some bits and bobs from the THG
The Monarch CDSS1 trial in Proctor House WC1 had MF4 LST4s for the TD7 Staff Engineer, and all his Heads of Section. It was advisable to make sure these worked!
In Procter House, on the PABX 3 Satellite we had 10 Sig Units 43A behind the First selectors for 432 2700-49, and another 10 on the next shelf for 2750-99. These were for the extensions (with MF4 teles) to able to use the Strowger when Monarch (CDSS1) was out of service. At the start, the 43As did all the work!
I can envisage a shelf of firsts on a public exchange being set up with 43As to provide a small grading for customers with MF4 phones. However, if there were say four or less such phones, the 43As would be one per line, rather than in a grading
2 Oct 2021, 16:43
Re: [THG] LE or RCU? (was LE to 2 GSCs?) thg
Robert M
The UXD 5 and monarch PABX were related. I never worked on any of the development of these. My claim to fame was ACRE, the system that automated Operator call recording and billing.
My memory is that the technology for UXD5 and Monarch originated from the work we did on ACRE, ie the microprocessor systems based on the Intel 8 bit family (8080,8085, EPROMS, etc)
Monarch and UXD 5 were designed differently to the ACRE processor systems, and used a different programming language. But
Plessey got the UXD5 / Monarch development & production when GEC / Marconi (?) got System X.
STC did the production engineering and production of the ACRE systems.
ACRE was short lived as it was replaced by the System X BTOSS Operator support system
On Sat, 2 Oct 2021 at 11:40, Paul E wrote:
Andy,
The Monarch Development team were on the same block of Proctor House as the Proprietary PABX team where I hid.
I did not get an impression of 'Nih'. There was a UXD5 near Exeter so as to be nearer to London than Scotland for field trials. I am not sure if there we any in Wales. The 2000 attempts at digital lines (VOIP) were trialled on a Welsh UAX site, followed by Penarth. The latter did not survive long!
Paul E
Andy E wrote
The UXD5 was a fascinating exchange. I have an idea that it suffered NIH (not invented here) syndrome, as it had been invented in Scotland and not by THQ.
It also suffered by the fact that although it was a digital exchange, its interface to the rest of the network was entirely analogue.
Both of these assertions are from memory and may be entirely wrong/misremembered.
Andy E.
John B via groups.io Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2021 at 13:21 Subject: Re: [THG] Key and lamp units
Ah, key and lamp units. I remember when I worked on the Monarch development that people who used key & lamp units (KLUs) loved them. Sales teams, telephone accounts groups, or the like, loved the direct access to colleagues and being able to see at a glance who was busy and when they came free. We wondered whether it would be possible to replicate the KLU function within Monarch.
It would have been possible to do it from a PABX to closed user groups of extensions, but it would have entailed a proprietary digital feature terminal with a proprietary signalling system from the PABX. Comms managers don't like locked-in proprietary solutions and we doubted we could sell enough to recoup the development costs. Networking the KLU to user groups across sites would have been wonderful, though DPNSS did not have the functionality to support that.
.....
John
Peter W wrote 7 Apr 2020, 09:01
Kev,
Thanks. I clearly ‘mis-remembered’. Several times BT said ‘UXD5s can’t be further developed to do this’, but somehow they seem to have managed….
Peter
Kev D Sent: 06 April 2020 16:49
All,
They were in service and supported from Martlesham until at least 2014 when I left. One year, the funding for support was a month late being signed off and the guy responsible for support was put on ‘the bench’ as his work was unfunded. He took the opportunity to apply for release and was granted it, having recently been refused as he was seen as having essential skills. He left almost immediately before funding came through. In the panic that ensued he invited back as a contractor... No idea what has happened since though...! 😊
Kev D.
Sent: 05 April 2020 23:30
On reflection, it may have been its inability to support Carrier Pre-selection that did for it. I’m sure it was a regulatory driven issue.
Sent: 05 April 2020 22:35
From my time at Oftel, I recall that BT reluctantly was forced to retire the UXD5s when CLI became mandatory under EU Regulations. Previously they only supplied ‘partial CLI’ indicating the exchange.
Peter W