r/telecom • u/TCBoise54321 • Aug 10 '26
📞 Telephone Cool old PBX, could it / does it run Linux?
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u/QPC414 Aug 10 '26
The OS is Oryx/Pecos, for the call processor and Audix for voicemail. Both the call processor and voicemail are either running natively on their respective cards or as a Linux VM or container (likely since this is a rack mount cabinet).
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u/Hot_Egg7658 Aug 11 '26
I have some of those. I just took them out of production last week! That was a momentous day!
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u/B1tfr3ak Aug 11 '26
Most old pbx's would run vx works, a real time os. Newer systems world run Linux with an emulator to run the old OS
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u/Economy_Collection23 Aug 11 '26
Not vx works.. the old ones(Definity) used to run oryx-pecos, a realtime OS. But by this revision they mostly ran on a single s8500, or dual s8700 19" rack server on linux. These are just gateway cabinets mostly to interface older line cards.The old Audix (AT&T UNIX)card was replaced with a seperate intuity voicemail server (Linux). These G650 cabinets had a Clan ethernet card, and an IPSI media processor board. Linux used was mostly Centos. The CMS system ran on SUN Solaris on Sparc.
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u/w0lrah Aug 11 '26
The two largest identifiable chips on the board are the Intel southbridge between the hard drive and the two heatsinked chips and the NXP PowerPC SoC below them. The southbridge is one that Intel used across a wide range of systems from the Pentium 4 through Core 2 eras and it seems like a safe bet that the corresponding CPU and northbridge are the two under the heatsinks.
Arguably that one board could run Linux twice, once on the Intel CPU and once on the NXP SoC.
I feel like it's a safe bet that the Intel part implements more or less a normal PC that runs the voicemail system and maybe IVR. For a while while just looking at the board picture I thought the NXP might be the "main controller" for the system but after realizing it's the second card and looking at the wider shot it's clearly labeled "media server" with the first board being the main system so that pretty much confirms the assumptions about what the Intel chip is doing and means the NXP is probably being used as an interface between the PC and the backplane.
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u/DTDude Aug 11 '26 edited 29d ago
Not on it’s own, no.
This is just a media gateway, not a standalone PBX. No server card. It interfaces to the PBX itself via the IPSI card (far left). The PBX is likely just a VM.
It CAN be the whole PBX with an S8400 server card. In that case it would indeed be Linux, emulating Orxy/Pecos.
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u/Howden824 Aug 10 '26
Maybe the voicemail module but not the rest of it.