If anyone has Nortel documentation related to these switches, I'd like to get in touch about preservation! leave a comment here or refer to www.dms-100.net/contact/ (maybe I'll put an email up there or something, I dunno)
It is an unlisted group but there is a LinkedIn group named Nortel Connection. Basically a group for all the laid off employees to keep connected. I will post in there and have anyone that wants to assist with docs go to that address.
I'm sure the Connections Museum or whatever it's called has documentation. As an aside- what are your plans with this? Is it possible to integrate it with POTS or otherwise connect it in a manner so that it can receive and place external calls?
@@paulloveless4122 I do know some people affiliated with the Connections Museum, I suppose I should ask them. As far as plans for the switch, I do intend to make it publicly accessible through various means. For the sake of my electric bill, I'll have to develop a schedule for it to be on though.
@@joesvax A full documentation suite would be 5+ feet high, although some of those documents wouldn't be relevant to the specific switch you have. Nortel jumped on the CD-ROM bandwagon early on. And, to the extent we could, we forced customers to pay extra for paper documentation.
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Wow! Brings me back 32 years. I worked then for Northern Telecom in Montréal, as a Systems Application Engineer on the DMS-100, serving Bell Canada. I engineered DMS-100s for SxS, XBar and SL-1 cutovers, and SuperNode / ENET upgrades. Good old days, and a lot of acronyms come back to mind.... Thanks for this trip back in time! Good luck with your adventure.
@@voxframe2259 what's crazy about them? Today's my first day back as a contractor in MB after 2 years for the cable company lol. One thing I seem to remember is that many of my rural repairs on 1Us were NDT or heavy static on the feeders. This equipment is so old now that even though it was more reliable than mechanical switching, it's dying a slow and painful death.
A lot of government entities went with Nortel back in the days, just look at the SQ police consoles they are still using Meridian/Norstar to this day. Even the Bordeaux prison can’t get rid of their Meridian system lol
I still maintain option 11c, 81C and CS1000 at work and it's a treat to see you get this DMS-100 up and running.. Management wants to get rid of all the Nortel stuff but for critical services everyone agrees it's still rock solid and reliable. Keep up the good work!
me too, still running cs1000, rock solid, as long as the power doesnt die unexpectedly, that wasnt fun trying to get it back after that. Callpilot hardrives starting to die now though. Keep up the good work!
Just out of curiosity, what is this stuff being replaced with? I know it's all soft switches now, but I don't think they are just using generic asterisk boxes.
@@theenterpriselab9401 This switch says University of Alabama, and they went Cisco, like most big companies. I know AT&T uses a Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia) IMS core and Verizon is on Ericsson. Nortel carrier hardware was sold to General Bandwidth, now Ribbon, so the direct upgrade path is to a Ribbon media gateway and call controller. In my area, the rapidly dying ILEC replaced their switches with Calix C-series around 10 years ago. Fiber Ethernet goes in the box and copper pairs handling DSL and POTS come out.
They told us they wanted to get rid of all the DMS switches by 2025 back in like 2018ish. I think they got rid of one so far. Going to be a while before they decom all these because they just keep working. I hope they continue to stay in service since my job relies on it. Any time they bring something new they never give it to us unfortunately.
Wow. Thanks for posting. I worked at Bell Northern Research in Ottawa Canada as a computer engineer. I contributed to the building of this system in a humble tiny way. It brings back some funny memories of conversations I had with some engineers about the future of consumer phones. I'm still impressed at the latency given the tools we had back then. Actually, it's bringing back a lot of good memories. Sincerely, thank you for that.
So glad to finally see this running! I can't even begin to imagine how much effort went into this behind the scenes. Also, you're an absolute chad for using the Nortel analog sets, I love those things.
Of course I *could* have just grabbed a 2500 set, but I decided it had to be some sort of Nortel. At some point, I need to give the SL-1/meridian styled Centrex sets I've got a try.
@@joesvax Watch out for the differences between analog sets and digital sets. They often look similar, but of course they need different line cards on the switch.
I started installing DMS back in late 80s in Australia. Went on to work for Nortel for 12 years before being made redundant not long before the demise of the company. Worked on Supernode CM/SLM pre BRISC with JNET all the way through to XA-Core, ENET, SPM, IOM and SNSE with DMS-100, 300, DMS TOPS, STP, SCP, MSC, MTX, GSP then right through the evolution of CS2K and CS2Kc and C20. CS2K hardware including but not limited to CICM, MG15K, G9, ERS8600, SAM21, MS2010, IW-SPM and SST and BCP for SIP trunking and A2 for SIP lines and SIP PBX. Next step is moving from CS2K, C20 and DMS-300 replacing them with Ribbon SBC and standalone A2. All the blood, sweat and tears I have shed for DMS over the years. But it’s all been worth it. I cried the day I had to turn off the CS2Kc which was replaced with Cisco Call Manager…replacing a carrier grade solution with an enterprise POS that had so many flaws and very poor support.
Love this. My day job includes working with a DMS-10. I've only ever seen the thing running, so seeing the full gauntlet to boot a similar system is neat. It also makes me hope I never have a situation where I have to cold boot ours...
This is really great- I've got some (smaller) big iron in my collection, including a collection of Q-Bus Microvaxen, and (2) small office PBX's that are waiting to be installed. It's really nice to see people collecting, restoring, running, and documenting all these types of things.
Back in the late 90s,my very first NOC job was monitoring these as well as running the back ups on night shift. Great to see you get this one up and running.
Installed a lot of these and DMS-10 all over the western states and other Nortel products back in the 90s and early 00s. Worked for Nortel for a few years until the dot bust. Brings back a lot of memories.
I must be getting old. I worked on these at BNR in our captive offices, mid 80s, and wrote some of the LCM and other maintenance software other peripherals, i.e. the double dashes that report card failure on 1/2 the replaceable unit. I can't remember much (PROTEL or other), I went on to other work at Nortel and anyway, so long ago ... amazing to see this set up in a garage, I wouldn't know how to do any of this anymore (I do remember loading large tapes of test software) in lab shifts that were sometimes only available at midnight ... blast from the past. Thankyou.
