Panaxonic KX-T30810

[Long Roof]

Well this is my first post and I need a little help. I have been interested in phones for quite awhile and recently ran across this great forum. Have been reading lots of old posts and learning quite a bit. In doing so, I ran across some posts about using a PBX to operate a home phone system. Like a few others, I do not have a CO line, just use cell phones. The house is wired for phones though. I have enough phones to put around the house.

I found a Panasonic KX-T30810 Easa Phone switch system for $10 and downloaded an installation manual for it. Tried playing with it tonight with a WE 302 and 502 set. Got a dial tone but can't do anything else. I read in the manual that the  T30810 defalt is for tone only and you need a dedicated phone to program the unit to work with pulse. I was going to try it with a couple of touch tone phones but all I have are rotary ones.

My question is what phones will work to program with? The manual says to use a KX-T30830 but I have not found one (at a reasonable price). I do see phones that will work with a KX-TA30830 but that looks to be a newer model of my PBX so I don't know if other phones will work. Does anybody know for sure what I can use?

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve

[gpo706]

You must need a "proprietary" phone as described, I have a 616 but this is described as a "hybrid" system and accepts tone or pulse as default.

The 308 with 10 added to the suffix, does the unit require extra cards in it?

Sorry can't be much more help.

Scot.

[bigdaddylove]

Shouldn't need a proprietary phone; I have the same unit and it works fine without one. Have you tried a re-set?

[GG]

Panasonic Certified Systems Dealer here.

KX-T30810 was one of the first Panasonic "hybrid" PBXs: every port except possibly the lowest-numbered extension (extn. 11), can support either a conventional analog phone or a Panasonic proprietary hybrid/digital phone.

The "default touchtone" setting is for the dialing from the PBX out to the telco CO line.  Thus, if you have a rotary phone on an extension port, the PBX will automatically convert the digits to touchtones.  The extension ports will handle both rotary and touchtone phones without any programming changes, and you should be able to dial from one extension to another using rotary phones.  So if your rotary phone is wired to the extension port correctly (see below), it should work. 

Some essential things you need to know:

Any analog phones need only a 2-wire connection: red & green.  Be very careful of what the yellow and possible black wires in your telephones are doing: they should be insulated (taped) and stored, so they don't connect to the yellow/black pair in the PBX (hybrid pair) and cause various minor troubles, potentially including inability to dial out.   You can't hurt the PBX by connecting a telephone set incorrectly (it has protection circuits built in), so don't worry about that, though of course you should fix any miswiring to telephones as soon as you find it. 

What I would do is:  use 2-wire modular cords to patch from the PBX into your house wiring.  This avoids the yellow/black (outer) pair entirely.   

The call progress tones on these units can be confusing because they all use the same actual tone but differ only in cadence.  The dial tone is a continuous hum, the busy tone is the same tone interrupted at busy cadence, and the ringing tone is the very same tone interrupted at ringing cadence.  For intercom calls (extension to extension), the ringing cadence is roughly English, so you'll hear what at first sounds like two busy beeps, then a pause, then two more, etc. 

Further, if you dial a call forwarding code on a phone, then the dial tone received by that phone will start with a couple of brief beeps before the continuous tone starts, which can create the impression of going off-hook and immediately getting a busy tone.

The best way to experiment with these switches is to start with two known-good phones that are connected only using the center pair (red/green).  Note the extension numbers they are plugged into.  If I recall correctly the KX-T308 is numbered from 11 - 18.  If you plug two phones into the last two extension ports, they will be extensions 17 and 18 respectively.   The extension jacks are white, the CO line jacks are black. 

KX-T308 should be considered an antique/collector's item, so if you got one for $10 that's a steal of a deal (I would not sell mine for less than $200).  These use relatively little power and are almost indestructible.  The difficult part for KX-t308 is finding one of the KX-T38030 telephones (with LC Display) that are needed to program the switch.  The more common KX-T123230 phones (for the 1232 system) won't work the same way.  And you need the little cardboard overlay, or some kind of written chart, to know which buttons are converted to what when the machine is in Programming mode. 

Note there is also a KX-TD308 that came out later, and is a much smaller unit with only a single 25-pair connector on it (that handles both CO lines and extensions).  KX-TD308 uses very little power, uses 7400-series digital phones, and can be programmed from either an LC Display phone or from a PC with the correct Panasonic programming tool (we call it the DOS Tool because it runs under MS DOS, though will still run on Windows XP, possibly Win7 as well).  KX-TD308 comes equipped from the factory for 8 digital ports and only 4 analog ports; you would buy a little circuit board to plug in inside the unit to get the other 4 analog ports.  Minus that circuit board, only four of the ports will work for analog phones. 

Once you get used to landline audio quality on room-to-room "intercom" calls, there will be a substantial temptation to spring for an oldschool POTS landline to your house, so you can have that kind of audio on your calls to friends & family elsewhere.  And then when someone calls you, all your dial phones will ring and you can answer from anywhere in the house.   After all, if you've got 'em, may as well use 'em the way they were intended to be used. 

[Long Roof]

Thanks for the information. Well I finally got time to get back to the Panasonic. I am kind of red faced but have a smile too. The problem I had before with the phones not ringing was because I was dialing the wrong number. Everything seems to be in order now.  Now I just need a few more phones to fill the rest of the extensions.

[GG]

Cool. Not to worry, you've never had a PBX to play with before. 

You might need a touchtone phone for extension 11, or you might need  a Panasonic KXT-30810 phone for it.  I never installed those without the digital LC Display phone on the first port, even where clients used 2500 sets for all the other extensions.

The best place for the Panasonic LCDphone (extn. 11) is in your home office, where you might have to handle more than one call at a time (if you have more than one line).  Then have the "dial phone of the week" on extn. 12 on your home office desk as well, and 13 on your workbench, and the rest can be spread out all over the house: living room, bedrooms, kitchen, etc.  If you automate the "night service" setting so it switches modes at a certain time each day of the week, the phone won't ring in the bedroom while you're sleeping, but if you're awake (reading in bed etc.) you can dial a pickup code to capture a call that's ringing elsewhere.  (If you have a kid, let them choose their own bedroom phone including from your collection.)

This also assumes you have telco voicemail or any analog answering machine to put in parallel with an always-ringing extension, to get messages.

You can probably get (safely) two modern American phones (anything 302 or newer is "modern" here:-) on every extension port.  But if they ring weakly or erratically, consider inserting resistors in series with the ringers and making mechanical adjustments so they are soft but consistent. 

[Long Roof]

thanks GG.

This stuff is just too much fun.

[bigdaddylove]

long roof,

i don't know if you have seen this thread:

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=5186.30

it talks about other ways to set up your pbx so you can use it with house wiring making an intercom system.