SO…buying any kind of old computer gear or technology can either be considered buying collectibles, or throwing money into a fire pit. In other ways its all about the experience; nobody is buying a $4k Altair to run Crysis; they’re buying $4k video cards. Since I’m not sure how collectible an old PBX will ever be, I’m considering it the latter, so the idea is to minimize the amount of spend as much as possible. That said, sometimes it makes sense to look at the big picture and try to find something that best fits your needs wants, instead of trying to find “the cheapest stuff possible”.
Why a Merlin PBX? In Part 1 I mentioned that I saw a ton of Merlin stuff get scrapped back in my childhood days, and the 1980s retro-futuristic (or perhaps space-age) look of the hardware has me on a nostalgic kick. In addition, after reading up on the Merlin stuff, I find it has some relatively interesting features, including the ability to “live behind another PBX” (like Asterisk), and handles a venerable plethora of connectivity, including POTS, T1/PRI, IDSN (including BRI!), and supports several generations of phones from the old space-age devices to 90s-rific Avaya 44xx series phones. So long story short, I wanted one for both nostalgic reasons, as well as even a few practical-ish ones. There are MANY MANY other PBXes, some of which may even fit all my actual needs (see my notes below regarding ISDN), but for now I just wanted a Merlin.
Read on to find out what I ran into buying/building an old PBX. These nuggets can be applied to other things in life as well, and I’m humble enough to admit my fumbles. Buckle-in as this is a multi-part…part.
The Devil is in the Details – Research EVERYTHING.
Telephony equipment varies a LOT when it comes to standards, and even devices that LOOK similar, from a similar era and even the same company, may not be compatible. For example, At&t made a variety of those space-age-looking phones, that while looking identical, some were not compatible with the Merlin systems; they were for the Definity family.