Brings me back 1991 when I worked for Nortel in Europe introducing CCS7 to the world, still remember to LIM, LIU, LCM, Supernode etc. and tons of Backup Tapes ;-) Thanks a lot!
Oh man, this brings back memories! I got my first taste of Nortel, while stationed in Japan. Our NEC pbx was replaced with an SL-100. I installed them for 7 yrs, up to 2001. Been with ATT, managing another SL-100, for a hospital for the last 17 yrs.....still love it! Great job on bringing this back to life and refreshing our memories.
Very cool! I worked for a large hospital corporation for 32 years and we had tons of Nortel equipment. Everything from tiny Norstar systems in some physician offices to Opt 81C's in the two big hospitals and two Opt 41's in the smaller hospital and business office. I had them all networked together using ISDN. I went to factory schools a number of times and loved working on that stuff. Shortly after I retired, they declared bankruptcy and most of the big iron was acquired by Avaya I believe. When we started building the data network in the early 90's, most of it was Bay Networks, later acquired by Nortel. That dial tone and ringback was common to all Nortel equipment including my home phone which is a 3x8 Norstar fed by a voip adapter and a blue tooth gateway to our cell phones.
Incredible! Thanks for sharing! I started working on the DMS-100 back in 1984 for BNR at the Carling site in Ottawa. My first job was to connect and make calls between an SL-1C and a DMS-100. These machines and each future generation were tanks that never failed. Incredible world-changing product and awesome people that we got to work with. Great memories!
Old school Nortel guy here. I came up on working on the Option 11’s and later on the CS1K and also worked on many Norstar switches back in the day. Nortel was some of the most rock solid gear you could work on. Local phone company here had a DMS100 at one point and later upgraded to the CS2K. It’s a treat to see someone take interest in keeping the Nortel gear alive. Some of the best stuff in the industry right there. Now you need the digital M5000 series phones to go along with that switch. They look just like their counterparts on the M2000 series but are totally different beasts.
i used to write software for these puppies. it was my introduction to actual software engineering. the ottawa offices were with the most brilliant people i’ve ever worked with and had ever known. rip BNR.
Woah that's awesome that you have this. We still have many in operation throughout the company, I only monitor and occasionally do programming, but never seen one be started up from scratch that's really cool.
This is so cool to actually see both hardware setup and shell interaction. And super impressive you managed to get it started up and working. The service manual for this looks chonky!
My best friend worked on the Nortel software (protel?) at the Maidenhead, UK site. He used to tell me about the DMS systems and I had a blast walking around the site with him showing me the then "space age" systems. As a weird turn of fate before I left the UK for good and just before Nortel collapsed I lived just up the road (400 yards?) from the Maidenhead office on Norreys drive.
I interviewed at Maidenhead about 1982. Just when they were first starting. A x-BNR Brit interviewed me. Didn't take the job as he had spent too long in Canada and couldn't get his head around 4 weeks holiday which was std. in the UK at that time. I had worked on the O'Connor DMS-200 project.
If you happen to find the numbers 09 inside a triangle stamped on any of those then they were the ones I tested. Date codes between 92 and 95. Those screens really took me back.
I supported and wrote DMS100/200/250/300 HW diagnostic portions of code as well as line card supervision extensions and ringing, payphone coin support, designed and integrated API for SLC96 remotes and good old echo suppression and echo cancellation. MAP UX was a hoot! DER Energy is next new control plane at scale challenge. Energy is the new "Media"
I thought my addiction to big iron minicomputers and AM broadcast transmitters was something, but suddenly I'm wanting to add a switch to my collection. Well done!
I remember my University rejected Northern Telecom because they were so impossibly obtuse to operate. We went with AT& T and you basically started things off by pressing a start button and monitoring a CRT. The user interface was really cool.
Everything telco is rather "obtuse". At least the 5ESS has a menu interface. It's not entirely obvious, but much more so than the command line. (having never seen one cold-start, I couldn't compare. it's not something that ever gets powered down. the one I walked around all the time was powered on in 1974, and has never been powered down to this day.)
@@SteffenHansen1973 That's not how it works. Various components get restarted all the time. Software does get upgraded. Just at no point is all of the processors down. (see also: in service software upgrade [ISSU])
My god, seeing this power up sequence, I understand the expertise my former colleagues had. I was one of the last "new hires (2006)" during the CVoIP transition from TDM and the last soldiers standing were older and extremely intelligent. I learned so much but never saw what they had to know. This is what they did in the back of 18 wheelers when hurricanes hit and they drove "ER trucks" to site. Loading specific site configs onto these things, powering them up to provide 911 and emergency call services to devastated areas. Wow.
Admittedly the power up sequence was purposely drawn out for the purposes of this video, but there is a little bit of sequencing that is real and needs to be accounted for.
@@joesvax And if there had been Nortel engineers there doing the power up, it would take two days. (two people can power one up in a matter of minutes, but it'll take the rest of the day to clear all the alarms.)
Went to training on Nortel switches back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. We used a couple of these switches at gateway earth stations for the satellite new gathering system GTE Spacenet had that supported ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC satellite news gathering trucks. The switch allowed the SNG trucks to connect to the PSTN and make calls back to the station to set up the new feeds and to connect the talent's IFB audio. The trucks could also make international calls if desired. We passed the billing records back to the networks based on the SNG truck's ID. Fun times.
As someone who took a summer internship as a maintenance tech on 1980's and 90's era semiconductor fab equipment a couple years ago, I can say, that the order you turn this old equipment on matters. It always baffled me how you couldn't just "turn it all on".....like, things had to warm up and you had to follow the procedure or else certain cards on certain control boards wouldn't boot or be recognized etc. It was wild.
"It's all in the sequencing." Everything has a power on order. Even a PC has to have the numerous components powered on in a specific order. (somewhere around here, I have the FPGA programs for the various servers I helped design.)
My very first job in IT back in the '80s was to set up dial-in access to a bunch of Wang minicomputers through a Nortel Meridian PBX switch. This DMS-100 makes the Meridian look like a cassette player.
