Quick PBX question. Are the processors swappable? Ours got fried

[tracerit]

My uncle has a market and one day the phone lines just stopped working. We called the phone compnay who came out and determined it was our PBX system box that wasn't working. They were unable to work on it since it wasn't their equipment so we ended up calling a telecommunications company to send a repair tech out and he determined it was the processor inside that was dead. The part is a Avaya ACS 509 7.0 processor.

The trouble is that they're asking $1200 to replace it with a refurbished part but online i'm seeing it going for $400-600 instead.

I just wanted to know if I pick up a refurbished part online, will it just be an easy swap, or will there need to be some type of programming/testing involved? They said the memory card with all the settings is still intact.

 

[ch33zw1z]

So you want to swap the CPU yourself?

What's the model of the PBX unit? (not the CPU, the Avaya unit model)

Did you watch the technician test it, so you know how to test the CPu after you swap it?

 

[tracerit]

So you want to swap the CPU yourself?

What's the model of the PBX unit? (not the CPU, the Avaya unit model)

Did you watch the technician test it, so you know how to test the CPu after you swap it?

I wasn't available to observe. The market is actually in another state and no one there is comfortable with tech to really do much. I managed to get him down to only $1000 but at least hell cover the labor and parts for a few years.

 

[imagoon]

Depends on the unit. Mitel has proms on the boards that contain keys that (must) match the licensing chips. Avaya has something like that depending on the year. I think but am not positive on that model that you can just swap it and swap all the PCMCIA cards. I think config / voicemail / firmware was on the PCMCIA cards in those.

 

[skyking]

I'd let the pros do it for a grand. Sounds like you made a good deal there.
I work on comdials myself, and there are always some small 'gotcha' things that will crop up. Better to have somebody who has been to school take care of it. If they order the wrong revision or something, THEY can eat it.
You may not be able to return a part and have to eat it, just because of a rev number.

 

[tracerit]

Thanks for the replies! I felt I was getting hustled but the points made makes me feel better having the pros do it.

 

[Agamar]

I work on Panasonic PBX systems, and a PRI card alone (for a digital circuit) has a MSRP of almost $2k.

It is pretty crazy how expensive a business class phone system costs. I can say that the only time I have ever lost hardware is from power and surge issues!

 

[Mushkins]

Definitely not getting hustled for $1k on that one when the chip costs $400-600 on ebay. Swapping a processor on a PBX is kind of a pain, like others have said even the smallest revision offset or licensing issue can make the whole thing a no-go.

Figure $600 for a 100% legit, working chip from a reputable source, $150 an hour for the tech to swap it and test it (about 2 hours), plus taxes and travel. $1k-1.2k is right around what i'd expect for a quote on this one. Some of those PBX systems, especially VoIP based systems are easily 3k-4k MSRP. For a full medium size business installation on one of these systems between phones, backend, support, and labor, you're easily talking between 40k and 70k depending on the hardware manufacture, support contract, and the number of bells and whistles you want.

Think of it this way, the phones are hard down atm, how important are those phones for your business? How much money are you losing every day because those phones are down? For most businesses, 1k to get that back up and running ASAP is a no brainer. I'd have them put the chip in, and then start the process of speccing out a new system to ultimately replace it within the next year or two before the aging system fails again.