While I was working on my project I was watching this video at the same time and I experienced the magic smoke for the first time, a real milestone. My components are still working though
This brings back so many memories from all the years I provided support at my job for this Panasonic system. We had the larger chassis that had more expansion cards and up to 32 phones. I liked the modular design and the flexibility it provided to upgrade or change features. The system is controlled from a terminal emulator connected through the 25 serial port. If I recall correctly they made this system from the early 90s to about 2001. Over the years they came out with new hardware revisions for the main board. This in turn dictated what firmware chips you could upgrade to. My company got stuck with an initial revision from the early 90s and that limited firmware upgrade options and system features. Our voicemail system at that time was just as antiquated and was a AT computer running dos! We kept this system running until about 2012 when the phone boards in the voicemail system began to fail.
Great video. I used to sell, install and maintain the Panasonic PBXs. I had them in my own office which I closed in 2001 and my PBX has sat in a damp trailer from 2001 until 2018 and I am just installing it in my house. It powers up and the red LED comes on but the processor board does not boot up. Do you think that the backup battery may have failed and needs desoldering and replacing? I used to configure them externally, I never needed to dismantle them as they were 100% reliable. I have found that they are better than modern VOIP systems as any form of shared bandwidth internet connection is subject to delay and jitter and cannot compete with a private digital circuit like ISDN. My house now has 80 mbs broadband but also has an ancient ISDN line for voice as the old copper technology non packetized 64k ISDN circuit out performs any VOIP system, which incidentally is only 64k. I love your videos by the way, I did electrical and electronic engineering from 1989-1992 at University and found it a very difficult and dry subject, but your passion for the subject makes it all really interesting again, thank you.
It's interesting how many different systems used Mitel chips in them. I've had a couple of those Panasonic systems. They had the nice feature that you could plug either a digital set or an old analog / bell set into any port and it would work. It uses 2 pairs, one pair for audio and the other for data. Some of the other systems I use now (Mitel / Comdail) require a different driver card for digital and analog sets. The digital sets only need one pair of wires, they use basically an ISDN connection back to the PBX. The DAC is in the phone set.
If the dropcam company starts having financial troubles, then I recommend selling the dropcam fast. due to the design it is 100% cloud dependent, meaning if their servers die, the camera becomes a paperweight. They taken many steps at the hardware level to prevent people from bypassing that restriction, (to avoid them from doing local recording instead of paying the steep fee for their remote recording) while the hardware is good, they crushed the future viability by linking its entire use to servers that can disappear the moment they are no longer profitable.
The 7 days of saved video for dropcam is only $10 a month. Not sure why you say that's so 'steep'. You can simply export the saved video, and remove it from the cloud and keep recording, so even with the cheap plan you can capture everything you need.
***** It is steep compared to the cost of doing it yourself. I currently have a 4 camera 1080p system running on a cheap netbook from many years ago, and it happily keeps about 2.5 weeks. (switched to continuous since motion detection has been a little unreliable or not prerecording and post recording enough) Dropcam recordings are low quality and are heavily dependent on your upload speed, if the connection becomes saturated, the quality drops significantly. furthermore, it constantly eats up bandwidth, and cost $10 per month per camera. With a traditional analog or IP security camera system, you have many recording options, you can record locally, or record remotely, or record locally and remotely at the same time. (some people do both in case someone breaks in and steals the DVR) I have yet to see a business rely only on remote recording due to the additional points of failure, they will always keep some amount of local recording. With dropcam, the camera only works with their service unlike traditional systems which use open standards, and thus competition in the area of remote DVR, and maintain all functions regardless of what happens to the company that made the security camera system. With dropcam, if they go out of business, then your dropcam becomes 100% useless as you cannot access the stream locally, and they took considerable steps to make sure you could not hack it in a way to allow for that. Cloud only = additional points of failure and increased cost, as you now have to have a connection capable of constantly pushing out a 1080p feed, and still having enough left over for you to use your connection normally without the connecting crapping out for the camera or what you are doing. (for longer term recording I also have an analog system that records to a 2TB hard drive in 480p, and stores about 2.5 months of footage across 4 cameras) Here in NY, there is a New York/ USA tradition of the generational crime marathon where hundreds of thousands of people in each city do their best 24/7 to make the lives of everyone else as miserable as possible by doing things like breaking into homes, breaking into cars, stealing things not bolted down and much more. Each new generation attempts to outdo the previous generation.
