Jack.Winslade@uunet.uu.net> (05/28/91)
Larry Lippman writes: > The 101 ESS was also used for Centrex-CU (sometimes referred > to as Centrex-CE). The 101 ESS had internal capability for AIOD > without requiring the hardware described above. GAAAAaack! Don't remind me of that one. Up till the mid '80s we had a 101 at work. It was slaved off of a 5 crossbar and was one of the more ill-behaved of the <ahem> modern switching systems. I know there are all kinds of stories of funky step switches and EAX offices, but this was right up there with them. It supposedly had all of the features such as transfer, forwarding, etc., but they never seemed to work like the book said they should. One thing that NOBODY could answer, including the two telephone types who were 'stationed' on campus, was why the ringing tone was so irregular. When a call was completed, the first ring was always quite long, sometimes as long as three or four seconds. It then settled down to a more or less one on, two off cadence. (For electronics types, it was almost as if the ring on/off was controlled by a 555 timer in the astable mode, where it took longer to charge on the first cycle. ;-) During periods of high-volume calling, it would almost never gracefully overflow into an all circuits busy condition. Sometimes it would appear to die -- no ring, no busy, no ATB, no nothing, and other times it would sputter a bit and return dial tone. It's no wonder to me why Ma Bell ash-canned these as soon as possible. Good Day! JSW