Do Panasonic KX-61610's (phone system) die after 16 years?

Hi,

My Panasonic 616 Easa-Phone system has been getting flaky. First it was the door intercoms (Viking units). So I switched to different lines. That revived one. Now my main line will sometimes ring a few times and then stop. I'll try switching it with my rollover line. What I want to know are these symptoms of this thing dying? Should I replace it? If so, then I need a way to determine all the settings so I can set up its replacement.

Don (e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss
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Reply to
bruceR

If the OP like to play with his stuff,he should look at Asterisk, a pbx system that do VOIP locally and have all the function of a big pbx for a fraction of the cost

he should take a look at

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I am planning on using this at home,with the possibility of going outbound over internet while still having normal pots line not in used ,it can help cutting on the phone bill long distance wise...

"bruceR" a écrit dans le message de news:

45d14e2d$0$1380$ snipped-for-privacy@roadrunner.com...
Reply to
Petem

The OP does not plan to change the proprietary Panasonic phones that he has. Doing so would double the cost. As for the comment about getting more functionality, the current system has way more features than I'd ever use. What it does lack is caller ID passthrough. Caller ID came out right after I installed the unit. And my unit is not upgradeable. I checked.

I tried to find out what the current Panasonic model is. Panasonic sticks the label Easa-Phone on all their telephone products, making searching on that practically useless.

I'm looking at eBay now. I found a used Panasonic KX-TA624 phone system. In the description I find "there was some bad phone ports." Hmm...

Don (e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss

Reply to
BruceR

Reply to
Don Wiss

Reply to
BruceR

if you buy 4 VOIP telephone (from 35$ to 250$ depend of the model),run 4 cat

5 cable to those phone,take an old PII computer and a line card (about 20.00$) you have the same system then your panasonic system,and more,not how much would you pay for the replacement of your panasonic system?
Reply to
Petem

And home many hours of labor to pull it off? What if I value my time at $100/hour? I have more than four phones here. How much electricity would that old PII computer suck 24/7? And then I'd have to give up some space somewhere to put it. No thanks.

Instead I've ordered an 824, the 308 upgrade (to get me back to the 6x16 capability), two 7731s, and one 7736. This will give me seven proprietary phones. I don't need quite so many proprietary ones, but Panasonic gives their dealers 20% discounts when three phones are packaged with an 824.

Don (e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss

Well if you value your time at such a high level,don't loose your precious time on old obsolete stuff like that and get someone paid at a lower level to change that old system to anew one,and it will be paid very fast,at the rate you supplied us,only a few day of work and its done..

and a pc like a PII usually pull 300 watt max,much like your old Panasonic stuff...

p.s. I was trying to help,but since you are hoping to save a penny by keeping an old obsolete system alive,go for it..

I know what I will answer next time you ask a question here....

Reply to
Petem

Huh? I don't follow. Yes, I am keeping my existing proprietary phone sets. I plan to move a couple to unimportant locations, and put one aside as a spare. I just ordered an all new system, and the three new phones will be my primary ones. I made sure everything I ordered was the latest model. I don't know where you get the idea that I'm trying to keep my old system alive. My total outlay for what I listed above was $968.

By hooking the 824 to my PC via a USB cable I expect to be able to program it in a very short time. Unfortunately I won't be able to modify the program this way, unless I buy some devices that allow USB to run over an

80' network cable run. I have an extra network cable between my PC and where the PBX gets mounted.

Don (e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss

The main problem with Asterisk is that you would be stunned by the massive configurability of it all, and there'd be a bit of a learning curve.

Throwing together FreePBX (a preloaded, ready-to-go Asterisk) on a low end PC is pretty trivial. If you want really low power, you can even buy an external PSTN-to-VoIP gateway, and then use something like a Soekris or other low power PC, and it is very likely that the power utilization would be less than your Panasonic system by a good bit. Depending on how you decide to mount it, it could be bigger than that Panasonic:

Panasonic (70 watts est., 11"x15" of plywood, 165 sq. inches)

- vs -

Grandstream GXW-4108 (8 FXO, 15 watts, 6.5"x9" of plywood, times two for wiring space, 117 sq. inches) Soekris 4501 (10 watt, 6"x8" of plywood, times two for wiring space, 96 sq. inches). Netgear FS116 switch (14 watt, 11.5"x4" of plywood, times two for wiring space, 92 sq. inches). Total (39 watts, 305 sq. inches)

Half the power, twice the space, but I assumed all wiring would fit inside the Panasonic. Further, it assumes that you don't need a KX-TVS voice mail system or anything else like that. And don't forget that Panasonic likes to ding you for the add-ons. Caller-ID? Don't forget to buy those 3-line caller ID card addons. DISA? Fax detection? Yet another card.

From a labor point of view, wiring is wiring. If you want to go buy a FXS gateway, you can reuse your existing wiring. Otherwise, since VoIP uses ethernet, any wiring you did could be trivially recycled for other uses in the future - not even a jack switchout. VoIP has no limit to the number of extensions, so you aren't locked into that "x16" configuration, and you aren't limited to having all phones within wiring reach of your PBX. Now compare your Panasonic, where the wiring you are doing is not necessarily going to be forward compatible with a future phone system.

And if you don't like Asterisk? Asterisk doesn't use "proprietary" phones, so those generic VoIP phones are usable with other telephony systems as well.

When we bought this house several years ago, I had intended to wire it with a KX-TD1232, but a number of things were problematic. I ended up waiting and eventually got around to looking at Asterisk for business PBX uses. Once I started playing with it, I knew it was what we really needed for home too. Now our business calls transparently follow me to the house if needed, my cell phone, both simultaneously, or any other policy I can think up. It is completely programmable, with built in IVR support, dialplans, etc.

The main problem with Asterisk is that it is so tempting to do so much with it. I had purchased Cisco 7960's for the house, and now find that all six lines are used.

One thing I had originally lameneted was the lack of a BLF (Busy Lamp Field) implementation, but this is mostly a matter of choosing your phones appropriately. The Cisco's don't/won't do it, but others (including the nice-looking and less expensive Grandstream 2000) do.

Going with VoIP leads to unexpected benefits. I have some family who travel frequently for several weeks at a time, and they commented that they had a devil of a time retrieving their messages from their answering machine - it expects you to control it with touch tones in response to various beep codes. I set them up with a Sipura SPA3000 that answers their phone and forwards it, over the Internet, to our PBX, which records messages for them, and allows them to be retrieved when they call our second line - based on the Caller-ID of their cell phones! Full voice prompting. No more fumbling with a book of Chinglish instructions or worrying about running out of tape.

Once you get over the idea of having a "mere PC" run your telephony (and remember, that's exactly what a Panasonic PBX really is), you can trade up and get some real flexibility in your telephony deployment. I value my time at a lot more than a mere $100/hr, and I consider the time I've invested in Asterisk to be time well spent.

The Panasonics are nice, tightly integrated units, but even Panasonic refers to their phones as "DPITS"... they are "de pits" when it comes to flexibility. But seriously, DPITS says it all.

D igital - yes, similar to VoIP.. without the "anywhere" capabilities P roprietary - locks you into the Panasonic realm.. I ntegrated - something of an advantage, it IS more tightly integrated T elephone - same S ystem - same

Anyways, if it is doing what you need, then great, but Panasonic and other PBX manufacturers are losing business to VoIP solutions.

Reply to
John Q. Public

Go with a PC based solution, the industry is changing, there are lots of choices over the last 16 years.

Reply to
ralph.biggar.van

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