Razor2048 The point of his live feed is not to cover anything you talked about, its just a way for viewers to watch him. Also as he said he will be upgrading to a different system in the future, and I am sure to Dave, $10 is nothing. Hell did you watch his video where he said how much he pays for the internet connection alone?
Razor2048 you pay for the "dropcam service" people are well aware of IP Cams capable of streaming back to a storage device. yet they choose the drop cam because its piss easy to set up, and that it worth more to them than fannying around setting up storage devices and ip'cams and all that funk! I'm an IT person, so i agree, a "self hosted" service is perfect for people who enjoy setting it up, maintain it as a type of project... Drop cam is for the people who don't want todo that!
I just found your channel. I started doing board repairs on PABX equipment for NZPO back in the mid 80s. so been involved with electronic PABX from the beginning. I've fixed a few of those.
4min in I am already excited as to finally know why ......every bit of hold music ever sounds like it was recorded at 4khz then sent threw the audio equivalent of a photocopier a hundred times......
Ahh,didn't you say someone else in the building just upgraded to VOIP,hence your ability to upgrade the lab internet? Faster 'net,and their old equipment to tear down,Double-Score! 131megabytes! That HDD is a beast! ;-)
Them Panasonic systems are still worth a lot as they're so damned reliable, whoever threw that one out is an absolute pillock!! :P I have a KX-T61610BE hybrid system made in the early 90s that still works like the day it was first manufactured (in the UK no less!!), it's great for operating vintage telephones as it accepts analogue phones AND pulse-dialling... :D
be aware some IDE USB adapters wont pick up some smaller drives, if you have a PC with a PATA socket get an adapter to convert the laptop IDE to desktop IDE, see if windows or linux will read it assuming the BIOS will pick up the drive and it's not damaged
A zener will clamp at a certain voltage. A gas discharge not only clamps at a certain voltage, but due to the fact the gas is now ionized, it will still keep clamping until the voltage drops to a lower level, i.e., it'll start clamping at 90v, and once it hits 90v it keeps clamping until the voltage drops to 20v.
And to think with asterisk pbx and an old surplus computer you can do all this and more, VoIP is great. I've got an early 90s ISDN equipped enterprise router with a pair of redundant power supplies, massive 10u unit, weighs an absolute ton. Wish I could send it in but I imagine sending it from the UK will cost a fortune!
i would expect to see allot of these PABX in dumpsters due to running costs, line leasing, so all up VOIP is just cheaper, plus you don't need the equipment onsite. well apart from the voip phones. not wrong about useful parts. sexy Transformer DROOL. "120watt power transformer". The PSU is Linear.... Dave!!!!!!!!....... "I am interested in that Transformer"
Thought you guys and Dave might appreciate this tear-down of a toshiba lappy. It starts with an abrupt dismantling! Destroying a laptop with a Mercedes Sprinter! cheers :)
Telecom stuff comes from an alternate design universe. It's a whole field of study of its own, based on Bell Labs / AT&T stuff with all kinds of interesting improvements. Various audio codecs are used - and the equipment needs to be absolutely reliable no matter what happens. Very challenging design challenge and what results seems odd to many.
If you have ever lost some expensive telecom stuff due to heavy thunderstorm around your house, you know why. I lost my first digital phone network controller, as we got a massive thunderstorm back than. It was unplugged from mains but still connected to the telecom lines....my whole telecom untis where dead after that. Modem, phones....total cost of about $1500 around 1990.... I invest on external telecom line protection systems since than, to prevent this to happen again. Surge, overvoltage and lightning protection to be inserted into the incomming telecom line. And it protected me one time, after some overvoltage, one of the discharge tubes was black and the whole thing needed to be replaced. So i spent around $30 to protect $500 stuff....
PBX units sit in an awkward location; on one end they're connected to the PSTN which is very well grounded, and at the other end they're plugged into mains power. A near by lightning strike can do catastrophic damage to the PBX and attached telephone sets. External line protection systems are helpful, but only if they're grounded to a well placed ground rod. Even then, when Mother Nature draws a target on your location it's going to turn out badly. You've got be be very careful about extreme common mode voltages; the hot and neutral mains lines may remain at the nominal 240V, but both be momentarily elevated above ground by a few kilovolts. That's very hard on grounded equipment, especially if there's solid state circuitry between the mains and the ground point.