My dad and I worked at Northern Telecom and he tossed out thousands of books and manuals on the dms switch, along with whatever cards he had left when he retired. I can ask and see if he has anything left. Also can put you in touch with one the best operational testers ever. He knows that switch inside and out. Man this brings back memories installing and working on this. I do however have a Display Phone Plus that goes to the DMS switch...
Wow, I was trained to operate the DMS-100 when I was in the Air Force. I don't remember a thing about it other than console could do some interesting tricks that kept me from falling a sleep during the training.
Wow, I forgot how noisy these were. Had allot of fun engineering these for deployment across Europe and the middle east out of the offices in Maidenhead in the UK. Thanks for sharing, I have already passed on to the ex-Nortel group in the UK and the comments are great.
Coincidentally, I co-op'ed as an outside plant engineer with BellSouth in Tuscaloosa while I was in school there (in electrical engineering). I haven't checked lately, but last I heard, AT&T was using Lucent 5ESS switches in all three Tuscaloosa central offices (Northport, Druid Hills, and Tuscaloosa Main & Toll). They replaced the switch in the Main & Toll office after I graduated (the former clicky beast in that CO was an AT&T [Lucent] of some variety), and for some reason I never had a reason to visit the Northport CO, but I've seen the 5ESS in the Druid Hills office. :)
My Telco still runs several DMS-100s. Oldest bay is from 1978 I think, long before I was born but still worked on them myself for 10 years up until last year. We have tons of documentation in binders and CDs of various releases of Helmsman.
Just want to say this is awesome. I still live in DMS land lol. It begs me to ask who what when where HOW do you have one of these?!!? Please please please make a series of videos on the switch and how it operates. I know the old stuff quite well but DMS is a total mystery for me. I also live in a strange DMS kludge area in Quebec. My town is serviced by a DMS-10 but the “switching matrix” was never installed. Instead they dumped all the calls to another town’s DMS-100 to be switched back. This was done for 2 other towns next to me as well. It’s still done this way today and from what I’m told, this was totally non-standard and not done really anywhere else. We also have a load of DMS-1Us kicking around in rural areas. It’s really a strange setup from what Bell guys have told me. I have no idea where you’re located, but supper/lunch/drinks are on me if you’re ever up for DMS chatting. (I’m a network and telecoms admin by trade).
Worked on telecoms 45years, finally with Lucent as a Transmission Lab manager. My garage has a lot of test equipment and benches.Nice to see a garage being used the right way. A man cave😅. We had a DMS100 a USAF Fairford it was always a fascinating switch.
Very cool to see after so many years! You need to get some punchdown blocks to wire to the LCM's. Then you can know the joys of running that terrible tool (I forgot its name) that makes you verify dial tone on every pair, in order. If something was wrong or if you accidentally the wrong pair, the tool threw the error and quit. You had to start over. PITA. To clarify, though, this is a DMS-100, aka "class 5 end office." SL-100/MSL-100 has the DMS software base and additional code for DLM's and digital phones (M2000 series). The MSL-100 was also cabinetized (i.e., one shelf shorter with gray front/back doors and end panels). I have books - I'll send you a DM.
Yeah, this system was originally a DMS-100/200 (SL-100 didn't exist when it was installed) and later converted to SL-100/MSL-100, so it has a mixture of converted DMS hardware and SL hardware. Later on it was upgraded to CS-2100 (PABX counterpart to CS-2000 CO switch). I haven't found any way to DM through youtube, but feel free to contact me via email or other means www.dms-100.net/contact/
thats really something to see someone bring back to life.. today we now have home brew pbx systems. sip boxes and wifi telephones. look at how much space the dms100 exchange occupied.. but imagine that this could also run an entire town back in its day. the dms100 had also some classic bugs. would be interesting to see the different bugs shown and demonstrated.
We currently maintain an 81C / CS1000 hybrid setup but are planning on moving to ACO here in the next ~12 months. Crazy to see someone turning up one of these like it would'be been done decades ago lol
Ahhh beautiful. The amount of DMS 100's and 250 Super Nodes we exploited back in the days are mind boggling. Nice too see the hardware in video. I miss the Phreak days! =)
Lol, I remember these behemoth switches. Worked at Nortel Richardson in the late 90's. Was in IT dep but still had a few co workers that could bang out servord on memory alone "no giant manual". Automation scripts for tones of new service, moves and patches.
I used to work on the NEC 2400 IPX which was NEC's enterprise PBX which could go up to something like 192,000 extensions. It was a lot quieter but had more of a 'look' about it - think of a blue stackable fridge with some ominous lights on it, from 2001.
I was extensively trained on the Stromberg DCO, the company put tons of money into the ESC and it was out dated in 5 years, I also worked on the dms10 and DMS250 mobile.
Wow, that's really impressive! Especially so after reading how much work was involved getting to this point. I've always had a soft spot for these old digital systems, but the furthest I ever got into it is some little Norstar units. I did manage to get the Norstar CTA and RAD software working, and I believe I have the Norstar version of that Dialogic T1 card you mention on your website (model D/42-NS) but unfortunately I never found any use for it.
Amazing video. I worked on DMS500 since mid-90s, kept quite a handfull of documention if you need. Mostly cds. Im retired now but company i worked for 20 years still have 3 DMS running in VA, and im probably will be cLled back for decommission job once all services have migrated to voip.
If you're looking to unload any of that documentation, I've been slowly preserving it and putting it up on my website. Get in touch with me, if you'd like. www.dms-100.net/contact/
Couple of crazy things. These things are more like computers with Kermit and baud rates than phones - never worked with phones but I understand they are just networks. So the other thing, the electricity usage must be REALLY high. And you are doing this for fun when people over the last 30 years have had to work on these and keep them going. How crazy is that. So neat to see. Also cool to see comments about people working on them and bringing back memories. Neat.
I remember programming Unisys mainframes using NAP (Network Applications Plaform) to interface into these switches back from the early 90s to mid 2000s. We were able to perform several hundred thousand customized calls a day without breaking any sweat.
Joe, were you a telecom professional? To go out of your way, purchase and to set it up makes for a very peculiar set of interests. Great work my friend.
