🚚 Driving across America (AGAIN) for a DMS-10! 

Hey everyone! Someone got us a copy of the Physical Handbook, so we're all set :)

Love that brown and orange fashion style! 🤎🧡😁👍

I am glad to have helped with this project, even if all I did was know you guys collected this type of gear and know that Adtran had one they were looking to place in a museum. The whole thing started just as a quick conversation during a trip to Huntsville in April. Brad mentioned he wanted to find a museum home for it and I popped out a quick donation email to Peter. Looking forward to future updates!

Very cool switch! Happy to see a big company like Adtran giving you all the switch for preservation instead of throwing it away. Can’t wait for more videos on the DMS-10 and its platform, and digital switching in general! I have a couple contacts in the telco industry. I’ll reach out to them and see if anyone has the DMS-10’s physical handbook. It’s worth a shot.

I used to work for Adtran and my customer in Sherman, TX was the company that donated that DMS-10 to Adtran. I had the honor of helping disassembling the DMS-10 at my customer and shipping it to Adtran.

I'm super impressed by your interest and dedication to the preservation of telecom history. I spent 40+ years in telecom after ITT (Kellogg/Alcatel/Cortelco, etc.) Inc. built factories in Mississippi and Tennessee in the 60's. The timing of this gave me hands-on experience with patch-panel pbx's, step switch office, crossbar pabx, ksu's of all flavors, A1 crossbar office, and the early evolution of digital switches. Thank you for keeping the memories alive. (No pun intended!)

Worked on Northern Telecom's DMS-100 (as a NT employee) thirty years ago. Cool to see the little brother making its way into the Museum! Can't wait to see the follow ups. Fan noise ahead! Thanks.

Wow. I remember starting in telecom in 1990 and seeing probably 15 of these installed to replace step-by-step switches in rural cities in Missouri. These things were BULLETPROOF. The ones in my territory operated for MONTHS at a time without a single "code 5" customer ticket (code 5 meant problem was due to inside switching equipment) being attributed to the switch. The few codes we had were typically due to the individual line card of a SINGLE customer that fit into the larger "drawer" shelves. I think each of those wider "drawer" cards fit 32 line cards.

I remember in the 1980's when I first called a phone number served by a DMS exchange in the Miami area. It was stunning because there was no "clunk" or "click" sound on the line when the called party answered. One of the many electro-mechanical sounds we took for granted back then, but which have now completely disappeared from the modern network.

24 years at Nortel. You need to find a Helmsman CD-ROM for the DMS-10. It will have all the NTPs (Nortel equivalent of BSPs).

That's so awesome. I helped remove and preserve a 5ESS-2000 switch from a rural telco back in June 2023. We need to start saving these switches for posterity! :)

i appreciate you guys getting a shot of omaha on your trip back. As a Omaha resident with family in Bellingham, I have visited your fine museum twice now and enjoy your videos.

It's cool to know that DMS switches are still in use in the United States. The DMS ruled the Canadian telecom network for decades, but when I worked at Bell Canada in 2016, they were removing them from service as quickly as they could. I don't know if there are any still in service in Canada.

This is GREAT to see that the Digital systems are being preserved as they are being phased out.

putting a hammock across the cargo bars of a panel van is genius, I wish I'd thought of that

Holy shit! I live in Huntsville. Hope you all had a good time here and got to do something else fun here! My office is around the corner from Adtran, actually. And I've driven from Huntsville to Seattle and back. That was a great road trip, but I was not in a big box truck either time, so "great" may not have been the word for your experience. :D Congratulations on getting a new exhibit for the museum! Good on Adtran for donating it to you instead of scrapping it.

I installed and tested DMS switches on the west coast in the 1980s. One interesting thing I found was that there was a more-or-less complete programming language built into their "store file" system, that didn't seem to be documented anywhere. So I wrote a manual for it, called 'Store File User's Guide'. There's another story regarding that book, but not for public consumption. I also used that language to write a utility program called 'steve1' that got passed around quite a bit.

Glad to see a DMS saved from the scrap heap. There is alot of them that are waiting for their turn as efforts are trying to decommission the units. Good on Adtran, yall need some TA3/4/5000s and the like to connect to it.

