navigating through its prompts I was able to create a dial plan, figured out how to set up the phone’s line appearances, etc.

 

I got a few 5330s, their screen based sets. They are similar to Avaya’s 960x series, to not fully alienate traditional desktop users. The main information is on the top, and the lines and feature are below the solid black line. Page up through 3 pages and you can have up to 24 features and lines. (From my experiences, you can’t go beyond 4 call appearances -sometimes called “Multicall” on Mitels, but there maybe a loophole with bridged appearances.)

(You wonder how come I have “Send Calls” on the screen? Simple, you can rename feature keys or anything for that matter, which is good if you cutover from one vendor to another and try to mitigate retraining… wait, IT guys ask what is “training”?)

A caveat I learned was the blue button known as the Superkey does not work like other Mitel sets. For these 5330s, you have to program a feature button also known as a Superkey to change ringers, and other settings – for me it’s a little weird. Hardware specific on the 5330s is done on the actual blue key – which to others could be mistaken as a Superkey.

Despite other oddities, the system compensates it with very feature rich functions on the sets themselves. If you don’t get through to another user, you can activate their MWI by pressing your VM access key while ringing – which is kinda cool.

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This is an incomplete post with more pictures and video to follow.

My Collection: Princess Telephone

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That $1 telephone I mentioned earlier was this guy (or girl)

If you know the history of Western Electric telephones from the late 60s, the Princess was basically marketed to women. This would be the first “chick phone”, way before the days of the RAZR, and other girly phones I have forgotten since the last decade.

The thing is so beaten up. The base is cracked, the bottom surface is breaking off and it doesn’t have the “Princess” logo on the bottom like other sets.

This is the same green colored phone similar to the 500 set that I got around 2008.

My Collection: Bells to a Bell Telephone

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I went to the Londonderry Flea Market (formerly known as Londonderry Gardens at the time) and found a vendor who had scrap phones for sale. I was able to get a couple bagfuls for about $25 and another telephone for $1. Not bad.

In this picture, I got a ringer. It looked like it came off a 564, which I did buy a set with it’s own ringer. I wanted to use this set of bell to make my own ringer to alert me outside a call is coming in.

My Collection: (Kellogg) ITT/Cortelco 564 Multiline Rotary Telephone

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This latest find – was on Etsy of all places (and not eBay!) In this video I produced, I unbox, open up, add-stations to the Avaya PBX, and then tried to do test calls and dials to the system. The only line that has a lamp is the Line 1 position and typically that requires a power adjunct to provide additional power for lamp status. However near the end of this video, I redid the entire analog board (the extension numbers and set type through the system access terminal) and set them all to 500 (with no MW lamp settings) and wola the Line 1 was lit. However it never went out. And it still hasn’t ring. And the Hold button has a function like the Release key as calls just drop like a Nortel set!

I’ve watched this video before taking this to air, and my gawd, I am the worst on camera talent, the more I am on camera, the more I want to be behind it at all times!

Found this on AmadolynCozyCottage on Etsy again thanks for this great find!

My Collection: The Avaya 8410 Voice Terminal

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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.

 

 

 

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.

My Collection: Avaya 4424 Digital Telephone

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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.

Continue reading →

My Collection – AT&T (Avaya) 7102 Analog Voice Terminal

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Here is another private collection of another office telephone. It’s an AT&T (now Avaya) 7102 Analog telephone.

These were made by AT&T in the mid to late 80s, sports the “R” handset (Merlin style) while having a basic featureset with a 12 digit dial pad and a “Recall” (read: Flash) to use additional features of the PBX or “Call Waiting” as this terminal can – in fact – be used for residential landline services.

In fact, the ringer is much like the very old AT&T 1810 digital answering machine/house phone I had at my family’s house. It doesn’t have the sound of the digital telephones unfortunately.

I bought this on eBay a while back, and here is the gallery

It was made in Korea, kinda odd for phones to be made out of the States at that time. Maybe this was built in the same plant as the other consumer phones that AT&T continued to produce leading to the spinoff to Lucent in 1996.  I opened the phone and the guts looked like a cheap Asian produced device.

This phone however, is a shell of a BIS-10 (or a 7410 Plus), take the DESI paper off, and you’ll see the empty spots for those buttons. It was kinda surprising to see, but I guess since there was a membrane cover, it didn’t matter. I’ll post that picture (and redo the picture gallery in a neater workspace) at a later time.

Hello world!

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Welcome to my latest venture into mutlimedia blogging. This blog will contain pictures of telephones dating from the early 1900s manual powered phones to the latest Voice over IP telephones of today. This blog will feature circuit cards to notable headsets to my personal collection of phones and communications.

 

Please enjoy this blog as its in Alpha Tier.