Mystery Box: What Is It?
Updated January 11, 2005
Updated January 11, 2005
I got this device through eBay in January, 2005. I don't know what it is or what it does, so I'm hoping that somebody recognizes it and can tell me something about it. It appears to me to be a remote control panel that has something to do with telephone switching, telephone/radio relay, etc. The front panel has a bunch of controls that appear to allow an operator to control 16 telephone lines, 8 radio links, and some sort of intercom and crypto gear. The front panel can be backlit by a pair of light sources inside, that illuminate it through bundles of fiber-optic cable. There's a mount at the upper left corner of the front panel that appears to accept some sort of bracket. It has has a square receptacle with a spring-loaded ball detent.
The back panel of the box has a 3-pin connector that appears to be a power input, a 6-pin connector, two fiber-optic connectors (one transmit line and one receive line), and two standard 6-pin audio connectors. I do not yet know whether the 6-pin connectors are for audio accessories, data links, or both.
The device was made by Eastern Computers, Inc. in Virginia Beach, VA. The enclosure was made by Zero Enclosures in 1995.
I powered the unit up from a 24VDC power source via a pair of wires that I patched into a terminal block inside the enclosure, after I traced enough wiring to make a guess about the voltage needed and the right signals to connect to. After a brief delay, during which the speaker on the back of the box sometimes emits a tone, the display indicates that the box is waiting for something (perhaps communication with some other device). It does not appear to respond to any button presses. Connecting a handset to either of the 6-pin connectors on the back causes the box's speaker to emit a sound that may be a data carrier of some sort, and the box seems to "glitch" when the PTT button is pressed. I have yet not figured out whether this box is just a control panel, or if it actually performs some sort of switching/routing functions.
Connecting the two fiber-optic ports together causes the remote alarm LED to turn off, and a change in the faint noise emitted by the box. The alarm LED does not turn back on if the ports are then disconnected, unless the box is rebooted. There is a green LED on the back of the rear-most board which appears to be a carrier detect LED; it turns on whenever the unit is powered up with the two fiber-optic ports connected together.
Further disassembly of the box revealed that there is a PC-104 form-factor 25 MHz 80386EX computer inside. It connects to the front board (which also is connected to the front panel controls and displays) through a standard PC-104 connector, and there's another PC-104 site on the same board. Each site only has one of the dual-row connectors, indicating that the front board presents an 8-bit interface to the PC. Additional cables connect to the reset line and both RS-232 interfaces on the PC. The behavior of the front panel when the reset pins on the PC are momentarily shorted suggests that the display (including the "waiting" text) is controlled by the embedded PC. I have not yet determined what sort of software may be running on the PC, whether it has a standard PC BIOS, etc. A future experiment may be to patch in to one or both RS-232 interfaces to see if the PC outputs anything interesting when it boots up. I have not yet determined whether either or both RS-232 interfaces are available at the rear panel connectors and/or are used to control other circuitry in the box.
Text on the rear board's silkscreen such as "T1-CLK", "T1-DATA-TX", etc. suggests to me that the fiber-optic connections may be intended for a T1 data interface. I'll need to learn more about T1 interfaces... maybe some of my friends who have more telecom experience than I do could provide some information.
Can anybody tell me anything about this box? If so, please email me.