Let my DMS-10 training begin. I'll be watching for updates. Have 3 of these to support in SW WA

Congrats on getting the museum to the point that companies like Adtran would reach out! That's no small feat! I have a neighbor who was in the telecom industry who's said he's never been to the museum, I'm sure he'll love seeing this new addition!! PS: The next time you need to make a long box truck move, consider a UHaul with the gas V10. When we moved from VA to the PNW last October that's what we ended up doing - yes, the V10 gets worse fuel economy, but it's not a tonnn worse, and regular gas is cheaper than diesel. Plus the truck itself was cheaper than one from Penske.

Looking forward to all things 1978 digital switching! Congratulations on the acquisition! ❤ Those 1978 colors of the cabinets! ❤

9:27 that looks like STTLWADUDS0 snuck into the video! Awesome to see the DMS 10 coming to the museum though! 😀

I've had to call Adtran a number of times throughout my career in VoIP and every time they've been wonderful to work with. I was just a "small fish" in their perspective working on a couple dozen TA924s but they always had my back when I had to get it to talk to some weird T1 configuration or similar.

Time to get some Mitel hardware for your "Canadian Wing" of the Museum.

Verizon has been decommissioning quite a few DMS-10s from small rural COs as part of their copper retirement projects, particularly in upstate NY. Maybe someone there has a few spares? It would be cool to see this unit serving BRI ISDN considering all the telcos have long shut that stuff down. Verizon is also slowly pulling out DMS-100 and 5ESSes from service and going IP only, re-homing to large Ribbon C20 regional IP switches. I suspect the large switches are being stored for spare parts to support COs that don't have Fios yet, so I don't see them parting with them anytime soon.

Nice downtown Omaha shot. Hope you guys had fun while you were here!

Wow! Congrats on the DMS-10. I'll need to visit again and see it.

It's nice to know I am not the only one to drive across the US to pick up old telecom equipment. A previous job sent me and a coworker out on a few trips to pick up old massive Meridian PBXs and a couple of the large Avaya Definity cabinets. I never got to work on any of the big CO switches, but had lots of fun learning and working on some larger PBXs. One of these days I'd love to visit the museum!

If you need a long-term solution for the SCSI storage in the DMS-10, I'm sure I can donate some BlueSCSI units to the museum. Let me know!

Great video. Small suggestion here, please make it easy to donate to the museum. I donated a small amount but I had to hunt down how to do that.

This just makes me happy! 😊

I’m glad that I was able to go see this switch and everything else this last Sunday. Had a great time at the museum, and thank you to everyone that works there for preserving these unique and interesting pieces of history.

I worked on DMS-100 in lower Manhattan. I wrote a program that diagnosed trunk logs and make them busy when bad and RTS when good. Amazing something like that made into the BCS code

Just love you guys and what you re doing...!

The DMS products were developed by Bell Northern Research in Canada and manufactured by Northern Electric, later renamed Northern Telecom or Nortel. I worked for BNR Inc., a US subsidiary of Bell Northern Research. We were located in Palo Alto, CA, later moving to Mountain View, CA. I was aware of the DMS but did not to development work on it. The SG-1 "Pulse" and SL-1, later designated "Meridian", PBX systems were transferred to us for engineering maintenance and development. The "Pulse" had a time division analog time division common bus where samples of the speech were transferred between parties. The SL-1 encoded the speech using pulse code modulation, similar to the DMS. If you could acquire either one of them, I think they would be nice additions to your museum. Note that the SL-1 underwent extensive modernizations over the years, so the early versions that I worked on may all be history. I do know that we did a version for the Swedish market, where we licensed that version to be manufactured by another company in Sweden. We designed versions for the hotel/motel market. Of particular interest, the extension numbers were room numbers and this numbering scheme often had a variable number of digits and gaps which made the number assignment and translation challenging! The DMS had line card drawers, with a replaceable circuit board for each line. The idea was that faulty circuit boards could be swapped out without affecting service on other lines. In the PBX, one board could serve several lines. When a board was swapped out, calls on the other lines served by that board would get disconnected, but it wasn't so much of an issue in a business.

My company used to use that thing's younger brother (A DMS-500) to run our CLEC for the longest time. Great switches, kinda still miss them but switching to an IP core has saved us so much on power and cooling it's not even funny.

A little correction, it wasn't the first digital switch on the market. While I don't know if it was first but the Swedish AXE from Ericsson was earlier. From Wikipedia: "The AXE telephone exchange is a product line of circuit switched digital telephone exchanges manufactured by Ericsson, a Swedish telecom company. It was developed in 1974 by Ellemtel, a research and development subsidiary of Ericsson and Televerket.[1] The first system was deployed in 1976.“

for Charter Communications in the mid 2000's I worked on their DMS-100 platform extensively before they switched over to a Metaswitch platform around 2009. I loved working on those DMS systems.

there is a lot of them still in service on norrthern canada rural regions but spare card begin to be rare and hard to find.

