What’s wrong, you don’t like to wire your fire alarm panel with telephone wiring? Yeah, all kinds of fun stuff! May be hard to tell if you are not familiar with this panel but they also have telco lines 1 & 2 jumped together - upper right on the main board. But the blue wire is actually FPL cable, it’s on the jacket. I’ve seen it on some old installations.
I find it funny they didn’t even use the right pairs on the telephone cable - the blue pair is correct, but just looked like they randomly picked from the orange and green pairs. That wire is for the waterflow and tamper switch on the other side of the building, and by the time it gets there, it’s fire wire. So there’s a splice somewhere!
The sticker is actually factory applied, it’s the warranty sticker. I believe it is stuck to a relay or some other obscure component.
Loved that show as a kid! Every time I see someone driving a pickup truck loaded with a bunch of junk in the back, the theme song goes through my head!
Don’t think so. At least I can’t find them on the Napco web site. I installed one new about 10 years ago, but that was 10 years ago. They were dated but a good panel for a small apartment building or daycare - 4 alarm plus 1 supervisory zone, ability to add a communicator. Programming was a one shot deal, if you were lucky you could fix an error, but usually ended up having to replace the PROM chip. Seems like the Firelite MS-4 panel is taking over for these now.
I’m pretty sure it’s something along the line of an Edwards 282b heat detector that fell apart and this is what’s left! Unfortunately, it was a live system that I didn’t have authority to take the detector down and check it out. I was in the building for another reason.
But now I have the desire to get an old heat detector and take it apart and check out what is inside!
Found this the other day! Mid-rise apartment building - from what I could tell the wiring that is so thoroughly twisted up wasn’t actually connected to anything but went out with the smoke detectors that covered the hallway. So I’m not quite sure what the purpose was supposed to be, but given the nice nick in the jacket from someone either pulling on the wire or tightening down the cover too hard, damaged now!
Came across this old Edwards B01-1 fire alarm panel today - dated 1961
No longer in service but rather clean for an 50+ year old fire alarm panel - removed the cover to show the internals.
No controls or indicators on the front of the panel, guessing it was one of those systems where the pull station is activated and as long as it was in alarm the bells ring.
Firex elevator smoke detector panel in the same building - this one was still in service!
Here you have 120V smoke alarms located in the elevator lobbies, connected back to this control panel for elevator recall purposes. Don’t see too many of these around anymore!
Seen that before. Late 80s condo apartment house with 8 units, 4 per floor. At the time was not required to have a fire alarm system so they’re using 120V smoke alarms to recall the elevator. Machine room had a similar panel to this one that was also homemade looking.
An identical one was built right next to this building at the same time but it burned to the ground in 2007. No deaths. Was rebuilt 2008 and has an addressable Siemens system.
That’s really cool to see these old panels out and about. It’s interesting that these older panels stay in service for so long, yet the newer ones seem to break down often (depending on the brand and service company).
Got called out to see why a power supply was in trouble, and I found this:
Hmm. Wonder what happened.
This box still had live 120v power and proper voltage over the SBUS terminals. But the only LED that power supply has, well, she no blinky! Plus I tried manually activating the NACs via the I/O control menu but they didn’t sound either. Supposedly this is like the 3rd set of power supply guts in this thing, and the building is brand new. Not the first system I’ve worked on with water issues either. Anyway, good times.
I remember when a leaky ceiling took out the Faraday MPC-2000 fire alarm panel at my college’s Field House building in the summer of 2010. SO, what they did was put the new panel right in the main lobby, a Fire-Lite MS-9600UDLS with a really big junction box next to it, replacing the existing annunciator. Then in the electrical room the old panel was located, the MPC-2000 was gutted, and a Fire-Lite power supply cabinet was plastered to the front of the door.
This was what I had to do today… The site I was at had a really bad water leak. Their insurance guy told them that water had got into the strobe lenses of the horn/strobes because they looked “cloudy”. Had nothing to do with the fact they were like 20 years old! So I had to go around and take 7 of these apart and photograph each one to prove to their insurance guy they were fine. At least I get paid by the hour!