I had a great time to work with DMS-10 (little brother of DMS-100). Thi was pretty unique configuration. No lines at all - subsciber’s part was delivered by Proximity I radio system. I keep somewhere a copy of Helmsman for this and some manuals from my training in RDP, Raleigh, NC. Let me know if you are interested.
You know, as you were making that call and saying the phone number out loud, "three...four...eight...", I was thinking, "That's a weird coincidence. That's the same exchange number used by my undergraduate university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama" (I obviously skipped a lot of the video). 😆
Back in 85 Mercury Comms in the UK bought a DMS100 to offer Centrex services to financial institutions in the City of London. BT panicked because the 5ESS-PRX DDSN wasn't going to be ready for another year so they bought a Bell standard 5ESS and added T1-E1 converters so it could connect to the PSTN. It never went live and was used as a training switch. #goodolddays
Simply splendid movie; I thoroughly enjoyed fan starting at 00:49:00 & again at 00:01:26; Having worked in plenty of PoP's and CO's over the years, I have never had the pleasure of watching one getting started. Out of curiosity, why does the fan howl at :49? I imagine it is due to the number of fans starting... Also, good luck on documentation - helmsman will be your best bet.
Late 70s and 80s we were installing those in New York City and Boston. Old technology. Used to see that in the old Bell telephone company building a block from Bryant Park in NYC. Before it became Verizon lol. I used to do power cuts at those tel-co’s.
I just read your story; it certainly takes lots of bravery and dedication to pull off something this ambitious and risky, and I'm quite impressed at the progress you've made so far. I myself have got to start exploring govdeals - although I don't have the resources to pull off something this risky. Since this PBX is essentially a smaller version of a DMS-100, I'm wondering if it could serve an ISDN line. If you have a couple of IDSN modems, you should see if you could hook them up through the PBX and transmit data from one to the other. I'm also wondering if there's a way to configure a special sort of analog phone line where, when one picks to the telephone, instead of getting a dialtone, music is instead transmitted to indicate a readiness to dial.
The switch monitors the first duration of establishing a dial tone, if you put music on the first part of it when you go off the hook the switch wouldn’t be happy and gives you a fast busy signal. Or a error message on the computer terminal at the office.
They didn’t engineer stupid people to put music on top of a dial tone, the switch would say nope 👎🏼 not a dial tone and wouldn’t even let you get close to dialing a phone number it’ll just drop you out of the call progressing path back into a fast tone signal to let you know something went wrong!
I have the equipment to serve ISDN PRI (T1/1.544M) but not BRI (128k). BRI required upgraded line card shelves which I don't have. As far as a musical dial tone, I doubt this is possible through configuration alone, it would take some complex hardware or firmware hacking to pull off such a thing.
Just makes me think about when I had to run jumpers across the rack, 150ft down, up a ladder, two isles over. We were still putting 900 pair cable in the ground 7 years ago (road moves)... winching so hard the front end of the truck lifted up off the ground.
If anyone has Nortel documentation related to these switches, I'd like to get in touch about preservation! leave a comment here or refer to www.dms-100.net/contact/ (maybe I'll put an email up there or something, I dunno)
It is an unlisted group but there is a LinkedIn group named Nortel Connection. Basically a group for all the laid off employees to keep connected. I will post in there and have anyone that wants to assist with docs go to that address.
I'm sure the Connections Museum or whatever it's called has documentation. As an aside- what are your plans with this? Is it possible to integrate it with POTS or otherwise connect it in a manner so that it can receive and place external calls?
@@paulloveless4122 I do know some people affiliated with the Connections Museum, I suppose I should ask them.
As far as plans for the switch, I do intend to make it publicly accessible through various means. For the sake of my electric bill, I'll have to develop a schedule for it to be on though.
@@ctillnc I do have a number of the documentation CDs, but for the sake of preservation I'd like to get a hold of a number of older documents as well
@@joesvax A full documentation suite would be 5+ feet high, although some of those documents wouldn't be relevant to the specific switch you have. Nortel jumped on the CD-ROM bandwagon early on. And, to the extent we could, we forced customers to pay extra for paper documentation.
Wow! Brings me back 32 years. I worked then for Northern Telecom in Montréal, as a Systems Application Engineer on the DMS-100, serving Bell Canada. I engineered DMS-100s for SxS, XBar and SL-1 cutovers, and SuperNode / ENET upgrades. Good old days, and a lot of acronyms come back to mind.... Thanks for this trip back in time! Good luck with your adventure.
I live in a small town outside of Montreal serviced by a DMS-10, and the crazy DMS-1Us lol
@@voxframe2259 what's crazy about them? Today's my first day back as a contractor in MB after 2 years for the cable company lol. One thing I seem to remember is that many of my rural repairs on 1Us were NDT or heavy static on the feeders. This equipment is so old now that even though it was more reliable than mechanical switching, it's dying a slow and painful death.
I worked for BNR Mtv on OCS and PTE. there was a DMS Lab, but I never saw a startup. Such a shame the NT went down the tubes
A lot of government entities went with Nortel back in the days, just look at the SQ police consoles they are still using Meridian/Norstar to this day. Even the Bordeaux prison can’t get rid of their Meridian system lol
I want to put Iphone on Alexander Graham Bell statute lol, I had 20 years work with Meridien 1 PABX.
I still maintain option 11c, 81C and CS1000 at work and it's a treat to see you get this DMS-100 up and running.. Management wants to get rid of all the Nortel stuff but for critical services everyone agrees it's still rock solid and reliable. Keep up the good work!
me too, still running cs1000, rock solid, as long as the power doesnt die unexpectedly, that wasnt fun trying to get it back after that. Callpilot hardrives starting to die now though. Keep up the good work!
Bet the military still uses this stuff
Just out of curiosity, what is this stuff being replaced with? I know it's all soft switches now, but I don't think they are just using generic asterisk boxes.
@@theenterpriselab9401 This switch says University of Alabama, and they went Cisco, like most big companies. I know AT&T uses a Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia) IMS core and Verizon is on Ericsson. Nortel carrier hardware was sold to General Bandwidth, now Ribbon, so the direct upgrade path is to a Ribbon media gateway and call controller. In my area, the rapidly dying ILEC replaced their switches with Calix C-series around 10 years ago. Fiber Ethernet goes in the box and copper pairs handling DSL and POTS come out.