Rocket City to Jet City! Can't wait to come back to Seattle to meet y'all and see the goodies and goofies!!

Yay! I'm so glad that you are finally getting another switch for the museum! Unfortunately I have been unable to ever visit and I don't believe I'll have the opportunity anytime in the near future due to financial reasons. Also, I live in Florida, which is very far from Washington State. I am extremely fascinated with the electromechanical switching, as well as the various other electronic telephone equipment from throughout the day. My grandmother is a retired AT&t operator and witnessed the various technological advances throughout the many decades of her career. She was also there for the divestiture of the company when the FCC held the court case considering AT&t a monopoly. I have two aunts that were Southern😮 Bell / BellSouth employees also. I myself running my own Asterisk PBX system that had many phone lines registered to it, one of them being a self-built 20 room chat line with many other features, a few of which I designed and implemented myself. So needless to say the telephone system has been an interest of mine for many years. So again, I would very much love to be able to see that technology firsthand, in working condition, and be able to experience the tone plants and everything else firsthand, which is something I missed in my childhood by just a few years (I was born in 1980, but our neighborhood had a 1AESS phone switch well into my adult years}. When I hear recordings of the old phone network it really intrigues me and sounds much cooler than the sterile digital world of today. Keep up the awesome work guys! You are truly preserving history. This kind of preservation will not exist anywhere else, and I hope your museum stays active for the rest of the century.

OMG YES! NORTEL!!!!

Awesome! It will be so cool to see how the DMS-10 interfaces with the rest of the gear at the Museum. I would love to be there when the new switch is powered on for the first time. Could you share a date once things are ready to go? I will fly from Asheville, NC to Seattle to see that.

hecc, the planes at 0:07 are the ones I move around for work :3

I worked on a couple DMS-10 up in Hazard, Kentucky, back in the day.

Omigoodness, I’m so glad to see this switch in your collection! I cut my teeth on the DMS-100, so this is wonderful nostalgia for me :)

I am truly thrilled for you folks! Nice of Adtran to donate and not send it to scrap. I understand there are still many DMS-10 around in small CDO's. They were certainly the precursor to the DMS 100 Family (The systems I supported for many, many, many years with Bell Canada and Nortel). I don't have anything on DMS-10, unfortunately, otherwise you'd certainly be welcome to have it. No doubt, it's available somewhere, maybe on Microfiche (eeks!). I wish you all the best with your new to you wonderful digital switch. One day, I hope you can get your hands on a DMS-100 Family switch one day. A ton of thanks for keeping the world of telephony alive!

"Are you asking because I'm tall" 😂Thanks for sharing a peek from the road trip, also the crane unloading part was so satisfying - it's always great to work with people who care 😁

LOVE this format! Really cool tagging along your adventure

Thanks for this flashback of DMS❤

Great job, great presentation! Thanks

This is an awesome project! Can't wait to see how it progresses.

Congratulations!

Where I am we still have DMS-10 in operation. They are very interesting to work on.

Congratulations on a successful adventure! What a great addition to your museum.

Thanks Sarah, that was fascinating and informative.

Congratulations on you and your team’s hard work going so far to help add to your museum’s collection. 🎉

I'll be stopping by soon. Cannot wait to see what you guys have in store for me!

Nice work on the preservation and cool journey!

wicked even more tech hope we see you lot wireing it up as i love this type of stuff plus i think you lot rock do not let any one put you down or upset you keep going

we still have many dms10's in service where i work however they are slowly being decommed its cool to see you guys have one in the museum now definitely a well built switch

It's so awesome that you're adding this switch to your collection. I'm looking forward to seeing how you get this beauty ready to power back up!

I worked on about the 3rd one of these installed. I believe the first one was somewhere in Georgia and the one I worked on was in Canada. Of course that was the 200 generic while this one is much newer. Different peripherals all together

Man I missed out by a month or so I was there not too long ago and someone mentioned getting a dms-10 wish I could have seen it. I wish you guys the best of luck with that project.

Awesome! New, old gear! Plz keep that promise. Bunch of us out here love learning about this old tech.

