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Getting the Merlins and Cisco IP phones talking to each other! Plenty of retro rack infrastructure work as well.Video should go live Thursday or Friday! (EDIT: probably Wednesday lol)

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AT&T Merlin Phones on Early-2000s VoIP

Bridging the divide between some 1980s AT&T Merlin and 2000s Cisco IP phones. We'll go over each of the phones, do a bunch of infrastructure clean up in the retro rack, and get a Cisco 2821 router acting as a bridge to let us make calls! Cisco IP Phone Setup Video https://youtu.be/uA1VXI7uWLM Check me out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/clabretro Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio #netro #retrotech #retrocomputer #networking #cisco #telephony Serial to USB converter: https://amzn.to/4mAXDlJ Rack stuff StarTech Universal Rack Rails: https://amzn.to/404JV1Q StarTech 42U Rack: https://amzn.to/482c3oh StarTech 25U Rack: https://amzn.to/3mEB7hS Tripp Lite SMART1500LCD UPS: https://amzn.to/3KZW3Jw 1U 24 Port Patch Panel: https://amzn.to/3Nm0bFa 1U Brush Panel: https://amzn.to/3mExAA3 1U Rack Shelf: https://amzn.to/3oaDclT Video gear Camera: https://amzn.to/4al3xjA Main mics: https://amzn.to/4dCUuO2 Desk mic: https://amzn.to/3ye8BsV Note: The above are Amazon affiliate links. It doesn't cost you extra, but I'll receive a commission which will help keep the content coming. I only link to things I've personally ordered. 00:00 Merlin and IP Phones 01:52 Bridging Setup Plan 04:21 FXS Card Install 06:50 Racking up the Cisco 2821 Router 13:45 Powering up the Retro Rack 16:23 Checking the 2821 on the Retro Rack Network 17:14 Retro Rack Cable Improvements 20:16 IP Phone Testing 21:51 Merlin Phone Testing 24:06 Bridging Merlin and IP Phones 29:00 Installing Some Phones 29:24 Next Steps

Comments

Lily Finley

Back when I worked in IT, I built a device that would detect which wires on an RJ45 port were connected together. I then crimped a bunch of different RJ45 plugs with different sets of wires bridged. Then I could plug a bunch of those plugs into various ports on one end of a run and use my device to detect which plugs were connected through on the other. It was incredibly useful for mapping a lot of ports at once. There are commercial devices that do this, but they were out of our price range. My project took one night and an Arduino.

Impish

Hooray! I've been looking forward to this.

Jeremy Whaling

Excellent as always, excited to see the WiFi phones working eventually

Alf

Put one in the kitchen upstairs, in the case you need some beer or coffee, or just a hug...

Vorisi

If you cut the covers off the Monoprice connectors, the ones that go over the tabs, they'll come out a lot easier. They sit against the equipment and when they deform they press into it. A single swipe with a razer blade will solve all of your problems. Also, if you can, you could pull the yellow cables all the way to the patch panel under your desktop, and use the patch panel under the stairs behind the retro rack. Then use patch cables to get to either rack. Then everything has its place and you don't have a dangling bundle of cables to get in the way

Jack Beckman

Now that you have the dedicated phones from the workshop to the server room, a future video: human cloning. I worked at several data centers, and we never put sides on racks. THey'd just be in the way the next time you needed to do something.

clabretro

Yeah I've already cut a few of them -- it's even worse though. It's as if the plastic clip isn't quite the right size or something, so they still don't feel great afterwards.

clabretro

I was very tempted to build this let me tell you haha

Vorisi

Weird. The only time I've seen that is with improperly terminated pass thru connectors. The wires sticking out the end can interfere in the back of the port.

Fronzel Neekburm

You could mount the routers the other way around. Easy access to your most used side and PSU and console are on the same side as where they get plugged in, good for cable management. Its not the correct way as I believe the 28xx blow out the interface side and air flow should always go same direction. Most DC's have Cold aisle in the front blows over the hardware to the hot aisle at the back but it wont matter in your setup. FYI You can specify the direction of airflow in some hardware when purchasing new gear. I cant wait to see what you do next, maybe T1 link between the 2 phone systems. either by VWIC's or serial through your T1 modems. I think you have enough hardware for it. so many possibilities. Matt (Fronzel Neekburm is Roger Wilco alias in Space Quest 6).