They told us they wanted to get rid of all the DMS switches by 2025 back in like 2018ish. I think they got rid of one so far. Going to be a while before they decom all these because they just keep working. I hope they continue to stay in service since my job relies on it. Any time they bring something new they never give it to us unfortunately.
Wow. Thanks for posting. I worked at Bell Northern Research in Ottawa Canada as a computer engineer. I contributed to the building of this system in a humble tiny way. It brings back some funny memories of conversations I had with some engineers about the future of consumer phones. I'm still impressed at the latency given the tools we had back then. Actually, it's bringing back a lot of good memories. Sincerely, thank you for that.
So glad to finally see this running! I can't even begin to imagine how much effort went into this behind the scenes. Also, you're an absolute chad for using the Nortel analog sets, I love those things.
Of course I *could* have just grabbed a 2500 set, but I decided it had to be some sort of Nortel.
At some point, I need to give the SL-1/meridian styled Centrex sets I've got a try.
@@joesvax Watch out for the differences between analog sets and digital sets. They often look similar, but of course they need different line cards on the switch.
@@ctillnc yes, I'm aware, the sets I am referring to are the p-phone key sets a la M5000 and NT4Xxx
You've got to love the DMS-100 ! One on the best phone switch designed !
YES! it really is very cool indeed.
I started installing DMS back in late 80s in Australia. Went on to work for Nortel for 12 years before being made redundant not long before the demise of the company. Worked on Supernode CM/SLM pre BRISC with JNET all the way through to XA-Core, ENET, SPM, IOM and SNSE with DMS-100, 300, DMS TOPS, STP, SCP, MSC, MTX, GSP then right through the evolution of CS2K and CS2Kc and C20. CS2K hardware including but not limited to CICM, MG15K, G9, ERS8600, SAM21, MS2010, IW-SPM and SST and BCP for SIP trunking and A2 for SIP lines and SIP PBX.
Next step is moving from CS2K, C20 and DMS-300 replacing them with Ribbon SBC and standalone A2.
All the blood, sweat and tears I have shed for DMS over the years. But it’s all been worth it.
I cried the day I had to turn off the CS2Kc which was replaced with Cisco Call Manager…replacing a carrier grade solution with an enterprise POS that had so many flaws and very poor support.
Love this. My day job includes working with a DMS-10. I've only ever seen the thing running, so seeing the full gauntlet to boot a similar system is neat. It also makes me hope I never have a situation where I have to cold boot ours...
This is really great- I've got some (smaller) big iron in my collection, including a collection of Q-Bus Microvaxen, and (2) small office PBX's that are waiting to be installed. It's really nice to see people collecting, restoring, running, and documenting all these types of things.
Glad you liked it. I've got a Q-bus microvax as well, but it's always got failing RAM.
Back in the late 90s,my very first NOC job was monitoring these as well as running the back ups on night shift. Great to see you get this one up and running.
Installed a lot of these and DMS-10 all over the western states and other Nortel products back in the 90s and early 00s. Worked for Nortel for a few years until the dot bust. Brings back a lot of memories.
Nice!
I worked on one of these back in 2005. It was a world of tables and tuples and the most cryptic command line syntax I'd ever seen. Good times!
I so understand the excitement of getting equipment up and running. Having a gigantic machine to connect two telephones is excellent 😍. Well done 😉.
I must be getting old. I worked on these at BNR in our captive offices, mid 80s, and wrote some of the LCM and other maintenance software other peripherals, i.e. the double dashes that report card failure on 1/2 the replaceable unit. I can't remember much (PROTEL or other), I went on to other work at Nortel and anyway, so long ago ... amazing to see this set up in a garage, I wouldn't know how to do any of this anymore (I do remember loading large tapes of test software) in lab shifts that were sometimes only available at midnight ... blast from the past. Thankyou.
Brings me back 1991 when I worked for Nortel in Europe introducing CCS7 to the world, still remember to LIM, LIU, LCM, Supernode etc. and tons of Backup Tapes ;-) Thanks a lot!
Oh man, this brings back memories! I got my first taste of Nortel, while stationed in Japan. Our NEC pbx was replaced with an SL-100. I installed them for 7 yrs, up to 2001. Been with ATT, managing another SL-100, for a hospital for the last 17 yrs.....still love it! Great job on bringing this back to life and refreshing our memories.
Very cool! I worked for a large hospital corporation for 32 years and we had tons of Nortel equipment. Everything from tiny Norstar systems in some physician offices to Opt 81C's in the two big hospitals and two Opt 41's in the smaller hospital and business office. I had them all networked together using ISDN. I went to factory schools a number of times and loved working on that stuff. Shortly after I retired, they declared bankruptcy and most of the big iron was acquired by Avaya I believe. When we started building the data network in the early 90's, most of it was Bay Networks, later acquired by Nortel. That dial tone and ringback was common to all Nortel equipment including my home phone which is a 3x8 Norstar fed by a voip adapter and a blue tooth gateway to our cell phones.
Incredible! Thanks for sharing! I started working on the DMS-100 back in 1984 for BNR at the Carling site in Ottawa. My first job was to connect and make calls between an SL-1C and a DMS-100. These machines and each future generation were tanks that never failed. Incredible world-changing product and awesome people that we got to work with. Great memories!
Old school Nortel guy here. I came up on working on the Option 11’s and later on the CS1K and also worked on many Norstar switches back in the day. Nortel was some of the most rock solid gear you could work on. Local phone company here had a DMS100 at one point and later upgraded to the CS2K. It’s a treat to see someone take interest in keeping the Nortel gear alive. Some of the best stuff in the industry right there. Now you need the digital M5000 series phones to go along with that switch. They look just like their counterparts on the M2000 series but are totally different beasts.
I actually do have several of the M5000 series, and even an old NT4X set in the older SL-1 styling. I need to get around to trying them at some point.
I've never seen this type of system running before, but I can see that IPL'ing it is an art. Amazing to watch!
i used to write software for these puppies. it was my introduction to actual software engineering.
the ottawa offices were with the most brilliant people i’ve ever worked with and had ever known.
rip BNR.
