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At Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:52:03 -0400, Brian A. Seklecki wrote:
Subject: Re: virtualization and a SCO openserver on NetBSD? vmware3?
>=20
> These are the old AT&T/Lucent "Merlin" digital protocol -- they
> terminate into "MLX" cards. =20
>=20
> I think Greg was suggesting that, at least for a replacement /voice
> mail/ solution, one could use a T1 PRI to trunk lines between the old
> Merlin PBX and a new Askterisk system (using a Sangoma E1/T1 card
> presumably)

Hmmm....  I once upon a time worked at a place that had a Merlin PBX.

It was a very nice small office system!  AT&T really blew the doors off
anything Nortel ever produced for that market range, and probably still
do.

If I'm not mistaken even the fancy AT&T desk sets can be made to work on
a simple analog line.  Don't quote me on that though :-) (I say this
because I've seen many phone systems which do this by running the analog
line along with control lines in a multi-pair connector, and the Merlin
uses a multi-pair connector, and I seem to remember that during power
outages the phones on the Merlin were all connected by default to the
main line -- it certainly had lots of relays that clicked when the power
was turned on or off.)

Of course you would forgo all the fancy features on the phone sets --
they'd all be replaced by special DTMF sequences (eg. dial "*98" to get
to voicemail).


> As for programing call routing, extensions, hunt groups, etc... and
> other functions that the old SCO Unix system handles, I'm not even sure
> which physical components are responsible for which functions.

I would guess the Merlin handles all that the basic call routing and
hunt groups and such -- it certainly handles the extensions.  The SCO
system is probably just the voice mail storage box.  It probably depends
on exactly what Merlin model the controller is.  The system I remember
using had, I believe, its own built-in voicemail module.  Of course the
SCO box may have a user interface for programming the Merlin.  We always
just plugged an ASCII terminal into it to re-configure it.

If that's the case, i.e. that the SCO box is just voicemail, then I'm
almost absolutely certain that an Asterisk box could be configured to do
voicemail for the Merlin system.  In fact I'd guess the SCO voicemail
system is just acting one or more extensions that are hung off the
Merlin, and given the special designation of being voicemail numbers.
Many (most?) voicemail systems are just call-forward on busy/no-answer.

--=20
						Greg A. Woods

H:+1 416 218-0098 W:+1 416 489-5852 x122 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>       Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>

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