PABX stuff is crazy. We have had the Panasonic PABX stuff. We then went NEC. This stuff is from the early 90s. The old Panasonic PABX stuff is crap. more like craptastic.
+gbowne1 Maybe it was your tech which didn't keep your system running properly. Though like everything, it has a life expectancy of only so many years.
Panasonic PABX, rock solid small-medium system. Unstopable machines. Its 20 years ago probably. Never hear of one of these going bad, but see them installed in the worst conditios you can imagine, example, near a central heating boiler. Beat this quality, if you can.
Goldstar/LG, specially the GHX820, I've seen them work fine even when full of oil soaked dust bunnies inside. Whoever thought of placing it in the workshop/garage of a petrol station was a genius. Lots of them in use on ships etc too where they often literally gets a beating. That said, I've replaced/fixed quite a lot of both panasonic and goldstar/LG systems up trough the years, and not always (though frequent) from lightning/over-voltage
Those old workhorses never die ... Here, in small bussiness Panasonic was all about it. Other manufacturers like siemens were sky expensive and quality in the small ones was not the qualitiy of its big boys. Never got an LG while evaluating offers from dealers. But for example, one time replaced a Samsung, what a POS, terrible. And big boys, the all winner Teltronics (Harris) 20-20 another warrior, pure quality and dependability, great capability, great price (for its value). Cheers.
Power cords have black white green usaly 18 or 16 awg for this kind of thing I'm surprised they fuse both sides if fuse in neutral side bowed it is still hot the only time I see two fuses used is on something 220 volt which uses both hot legs
EEVblog Would you be interested in some VoIP phones? I have some Snom, Polycom, and Grandstream units. Not much to see in them if you'd just tear them down, but if you want to play with them and learn about Asterisk PBX I could probably send them over for a mailbag segment or something.
Dave, every time you bring your flat head screw driver into shot near the PCB, I cringe and die a little inside! One of these days, you're going to cut a track and I'll have no pity for you!
NEC's PBX's are crap. Panasonic makes much better stuff, as you can tell. If you're into the proprietary PBX world, Nortel is the best, followed by Panasonic. NEC is at the bottom of the list...
Remember,he mentioned that,any board you take out to save for Next project, be wear of the battery 🔋 , even though old and described,! May Case short, and 🌡️🔥
While I was working on my project I was watching this video at the same time and I experienced the magic smoke for the first time, a real milestone. My components are still working though
This brings back so many memories from all the years I provided support at my job for this Panasonic system. We had the larger chassis that had more expansion cards and up to 32 phones. I liked the modular design and the flexibility it provided to upgrade or change features. The system is controlled from a terminal emulator connected through the 25 serial port. If I recall correctly they made this system from the early 90s to about 2001. Over the years they came out with new hardware revisions for the main board. This in turn dictated what firmware chips you could upgrade to. My company got stuck with an initial revision from the early 90s and that limited firmware upgrade options and system features. Our voicemail system at that time was just as antiquated and was a AT computer running dos! We kept this system running until about 2012 when the phone boards in the voicemail system began to fail.
The Toshiba processors are MC68000 + uart etc in a single chip. Toshiba did some Z80 + companion chips in one designs too.
is the 68k still in production?
Rubus Roo Some cold fire muP uses a 68k instruction set
Rubus Roo I think some texas instruments calculators still use them. At least ti89 titanium series used them.
Great video. I used to sell, install and maintain the Panasonic PBXs. I had them in my own office which I closed in 2001 and my PBX has sat in a damp trailer from 2001 until 2018 and I am just installing it in my house. It powers up and the red LED comes on but the processor board does not boot up. Do you think that the backup battery may have failed and needs desoldering and replacing? I used to configure them externally, I never needed to dismantle them as they were 100% reliable. I have found that they are better than modern VOIP systems as any form of shared bandwidth internet connection is subject to delay and jitter and cannot compete with a private digital circuit like ISDN. My house now has 80 mbs broadband but also has an ancient ISDN line for voice as the old copper technology non packetized 64k ISDN circuit out performs any VOIP system, which incidentally is only 64k. I love your videos by the way, I did electrical and electronic engineering from 1989-1992 at University and found it a very difficult and dry subject, but your passion for the subject makes it all really interesting again, thank you.