Could you upload the software if you have it to GitHub or something
So your an expert in PROTEL ?
@@212MPH a long time ago. i’ve forgotten it now, but if i had access to the tools again, i could relearn it pretty quickly.
Woah that's awesome that you have this. We still have many in operation throughout the company, I only monitor and occasionally do programming, but never seen one be started up from scratch that's really cool.
This is so cool to actually see both hardware setup and shell interaction. And super impressive you managed to get it started up and working. The service manual for this looks chonky!
My best friend worked on the Nortel software (protel?) at the Maidenhead, UK site. He used to tell me about the DMS systems and I had a blast walking around the site with him showing me the then "space age" systems. As a weird turn of fate before I left the UK for good and just before Nortel collapsed I lived just up the road (400 yards?) from the Maidenhead office on Norreys drive.
I used to visit Nortel when they were in the Jolly Green Giant building opposite Maidenhead Station.
yes, protel. it was a pretty cool language.
Did an SDH training course at Nortel Maidenhead in 1996, working for Cable & Wireless. Great lunches. Shit equipment.
I interviewed at Maidenhead about 1982. Just when they were first starting. A x-BNR Brit interviewed me. Didn't take the job as he had spent too long in Canada and couldn't get his head around 4 weeks holiday which was std. in the UK at that time. I had worked on the O'Connor DMS-200 project.
@@jockinafrock The destruction of the company was already well underway by this time.
If you happen to find the numbers 09 inside a triangle stamped on any of those then they were the ones I tested. Date codes between 92 and 95. Those screens really took me back.
Love this! Spent a good portion of my career supporting a DMS-MTX in a wireless network. It's all VoLTE/VoIP now.
When he said he gots dial tone I got so freaking excited lol! That was awesome NEWS!
I supported and wrote DMS100/200/250/300 HW diagnostic portions of code as well as line card supervision extensions and ringing, payphone coin support, designed and integrated API for SLC96 remotes and good old echo suppression and echo cancellation. MAP UX was a hoot! DER Energy is next new control plane at scale challenge. Energy is the new "Media"
No home is complete without its very own DMS-100.
I thought my addiction to big iron minicomputers and AM broadcast transmitters was something, but suddenly I'm wanting to add a switch to my collection. Well done!
I remember my University rejected Northern Telecom because they were so impossibly obtuse to operate. We went with AT& T and you basically started things off by pressing a start button and monitoring a CRT. The user interface was really cool.
Everything telco is rather "obtuse". At least the 5ESS has a menu interface. It's not entirely obvious, but much more so than the command line. (having never seen one cold-start, I couldn't compare. it's not something that ever gets powered down. the one I walked around all the time was powered on in 1974, and has never been powered down to this day.)
@@jfbeam If you can get a screenshot with uptime, you win the internet hands down!
Your university knew nothing then.
@@SteffenHansen1973 That's not how it works. Various components get restarted all the time. Software does get upgraded. Just at no point is all of the processors down. (see also: in service software upgrade [ISSU])
was it a 5ESS or Definity they went with?
Holy smokes, absolutely incredible!!
May I commend you on your choice of junk. Good to see old stuff go to use and not into the shredder!
I was the project manager for the ENET in Bramalea. How many memories. Thanks so much for shariing.
Brings back memories of monitoring and working on DMS250 and DMS300 Long Distance switches for Sprint from the late 80s through the early 2000s.
My god, seeing this power up sequence, I understand the expertise my former colleagues had. I was one of the last "new hires (2006)" during the CVoIP transition from TDM and the last soldiers standing were older and extremely intelligent. I learned so much but never saw what they had to know. This is what they did in the back of 18 wheelers when hurricanes hit and they drove "ER trucks" to site. Loading specific site configs onto these things, powering them up to provide 911 and emergency call services to devastated areas. Wow.
Admittedly the power up sequence was purposely drawn out for the purposes of this video, but there is a little bit of sequencing that is real and needs to be accounted for.
@@joesvax And if there had been Nortel engineers there doing the power up, it would take two days. (two people can power one up in a matter of minutes, but it'll take the rest of the day to clear all the alarms.)
Went to training on Nortel switches back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. We used a couple of these switches at gateway earth stations for the satellite new gathering system GTE Spacenet had that supported ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC satellite news gathering trucks.
The switch allowed the SNG trucks to connect to the PSTN and make calls back to the station to set up the new feeds and to connect the talent's IFB audio. The trucks could also make international calls if desired. We passed the billing records back to the networks based on the SNG truck's ID. Fun times.
As someone who took a summer internship as a maintenance tech on 1980's and 90's era semiconductor fab equipment a couple years ago, I can say, that the order you turn this old equipment on matters. It always baffled me how you couldn't just "turn it all on".....like, things had to warm up and you had to follow the procedure or else certain cards on certain control boards wouldn't boot or be recognized etc. It was wild.
"It's all in the sequencing." Everything has a power on order. Even a PC has to have the numerous components powered on in a specific order. (somewhere around here, I have the FPGA programs for the various servers I helped design.)
My very first job in IT back in the '80s was to set up dial-in access to a bunch of Wang minicomputers through a Nortel Meridian PBX switch. This DMS-100 makes the Meridian look like a cassette player.
My dad and I worked at Northern Telecom and he tossed out thousands of books and manuals on the dms switch, along with whatever cards he had left when he retired. I can ask and see if he has anything left. Also can put you in touch with one the best operational testers ever. He knows that switch inside and out. Man this brings back memories installing and working on this. I do however have a Display Phone Plus that goes to the DMS switch...
I would appreciate any documentation, my contact info is listed at www.dms-100.net/contact/
"And this is Joe, our highest paid employee in the company." "Oh wow, what's his job? Is he the CEO?" "No. He knows how to start the telephone sytem."
Wow, I was trained to operate the DMS-100 when I was in the Air Force. I don't remember a thing about it other than console could do some interesting tricks that kept me from falling a sleep during the training.
Cool! This is like a POTS tech's equivalent of a really elaborate IT homelab.
Awesome! The opening where you power it up and we see you but you don't say a word is very surreal, and actually quite humorous (in a good way).
