Norstar Plus CICS is totally down

[ErnieE]

My client's Norstar Plus Compact ICS is down. The Feature Card was pulled with power applied. All phones are just flashing arrows. I have removed and re-applied power numerous times but it is still dead to the world.

I noted that in another thread, the user had to replace his KSU. Before I start looking a replacement feature card, does anyone know if pulling the feature card while the unit is powered can do that kind of damage to the whole system? Anyone have any other suggestions regarding trying to reset the system.

The feature card is DR 1.0 ver 7.3

 

[westcoaster]

I think this is one of those "you have nothing to lose" situations. pull all the cards out of the cics. take a screw driver and pull the cabnet apart. pull the main board out of the plastic and look for a (blue?) capacitor about the size of five quarters stacked. there should be two pins poking through the mainboard on the other side. short them for approx 5 seconds. Re-assemble. The programming memory is stored on the main board. By shorting the capacitor you are wiping out that memory. it was introduced when the pcmcia was pulled out under power. you will have to reprogram your system. If you had installed keycodes for upgrades those will be lost. It is also possable the system id will change meaning you would need to buy new codes. I don't think there is damage to either the pcmcia or the ksu just corrupt data. I have had this happen on 6/16's and repaired them this way.
best of luck...Merry Christmas

 

[Roldan]

hey westcoaster, does that work with a flash?

 

[westcoaster]

Works with lots of stuff... It is faster on a flash to downgrade from a 4 port to a 2 port and power up. I have had more flash pcmcia cards go faulty than needed "the big hammer"

 

[ErnieE]

To update you, I did try the reset. Unit still failed.

I found a friend who has a CICS and we swapped parts around to confirm that the Feature Card was bad. At first, his Feature Card in my KSU seemed to fail and my Feature Card in his KSU failed to so I figured that it was a total loss, but We tried his card one more time and my KSU fired up. So now I just need to find a new feature card.

My next question would be for a retail store with 2 lines and 3 stations, is it worth trying to find a Ver 2.0 Card?

And where can I find a feature card at a reasonable price? The local shop wants $500 for one.

 

[westcoaster]

one last tip on the feature card... you can go up but you can't go down. Meaning if your friends feature card is 4.0 and you found a 2.0 card to install, the system won't come up. you will need to do the battery short thing, or another procedure with your friends feature card in your system.
After having done the battery short, it can take up to 5 min or more for the phone system to start operating. Did you give it enough time?? (just when you said it failed then tried one more time and worked, is where this is coming from ) if you have time or feel like it try it one more time and dont touch it for 20 min after powerup.

 

[exsmogger]

I went from 4.1 to 1.0 on my CICS test system yesterday. It will take a while to finally come up, but no need to pull apart the unit and short the cap. A MICS is another story. $500 for a software card is way out of line. We do these for less than half as much. Brian Cox
J & J Communications

http://www.jandjcommunications.com

brian@jandjcommunications.com

 

[westcoaster]

I have been corrected... Thanks exmogger

 

[ErnieE]

Final Result

Replacing the Feature Card fixed the problem. System is up and running. Now I just need to figure out what I need to program on it