It's interesting how many different systems used Mitel chips in them. I've had a couple of those Panasonic systems. They had the nice feature that you could plug either a digital set or an old analog / bell set into any port and it would work. It uses 2 pairs, one pair for audio and the other for data.
Some of the other systems I use now (Mitel / Comdail) require a different driver card for digital and analog sets. The digital sets only need one pair of wires, they use basically an ISDN connection back to the PBX. The DAC is in the phone set.
If the dropcam company starts having financial troubles, then I recommend selling the dropcam fast. due to the design it is 100% cloud dependent, meaning if their servers die, the camera becomes a paperweight. They taken many steps at the hardware level to prevent people from bypassing that restriction, (to avoid them from doing local recording instead of paying the steep fee for their remote recording)
while the hardware is good, they crushed the future viability by linking its entire use to servers that can disappear the moment they are no longer profitable.
The 7 days of saved video for dropcam is only $10 a month. Not sure why you say that's so 'steep'. You can simply export the saved video, and remove it from the cloud and keep recording, so even with the cheap plan you can capture everything you need.
*****
It is steep compared to the cost of doing it yourself. I currently have a 4 camera 1080p system running on a cheap netbook from many years ago, and it happily keeps about 2.5 weeks. (switched to continuous since motion detection has been a little unreliable or not prerecording and post recording enough)
Dropcam recordings are low quality and are heavily dependent on your upload speed, if the connection becomes saturated, the quality drops significantly. furthermore, it constantly eats up bandwidth, and cost $10 per month per camera. With a traditional analog or IP security camera system, you have many recording options, you can record locally, or record remotely, or record locally and remotely at the same time. (some people do both in case someone breaks in and steals the DVR)
I have yet to see a business rely only on remote recording due to the additional points of failure, they will always keep some amount of local recording.
With dropcam, the camera only works with their service unlike traditional systems which use open standards, and thus competition in the area of remote DVR, and maintain all functions regardless of what happens to the company that made the security camera system.
With dropcam, if they go out of business, then your dropcam becomes 100% useless as you cannot access the stream locally, and they took considerable steps to make sure you could not hack it in a way to allow for that.
Cloud only = additional points of failure and increased cost, as you now have to have a connection capable of constantly pushing out a 1080p feed, and still having enough left over for you to use your connection normally without the connecting crapping out for the camera or what you are doing.
(for longer term recording I also have an analog system that records to a 2TB hard drive in 480p, and stores about 2.5 months of footage across 4 cameras)
Here in NY, there is a New York/ USA tradition of the generational crime marathon where hundreds of thousands of people in each city do their best 24/7 to make the lives of everyone else as miserable as possible by doing things like breaking into homes, breaking into cars, stealing things not bolted down and much more. Each new generation attempts to outdo the previous generation.
Razor2048 The point of his live feed is not to cover anything you talked about, its just a way for viewers to watch him. Also as he said he will be upgrading to a different system in the future, and I am sure to Dave, $10 is nothing. Hell did you watch his video where he said how much he pays for the internet connection alone?
*****
yep, no need to go into more debt paying dropcam $10 a month :)
The ISP owners there should be arrested for charging those prices.
Razor2048 you pay for the "dropcam service" people are well aware of IP Cams capable of streaming back to a storage device. yet they choose the drop cam because its piss easy to set up, and that it worth more to them than fannying around setting up storage devices and ip'cams and all that funk!
I'm an IT person, so i agree, a "self hosted" service is perfect for people who enjoy setting it up, maintain it as a type of project... Drop cam is for the people who don't want todo that!
Hello Dave,
I have installed lots of these Panasonic digtal pabx devices.
Nice to see them again.
The 4 pin plug on the side, that's for battery backup. PFT is power fail transfer. 2CO is a 2 circuit central office trunk(analogue exchange line)
I just found your channel. I started doing board repairs on PABX equipment for NZPO back in the mid 80s. so been involved with electronic PABX from the beginning. I've fixed a few of those.
That Live cam idea is superb :)
4min in I am already excited as to finally know why ......every bit of hold music ever sounds like it was recorded at 4khz then sent threw the audio equivalent of a photocopier a hundred times......
