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Table of Contents
Panasonic KX-TD816 PABX/PBX
I've bought this small PBX for my office. While not exactly needed, it can still be useful for a thing or two. This page compiles knowledge and information on this unit that I've been collecting around.
Alert: Rant incoming
As a strictly proprietary project, generally sold by Panasonic representatives, any very technical insights are pretty hard to come by. For some reason, folks that worked with this unit tend to withhold anything they have. People will either try to sell you this data or boast they have it in Sundance Communications. At best, you'll find a thread that ends in «sent you via PM.»
I, however, don't think even Panasonic would bother with anyone sharing schematics and software on a unit so old that the configuration software is written for MS-DOS. So, for the sake of open knowledge, I'll share what I find here, albeit it's not much. As I grow frustrated, I also got salty. Sorry, I can't avoid it. This article may be a little too rich on salt.
Nomenclatures
Panasonic has terms for some stuff. Some are pretty standard, some are their own thing.
| Term | Acronym meaning | Meaning |
| IRNA | Intercept Routing — No Answer | |
| PT/APT/DPT | [Analogue\Digital] Proprietary Telephone | A telephone set made specifically for those PABX's |
| SLT | Single Line Telephone | Any standard landline telephone |
| XDP | eXtra Device Port | On certain models (all of them Digital), allows for a SLT to be connected to the analogue wiring, acting as a completely independent station |
My unit
My PBX is particularly of the KX-TD816BX model. It sports a KX-TD170 expansion for eight more extensions. Since I have no use for it, it's disconnected. It's also impossible to find it's service manual. You'll see it mentioned in a maze of old websites trying to sell it. But I wouldn't bet any money on even being able to contact those people.
There's a service manual for the UK offering, KX-TD816E. But it's quite different from mine. While it obviously shares some design premises, it's quite different. The motherboard is completely different, the CPU board is in a different location and there's even stuff it got that mine doesn't, like dual pager and dual music source, as well as built-in door-phone card.
I'm compiling some information on the hardware here, but it is still a work in progress.
 |
| My unit with a KX-T7230X DPT and a Intelbras SLT |
Model suffixes
Both TD816 and it's bigger brother TD1232 got a lot of versions. Some are newer revisions, some are built for international markets. A friend of mine thinks it got to do with the wildly diverse world of telephonic systems, and it's probably true, but I live in Brazil, and, thus far, I've seen this BX unit, that, according to the «British Telephones» website, is focused for the Asian market, and also a KX-TD1232 unit being sold on OLX (as well in another site), of the «X» variant.
X, by the way, means international market. I'd not lose my sleep over those suffixes, but the fact is that some systems can be quite different from others with the same name, depending on the local market they were built for, and frequently, service manuals made for one won't be adequate for another.
As for Brazil, Googles returns nothing for TD816 with the BR suffix, and there's a single result mentioning the BR variant for TD1232 model. If this model really exists, I don't envy the luck of someone who'll have to maintain it. The sellers of one of the add-ons I bought said he worked with a lot of «BR» models, specially the TD1232BR, since the price difference between the two units were, at the time, minimal.
Resources
Other stuff
Paralleled Telephone connection
As per this reference:
XDP feature must be turned off in Program 600.
The most common example is to plug a cordless phone into the XDP port of your digital phone (7200 or 7400 series). When your extension is called, both phones ring and can be answered. In order for your single-line phone to ring you must do the following:
INTERCOM 391 To turn on parallel ring (INTERCOM 390 to cancel) and the AUTO ANSWER light must be off. BGM must be turned off.
Another example is to plug your laptop or computer modem into the XDP port and use OUTLOOK or another contact software program to make calls. If you have problems making the connection, look for the dialing properties in your program and set it to "Don't look for dial tone, just dial." Set parallel ring to off (INTERCOM 390).
The manuals doesn't seem to be very clear about this. It mentions the ring activation on the PT's configuration, but you have to dial 391 to actually enable the SLT paralleled connection.
This arrangement may be useful in situations in which you want everything in a room, for example, to answer to the same extension number. Otherwise you would have to configure a extension group, and each extension can only be assigned to one.
References
- http://www.csportal.panasonic-la.com/%5CDESCARGASPLA%5CPLA%5CCENTRALES%5CCORREO%5C6%20PUERTOS%5CKX-TVM50BX%5CMANUAL%20DE%20USUARIO%5CInstallation_Manual.pdf (tangential information on the programming software)