You are a very gifted man indeed. Will be checking back to see more.
Wow, I forgot how noisy these were. Had allot of fun engineering these for deployment across Europe and the middle east out of the offices in Maidenhead in the UK. Thanks for sharing, I have already passed on to the ex-Nortel group in the UK and the comments are great.
my inner nerd saw youtube recommending me this and I went why not. glad I stuck around and did not skip anything, Love this type of nerding!
Glad you enjoy the video as much as i did! UwU
Coincidentally, I co-op'ed as an outside plant engineer with BellSouth in Tuscaloosa while I was in school there (in electrical engineering). I haven't checked lately, but last I heard, AT&T was using Lucent 5ESS switches in all three Tuscaloosa central offices (Northport, Druid Hills, and Tuscaloosa Main & Toll). They replaced the switch in the Main & Toll office after I graduated (the former clicky beast in that CO was an AT&T [Lucent] of some variety), and for some reason I never had a reason to visit the Northport CO, but I've seen the 5ESS in the Druid Hills office. :)
My Telco still runs several DMS-100s. Oldest bay is from 1978 I think, long before I was born but still worked on them myself for 10 years up until last year. We have tons of documentation in binders and CDs of various releases of Helmsman.
Yes! Correct! :)
If you're comfortable sharing images of some of those CDs, feel free to contact me: www.dms-100.net/contact/
Great! What a complex startup procedure !
Very seldom necessary. Switches are a strange type of computer. It’s ok to make errors, but never ever go down.
5 9’s uptime was a minimum requirement, and these switches got it.
admittedly exaggerated somewhat for theatrical reasons here, but it made a cool intro!
Just want to say this is awesome. I still live in DMS land lol. It begs me to ask who what when where HOW do you have one of these?!!? Please please please make a series of videos on the switch and how it operates. I know the old stuff quite well but DMS is a total mystery for me. I also live in a strange DMS kludge area in Quebec. My town is serviced by a DMS-10 but the “switching matrix” was never installed. Instead they dumped all the calls to another town’s DMS-100 to be switched back. This was done for 2 other towns next to me as well. It’s still done this way today and from what I’m told, this was totally non-standard and not done really anywhere else. We also have a load of DMS-1Us kicking around in rural areas. It’s really a strange setup from what Bell guys have told me.
I have no idea where you’re located, but supper/lunch/drinks are on me if you’re ever up for DMS chatting. (I’m a network and telecoms admin by trade).
Definitely planning to make more videos. The full story is linked from the description, here it is again: www.dms-100.net/telephony/dms-100/story/
@@joesvax I've read your story over 100 times i love it a lot! Thanks for getting this switch and preserving it.
Triumphant!
That's gorgeous. Let's set you up with a bunch of 50-pin connectors and harmonica breakouts.
Actually I need a bunch of 32 pair connectors.....
Each line drawer on the DMS has 64 lines
Still remember those sounds from the Carling Lab3 captive office. Running BERT brings back memories
Looks like they loved their toggle switches.
We had different equipment in the UK.
That was truly a lesson in perspicacity. Thanks so much for sharing!
i connected with many DMS-100s when I worked at the NOC @DFW. Never physically worked on one. More intuitive than a GTD5.
Worked on telecoms 45years, finally with Lucent as a Transmission Lab manager. My garage has a lot of test equipment and benches.Nice to see a garage being used the right way. A man cave😅. We had a DMS100 a USAF Fairford it was always a fascinating switch.
Very cool to see after so many years! You need to get some punchdown blocks to wire to the LCM's. Then you can know the joys of running that terrible tool (I forgot its name) that makes you verify dial tone on every pair, in order. If something was wrong or if you accidentally the wrong pair, the tool threw the error and quit. You had to start over. PITA. To clarify, though, this is a DMS-100, aka "class 5 end office." SL-100/MSL-100 has the DMS software base and additional code for DLM's and digital phones (M2000 series). The MSL-100 was also cabinetized (i.e., one shelf shorter with gray front/back doors and end panels). I have books - I'll send you a DM.
Yeah, this system was originally a DMS-100/200 (SL-100 didn't exist when it was installed) and later converted to SL-100/MSL-100, so it has a mixture of converted DMS hardware and SL hardware. Later on it was upgraded to CS-2100 (PABX counterpart to CS-2000 CO switch).
I haven't found any way to DM through youtube, but feel free to contact me via email or other means www.dms-100.net/contact/
thats really something to see someone bring back to life.. today we now have home brew pbx systems. sip boxes and wifi telephones. look at how much space the dms100 exchange occupied.. but imagine that this could also run an entire town back in its day. the dms100 had also some classic bugs. would be interesting to see the different bugs shown and demonstrated.
Rock Port Telephone in Rock Port Missouri is still using a DMS-10 in production to deliver POTS, SIP, and GR303 services.
We currently maintain an 81C / CS1000 hybrid setup but are planning on moving to ACO here in the next ~12 months. Crazy to see someone turning up one of these like it would'be been done decades ago lol
Ahhh beautiful. The amount of DMS 100's and 250 Super Nodes we exploited back in the days are mind boggling. Nice too see the hardware in video. I miss the Phreak days! =)
Incredible setup and video! Love your work, can't wait to see more (:
Lol, I remember these behemoth switches. Worked at Nortel Richardson in the late 90's. Was in IT dep but still had a few co workers that could bang out servord on memory alone "no giant manual". Automation scripts for tones of new service, moves and patches.
I used to work on the NEC 2400 IPX which was NEC's enterprise PBX which could go up to something like 192,000 extensions. It was a lot quieter but had more of a 'look' about it - think of a blue stackable fridge with some ominous lights on it, from 2001.
I was extensively trained on the Stromberg DCO, the company put tons of money into the ESC and it was out dated in 5 years, I also worked on the dms10 and DMS250 mobile.
Wow, that's really impressive! Especially so after reading how much work was involved getting to this point.
I've always had a soft spot for these old digital systems, but the furthest I ever got into it is some little Norstar units. I did manage to get the Norstar CTA and RAD software working, and I believe I have the Norstar version of that Dialogic T1 card you mention on your website (model D/42-NS) but unfortunately I never found any use for it.
