Telecom Equipment

K

Kett

Gawd
Joined
May 3, 2007
Messages
537
So I recently came across some telecom equipment my company was throwing out lying in the hallways; Apparently they intend to just scrap it for metal/recycling("proper disposal" recycling, not "Sell for cash" recycling; that would be far too intelligent) It's all Lucent Technologies built routers, switches, and DSP units, with a bunch of Sun equipment thrown in (Some model names were "Excel EXS/LNX", "APX8000", "APX8100", "MAX-TNT", Various Sun Netra's, etc) Nobody seemed to care if people hauled it away, so I started grabbing what I could carry. I had planned on taking a couple of these APX8100/8000 units from the place, but it all got hauled off today before I got off work so I missed my opportunity to get anything major. I do have a few things though, and one of the smaller boxes.

I was wondering if anyone here had any experience with the stuff and could tell me approximately what I might be able to try to sell some of this stuff second-hand for?

I can't find a camera cable at the moment, but what I do have is as follows:

1x Lucent Technologies/Ascend Communications MAX-TNT chassis w/ 1x Shelf Controller board, 1x 32mb dram card, 2x AC PSU, 1x Capacitor unit
3x APX8-SL-96DSP boards
3x TNT-SC-48MOD-S-L boards
3x TNT-SC-48MODV3-S-L boards
1x TNT-SC-48MOD-S56 board
Several I/O boards for ethernet & fiber

One problem though, I don't know if it all works or not. It looks to be in good condition and visual inspection shows no leaning/popped caps, scorch marks, bent pins, etc. but I lack any facility to actually boot any of these things up. I'm pretty sure they're just getting rid of it because its older and they don't need it anymore.

Anyone have any suggestions as far as how I might go about capitalizing on this stuff?

I'm really quite sad I wasn't able to track down the APX8100 before it got trashed, because i'm fairly sure it was worth a ridiculous amount of cash. They even emptied the dumpsters today. =(
 
You are really giving me flashbacks, I used to work on these about 5 or 6 years ago ..

The APX-8100 and APX-8000 are the newer of the bunch. The MAX-TNT depending on the model can be quite old. (ascend called it 'the next thing', after the ascend max 4000/6000 series)

You should be able to get into the unit via serial cable and console port. If the admin password is set, or you don't know it, you might be SOL.

The 48MOD cards are modem cards (48 ports). If memory serves me correctly, you need the DSP (96 ports) cards for non-ISDN calls (modems/faxes). I don't recall if the APXes can use the MAX cards or not. I think they can, but they will lower density.

It'd be hard to test w/o some type of circuit. I don't recall if these cards of PRI based or if they ride off of a channelized DS3. If they are PRI based, you may be able to run a t1 cable from one port to another, and set up a 'nailed-up' circuit, and try placing a call between the two end points. Not 100% certain that this will work. Even if you do have a channelized T1 to work with, you need to know the circuit configuration for it to work.

You may also be able to do internal loop back tests, but it won't guarantee anything, these units typically handle lots and lots of calls, and definitely break down after a while.

Other than there isn't a whole lot of testing you can do with it, without putting it in a real live environment.

I'd suggest looking at ebay possibly to sell them, but it would be hard to test them before hand.

Good luck.
 
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