Leich L55 cord board: It's alive!

[jshprentz]

Today my Leich L55 cord board was connected for the first time since I purchased it last August. The board has been languishing in my storage unit while my house was under renovation. I wanted to confirm that the board worked before I made space for it at home.

There is no power available in the storage unit, so I brought a Duracell Powerpack Pro 600 to provide 120 VAC to a Tellabs 8050 power supply with ring generator. I assembled some leads with telco alligator clips at one end and crimp-on space lugs at the other. These leads clipped onto terminals in the cord board to provide -24 VDC, ground, and ringing power.

I also wired a couple of RJ-11 surface jack boxes to leads with telco alligator clips. This let me plug a phone into the RJ-11 jack and connect it to any cord board station line for testing.

With two phones and the power connected to the board, I turned on the battery key and lifted a receiver. I was delighted to see a station lamp glow.

The cord circuits worked, mostly. The operator's handset was noisy, but functional. I was able to ring the other phone and establish a connection. Supervisory lamps lit when phones went on hook.

This setup is sufficient to test all of the station circuits and many functions of the cord circuits. I don't know how to test the central office trunks while the board is isolated in my storage unit.

I discovered a few problems:

• The buzzer did not work (buzzer switch was on, NL relay operates, ring power supply was verified by ringing phones).
• In some cord circuits, a supervisory light remained on during a station to station call.
• The Split key will not turn from the On position.

I was very satisfied with my first day of testing.

[CanadianGuy]

Nice! This nostalgic stuff just makes my imagination run wild! All that human interaction required What a conversation piece that must be! Thanks for sharing