Ahh,didn't you say someone else in the building just upgraded to VOIP,hence your ability to upgrade the lab internet? Faster 'net,and their old equipment to tear down,Double-Score! 131megabytes! That HDD is a beast! ;-)
at 0:12 I half expected him to pan to a live audience.
Them Panasonic systems are still worth a lot as they're so damned reliable, whoever threw that one out is an absolute pillock!! :P
I have a KX-T61610BE hybrid system made in the early 90s that still works like the day it was first manufactured (in the UK no less!!), it's great for operating vintage telephones as it accepts analogue phones AND pulse-dialling... :D
be aware some IDE USB adapters wont pick up some smaller drives, if you have a PC with a PATA socket get an adapter to convert the laptop IDE to desktop IDE, see if windows or linux will read it assuming the BIOS will pick up the drive and it's not damaged
Anything on the hard drive?
I can see you right now live! haha, creeeeepy!
24:39 you could probably keep that for a 486/Pentium laptop because I think 131mb should be enough for windows 3.1/95…
I'm not sure I understand. What are the gas discharge tubes for? If they're for surge protection, why are they better than, say, a zener diode?
they can handle a lot more current, before they die.
Thanks.
A zener will clamp at a certain voltage. A gas discharge not only clamps at a certain voltage, but due to the fact the gas is now ionized, it will still keep clamping until the voltage drops to a lower level, i.e., it'll start clamping at 90v, and once it hits 90v it keeps clamping until the voltage drops to 20v.
And to think with asterisk pbx and an old surplus computer you can do all this and more, VoIP is great. I've got an early 90s ISDN equipped enterprise router with a pair of redundant power supplies, massive 10u unit, weighs an absolute ton. Wish I could send it in but I imagine sending it from the UK will cost a fortune!
i would expect to see allot of these PABX in dumpsters due to running costs, line leasing, so all up VOIP is just cheaper, plus you don't need the equipment onsite. well apart from the voip phones.
not wrong about useful parts.
sexy Transformer DROOL. "120watt power transformer".
The PSU is Linear.... Dave!!!!!!!!....... "I am interested in that Transformer"
what will you do with the transformer?
Thought you guys and Dave might appreciate this tear-down of a toshiba lappy. It starts with an abrupt dismantling! Destroying a laptop with a Mercedes Sprinter!
cheers :)
I would have like to see inside of that Murata device (relay?). How about a mini-teardown of just that part?
That video must have took up a good 40 GB of data
Telecom stuff comes from an alternate design universe. It's a whole field of study of its own, based on Bell Labs / AT&T stuff with all kinds of interesting improvements. Various audio codecs are used - and the equipment needs to be absolutely reliable no matter what happens. Very challenging design challenge and what results seems odd to many.
If you have ever lost some expensive telecom stuff due to heavy thunderstorm around your house, you know why. I lost my first digital phone network controller, as we got a massive thunderstorm back than. It was unplugged from mains but still connected to the telecom lines....my whole telecom untis where dead after that. Modem, phones....total cost of about $1500 around 1990....
I invest on external telecom line protection systems since than, to prevent this to happen again. Surge, overvoltage and lightning protection to be inserted into the incomming telecom line. And it protected me one time, after some overvoltage, one of the discharge tubes was black and the whole thing needed to be replaced.
So i spent around $30 to protect $500 stuff....
PBX units sit in an awkward location; on one end they're connected to the PSTN which is very well grounded, and at the other end they're plugged into mains power. A near by lightning strike can do catastrophic damage to the PBX and attached telephone sets.
External line protection systems are helpful, but only if they're grounded to a well placed ground rod. Even then, when Mother Nature draws a target on your location it's going to turn out badly. You've got be be very careful about extreme common mode voltages; the hot and neutral mains lines may remain at the nominal 240V, but both be momentarily elevated above ground by a few kilovolts.
That's very hard on grounded equipment, especially if there's solid state circuitry between the mains and the ground point.
dude, read the harddrive to see if it still works!
Nice studio lights!
Say, is that a train layout near your new webcam? what guage? (looks like N-scale to me) :)
How do you set uo Dave's Dropcam using tinycam? Since the live stream website doesn't work without flash plugin on mobile.
How did that utility socket get so high up the wall? Just the right height to power a webcam though, so quite a bit of fortune really.