Amazing video. I worked on DMS500 since mid-90s, kept quite a handfull of documention if you need. Mostly cds. Im retired now but company i worked for 20 years still have 3 DMS running in VA, and im probably will be cLled back for decommission job once all services have migrated to voip.
If you're looking to unload any of that documentation, I've been slowly preserving it and putting it up on my website. Get in touch with me, if you'd like. www.dms-100.net/contact/
That is a long startup sequence. Can't imagine these were turned off that often. What a feat to get it working.
Indeed, they weren't turned off often. In a properly functioning switch, never actually.
We only just replaced our Meridian, quite the throwback here.
Couple of crazy things. These things are more like computers with Kermit and baud rates than phones - never worked with phones but I understand they are just networks. So the other thing, the electricity usage must be REALLY high. And you are doing this for fun when people over the last 30 years have had to work on these and keep them going. How crazy is that. So neat to see. Also cool to see comments about people working on them and bringing back memories. Neat.
Wow many thanks for share. My work in the early of 2000. DMS-MTX, DMS-GSM and DMS-300 😁
I remember programming Unisys mainframes using NAP (Network Applications Plaform) to interface into these switches back from the early 90s to mid 2000s. We were able to perform several hundred thousand customized calls a day without breaking any sweat.
Looks and sounds like starting a jet engine. I love it!
Joe, were you a telecom professional? To go out of your way, purchase and to set it up makes for a very peculiar set of interests. Great work my friend.
Nope, complete amateur in most of this hobbyist stuff. I'm an electrical/electronics engineer for my day job, I just have an interest in technology.
Congratulations, that is so cool!
I had a great time to work with DMS-10 (little brother of DMS-100). Thi was pretty unique configuration. No lines at all - subsciber’s part was delivered by Proximity I radio system.
I keep somewhere a copy of Helmsman for this and some manuals from my training in RDP, Raleigh, NC.
Let me know if you are interested.
That is an amazing video right there! This is the first video that I saw of yours!
You know, as you were making that call and saying the phone number out loud, "three...four...eight...", I was thinking, "That's a weird coincidence. That's the same exchange number used by my undergraduate university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama" (I obviously skipped a lot of the video). 😆
Its the Beast! I built these circuit boards for Northern Telecom in Research Triangle Park,NC
Back in 85 Mercury Comms in the UK bought a DMS100 to offer Centrex services to financial institutions in the City of London. BT panicked because the 5ESS-PRX DDSN wasn't going to be ready for another year so they bought a Bell standard 5ESS and added T1-E1 converters so it could connect to the PSTN. It never went live and was used as a training switch. #goodolddays
00:52 start up sounds like an air raid siren.☺ Great Job !!!
A button flippers dream right there.
Wow this was great. Visited your site, too! You are a smart man. Keep doing what you love.
Simply splendid movie; I thoroughly enjoyed fan starting at 00:49:00 & again at 00:01:26; Having worked in plenty of PoP's and CO's over the years, I have never had the pleasure of watching one getting started. Out of curiosity, why does the fan howl at :49? I imagine it is due to the number of fans starting... Also, good luck on documentation - helmsman will be your best bet.
Late 70s and 80s we were installing those in New York City and Boston. Old technology. Used to see that in the old Bell telephone company building a block from Bryant Park in NYC. Before it became Verizon lol. I used to do power cuts at those tel-co’s.
It's like Marty McFly preparing to strum the guitar at the beginning of BTTF.
I was thinking the same thing! 🤣👍🏻
lol
I just read your story; it certainly takes lots of bravery and dedication to pull off something this ambitious and risky, and I'm quite impressed at the progress you've made so far. I myself have got to start exploring govdeals - although I don't have the resources to pull off something this risky.
Since this PBX is essentially a smaller version of a DMS-100, I'm wondering if it could serve an ISDN line. If you have a couple of IDSN modems, you should see if you could hook them up through the PBX and transmit data from one to the other.
I'm also wondering if there's a way to configure a special sort of analog phone line where, when one picks to the telephone, instead of getting a dialtone, music is instead transmitted to indicate a readiness to dial.
The switch monitors the first duration of establishing a dial tone, if you put music on the first part of it when you go off the hook the switch wouldn’t be happy and gives you a fast busy signal. Or a error message on the computer terminal at the office.
They didn’t engineer stupid people to put music on top of a dial tone, the switch would say nope 👎🏼 not a dial tone and wouldn’t even let you get close to dialing a phone number it’ll just drop you out of the call progressing path back into a fast tone signal to let you know something went wrong!
I have the equipment to serve ISDN PRI (T1/1.544M) but not BRI (128k). BRI required upgraded line card shelves which I don't have.
As far as a musical dial tone, I doubt this is possible through configuration alone, it would take some complex hardware or firmware hacking to pull off such a thing.
I should also mention that while I don't have BRI equipment for the DMS, I do have it for the Meridian 1.
@@joesvax T1s are fun to work on and troubleshoot.
This must have been what it was like to get the Space Shuttles up and running once they're at the pad.
Worked on DMS100s down in Wall St from 1984 to 1990
Oh good lord, now this make me feel old... Next thing you will see is an old 1980's AS400 array or a Grey SC system or a Amdaw mainframe...
nice! Can't imagine the time and effort to get this set up
probably the worlds most expensive short distance call
Just makes me think about when I had to run jumpers across the rack, 150ft down, up a ladder, two isles over. We were still putting 900 pair cable in the ground 7 years ago (road moves)... winching so hard the front end of the truck lifted up off the ground.
It has dial tone _off_ the DMS? OK, well then what's it coming from, and when will you get it FROM the DMS?
Dude... I'm having Telecom PTSD flashbacks from this stuff. Run away... run away fast. 🤣🤣🤣
Это просто Божественно! Инженеры которые придумали это чудо, просто гении.
Worked on so many PABX's, was strange removing ones you installed a decade earlier! Don't mean miss it though.
East coast America(calculated through timezone in the VT100 terminal) can’t figure out which version of Debian you are running?
Do you have a DMS TOPS operator position terminal?