I remember kinda-sorta working on those things... Then it was on the Stromberg-Carlson and then 5ESS.

Thank you Sarah for sharing . I was so excited to learn that the museum obtained this switch. Showing the mechanics of getting it was great. I will be so excited to see it in operation with will be making a visit down with lots of questions. Also very happy that everyone at the museums is keeping an open mind and also making an investment in some of the "New Technologies" in conjunction with the panel switch celebrating its 101th birthday soon. PS where are the DSLAM modules lol we need to get one up and running and connected to a Mac Power PC ;) Great work we really appreciate the hard work!

I love you guys awesome score and best of luck with it! You'd be surprised at what we still have used in rural appalachian ilecs paired beside the modern sbc's that rare grants pay for and are welcome to visit anytime. Much love & blessings to yall.

Oh, the old Nortel Brown CO gear!! I worked with Nortel Enterprise gear and it was always grey! You need to get a big old Meridian 1 if you don’t have one already.

Really nice that Adtran gave you the switch. Not relevant but the ONT for our home internet is an Adtran device so I've become and Adran fanboy. You guys are pros, it looks like the move went well. Something I would love to learn is the footprint requirements of various Central Office switch technology from SxS to the latest and greatest digital.

Wow, that's a heck of a drive, and you've done that 10 times?? I drove a 26-foot truck for a cross-country move once, and I hope never to have to do it again. Can't wait to see what you can do with the DMS-10, on here and, one day, in person!

A very interesting story of a cool switch! Nice acquisition :)

We know, work ADTRAN. Yes, DMS-10 is amazing find for you. However, there still are DMS-100s floating around. One was new, never used during the bankrupting of CLECS crazy TDM methods for internet (early 2000s). I think one of them is still around central Indiana. Congrats..

Still have ours in my area active been a fund beast to learn

Making Connections (Museum) across America, I see: nicely done! Another tired piece of retired hardware into the museum for posterity :) (I ... I kinda like the orange, I have to admit.)

That is crazy wow😮

Can't wait to it action!

😮I didn’t know you came to CT. I live here and would have been happy to help in some way.

It would be interesting if after Centurylink decoms that building if you guys could have the 5E or something.

Woohoo, new gear!

5:45 I recognize that place! It's the city that I live in. Looks like you guys were coming through sometime in july, maybe early august, since that was the time when it was very cloudy and rainy here. Also, could you guys maybe ask Lumen to maybe do a video showing the live CO part of the museum building?

I feel like I saw one of these in Cambridge MA at a Level 3 colo but maybe it was a later model. Was still in use in 2011.

Wish I'd have know y'all were in Huntsville, would have asked to meet/help. Next time I hope! Cheers!

Okay Sarah, I caught the clip at the beginning where you let out the other words for (W)hiskey (T)ango (F)oxtrot... both a veteran and a telco veteran here

I am a DMS-10 guy. I love them. Great little switches. We still have one active in Wendover, Utah. What generic are you running on the one you have?

We got rid of our SL-100 a couple years ago. If I had thought of it, I would have seen if I could have gotten them to offer it to you.

Nice acquisition. Free is best. Enjoy.

You sound like me. I too drive across the country for cool hardware. Sometimes you just have to.

Cody is dreamy!

#### Pretty sure that Benson Main and Page Main - in Arizona - still have working DMS-10's. I am not sure how to get in contact with those folks, but they might have docs or be able to assist. I don't know who the COT's and OST's are down there anymore since my old friends have retired or moved on.

Every time I take that thing in SEA the Black Mesa Transit System intro for Half Life starts playing in my head.

Great video, looking forward to the follow ons. I'm intrigued by what look like 3.5" SCSI drives in a 1978 product. I assume theses came along later. What are they used for?

I do remember #### and **** but.... I totally forget why. Oh well. I was never properly trained on DMS-10.

Having assisted in installing the DMS10 in Canton, MO is the early 90s, I can say it sucks moving this gear... I never understood why telecom companies enjoy building their gear out of depleted uranium...

My jaw dropped when I saw the crane. Top 10 Anime Plot Twist.

Nortel documentation is pretty good.

road trip ...buddy movie :)

Sarah i think you are wicked i love the videos you all so make all the info you know ps i think you are lovey

"THE dms 10"

Sarah, does the group plan on removing the original hard drives and using a solid state adaptive solution: such as Blue SCSI, etc? Prob a good idea - not to put the mechanical disks back into museum production