What was on that hard drive?
PABX stuff is crazy. We have had the Panasonic PABX stuff. We then went NEC. This stuff is from the early 90s. The old Panasonic PABX stuff is crap. more like craptastic.
+gbowne1 Maybe it was your tech which didn't keep your system running properly. Though like everything, it has a life expectancy of only so many years.
Daaamn, you just ruin my day, that PABX is 400++ $ AS IS, well over 1000$ for all,
really nice idea for the live streaming.
EEVblog I'm sure thats fat16 or 32 or ext I would be really surprised if that made a proprietary filesystem.
Were you able to get anything off that hard drive?
at 29:40, why were some of the SMD electrolytics disconnected?
How much would you save by reusing parts from this old equipment? Is it 2 or 3 figures.. :-)
Mate, I've just been on the live cam and your lab looks like it's been burgled!
I watched you record on the dropcam c:
Live Cam.. Kewl.. Looks like your checking out that old toshiba HDD !!
Only mentioning this because you seemed to be convinced of the contrary mister Dave Jones: Spiders are not bugs.
Would the gas discharge tubes protect against EMP?
just watch your live stream (local time is 0:15 CEST), nothing but some mess in your lab ;)
We call CO here in Canada Central Office in the field
I don't know, but images like around 18:30 look more like art to me than a Picasso.
Still waiting on that C5 resto part 2...
Panasonic PABX, rock solid small-medium system. Unstopable machines. Its 20 years ago probably. Never hear of one of these going bad, but see them installed in the worst conditios you can imagine, example, near a central heating boiler. Beat this quality, if you can.
Goldstar/LG, specially the GHX820, I've seen them work fine even when full of oil soaked dust bunnies inside. Whoever thought of placing it in the workshop/garage of a petrol station was a genius. Lots of them in use on ships etc too where they often literally gets a beating. That said, I've replaced/fixed quite a lot of both panasonic and goldstar/LG systems up trough the years, and not always (though frequent) from lightning/over-voltage
Those old workhorses never die ... Here, in small bussiness Panasonic was all about it. Other manufacturers like siemens were sky expensive and quality in the small ones was not the qualitiy of its big boys. Never got an LG while evaluating offers from dealers. But for example, one time replaced a Samsung, what a POS, terrible. And big boys, the all winner Teltronics (Harris) 20-20 another warrior, pure quality and dependability, great capability, great price (for its value). Cheers.
Power cords have black white green usaly 18 or 16 awg for this kind of thing I'm surprised they fuse both sides if fuse in neutral side bowed it is still hot the only time I see two fuses used is on something 220 volt which uses both hot legs
I love Dumpster Dives!
Live spider? That's your web interface.
Wow a 131MB Hard Drive lol
that is a LOT of phone numbers
Check the hard drive!! We want to tap those secret conversations!!
You should have put the hdd image on dropbox somewhere ;)
EEVblog
Would you be interested in some VoIP phones? I have some Snom, Polycom, and Grandstream units. Not much to see in them if you'd just tear them down, but if you want to play with them and learn about Asterisk PBX I could probably send them over for a mailbag segment or something.
3:10pm, friday 23/5,
The place is a mess and your not working
Didn't you clean that shop not too long ago? Looks like my workbench. LOL!
WATCH THOSE SPIDERS! I'VE BEEN BIT LIKE 25 TIMES SINCE JULY BY YELLOW SAC SPIDERS! NASTY STUFF!
Dave, every time you bring your flat head screw driver into shot near the PCB, I cringe and die a little inside! One of these days, you're going to cut a track and I'll have no pity for you!
PFT = power fail transfer.
Cobwebs = chip on board webs? lol
Hope you are going to tidy up before leaving :-)
look at his drop cam feed, "Hope you are going to tidy up before leaving" NOPE xD
Max Bainrot ::-) The perils of having a live feed.
Damn spiders...
Check this out and yes you too dave
Perfect for a electronics sex line!
NEC's PBX's are crap. Panasonic makes much better stuff, as you can tell. If you're into the proprietary PBX world, Nortel is the best, followed by Panasonic. NEC is at the bottom of the list...
*B R I I S H*
Remember,he mentioned that,any board you take out to save for Next project, be wear of the battery 🔋 , even though old and described,! May Case short, and 🌡️🔥
What was on the hard drive?