Anyone with SPA.EXE and firmware for SPA942?

I have tried to download these files for ages now but I can’t find a working download.

Anyone have these files laying around?

Try this link, it’s from softpedia and the zip contains the firmware file, the EXE upgrader and the release notes in PDF format

https://us.softpedia-secure-download.com/dl/2ffd8550ce90668244fd4508e93b4643/615447e2/300336008/drivers/voip/SPA942_6.1.5a.zip

Thank you. But I need the SPA.EXE to set a new password. All the other thins with TFTP have failed so I need to create a cfg file and hash it with the SPA.EXE

You mean your phone is locked with a password that you don’t know?

Maybe this link is of some help in case you are in a similar situation.

SPA942 Config File - Will Pay for Help - General Help - FreePBX Community Forums

I read that but It still stuck on password or a config file that is encrypted with SPC.EXE

Replace the ancient, unsupported phone?

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Would you care to elaborate on the details of your situation?

I have 4 phones that comes from a company we bought like 10 years ago and I would like to use these phones for some test but they are all locked.

They do not go to a TFTP and bootp, they are setup to be provisioned thru this address: http//tele.companyname.com:80/linksys/031/spa942.cfg

I have setup a webserver that answers on that link but it says that the file is corrupt.
What I have read I need to run the program spc.exe against my config file to compile it to a readable file for the phone.

Classic sunk cost… Just buy 4 new phones and your are done. You have already wasted more time than those phones are worth.

I have solved this now and if anyone wants tp know how to fix the old phones just let me know

I own a SPA 942 that I use as an extension phone. When I got it, it was running new enough firmware that I did not need to mess with spa.exe but I did read about that so I would definitely like to add that into my toolbox.

These phones are perfectly fine instruments and the sound quality is good on them. Sunk cost fallacy only applies with the original product is a piece of garbage - like for an example a VoIP handset manufactured by RCA. (I’ll bet you never knew they made them)

One of these days you may run into a customer that has 500 of these phones deployed…or you may need to setup a temporary boiler room operation with 50 people that will be banging away on the phones for 4 months and operates on a shoestring…these things are going for $10 an instrument in lots off Ebay…you just never know what may come in the future.

I think in this case it’s more like the Sunk Time fallacy. Extrapolating time is money. :grinning: If someone is spending more than a 15 minutes troubleshooting a $10 device then it’s already a loss. Maybe if it’s a personal learning or hobby challenge it’s a different story.

That is not how that works.

If they refuse to see what sunk cost is, I don’t take them as a customer. They are not worth it anyway.

Either you can make money off a customer or you can’t. Sunk Cost fallacy doesn’t apply to that. It’s their money, if they want to spend it keeping old tech going, that is their affair. Lots of people have made a very good living keeping that old tech humming along. Ever heard of Y2K and RPG?

It is only the inexperienced techs out there who think it’s impossible to make a living unless what you are touching is the very latest and greatest product. What you think is the very latest and greatest thing today is going to be old in 10 years.

I guarantee to you that there are many many systems and products that you personally encounter in everyday life that you likely even trust your very life to that are “old antique” tech. Every time you get into a car and drive down the street you are trusting your life to 20 year old “old tech with sunk cost” Not perhaps YOUR car but there’s going to be 20 year old vehicles sharing the street with you and your life is dependent on them not suddenly breaking and swerving into you. Every time you get into an elevator, or buy prepared food from the grocery store, or walk into a building erected 50 years ago you are dependent on products with sunk cost.

Getting back to the SPA942 phones, if a customer has a network of 100 phones and an old junk failing soft PBX that is running them, and they have a problem with the soft PBX, if you are the tech who can walk in and drop in a brand new FreePBX system and keep all their old phones, you can bid the job cheaper than a tech who only has the ability to walk in and replace their failing soft PBX if they can replace all the phones. The customer may be entranced by the new handset features of new handsets and may even want them but if they don’t have the money for them, then you will win the contract while the other tech will not.

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I’ll try one last time,

If I have a set of plug wires fail in my Ford Focus (which happened a month ago) brand new cheap $20 ones from Amazon take the same time to install as $100 ones from the Ford dealership. They also take the same amount of time as a $10 set of both the plug wires and the coil that came out of a wrecker. (which is what I eventually used since I was not sure if it was the wires or the coil or even if it was the ignition system at all, not having a $5k auto oscilloscope handy)

The value of a thing is often set by market forces not it’s actual intrinsic worth.

If it costs $200 for a brand new basic phone instrument and you can substitute a used $10 instrument that has the identical functionality, then the trading market value of the used instrument is being set by the fact that there’s an oversupply of those in the market, it is not being set by it’s intrinsic value. And in fact the value of the brand new $200 instrument is ALSO being set by the perception of it, by it’s market value, not by it’s intrinsic worth.

When you drop 20 minutes into the used instrument and that makes it function on a system, it immediately appreciates in value. When you drop the same 20 minutes into a brand new instrument to make it function on a system it immediately depreciates in value. You can make money either way all it takes is you having the knowledge of making the used instrument work. It is the owner of the system that either pays a depreciation cost or gains an appreciation cost, it’s not your money.

In fact if you know what you are doing in business you can charge more for making the used instrument work than the new one, as long as you set your cost to below the new one. For example a new instrument may cost the customer $200, and you as the tech may be making a kickback from the instrument manufacturer of $50 per instrument. So you get $50 + 20 minutes of labor.

The tech that works on the old instrument can get the same 20 minutes of labor and also tack on a $100 surcharge for the old phone. Thus, the customers total cost is $100+20 minutes, instead of $200+20 minutes for the exact same functionality. That is a win-win scenario and the tech that has the ability to do it ultimately makes more money than the tech that only has the ability to work on the new instrument.

But I suppose I am wasting my time trying to discuss business with people who can’t see beyond “shiny”

I can certainly see past shiny things. At my company I kept Merlin MLX’es supported well into the previous decade. And our Polycom IP phones are mostly well over 10 years old. It’s just a different perspective. If I were an independent contractor who charged for my services, my profit margin from labor would be far greater than my profit margin for reselling hardware.

In that latter scenario, I could spend an hour trying to fix a $10 phone and charge my customer my standard hourly rate. That would put a lot more money in my pocket compared to charging my customer for a $200 phone, and dropping it in with maybe a few minutes of configuration work.

The OP began with stating “I have tried to download these files for ages now but I can’t find a working download.” That hits different if they are an internal employee or an outside support partner I suppose.

Sure there are many merits for keeping older equipment functioning and viable. I love Deloreans back in the day. If it took me months of looking around for a failed old part, if I were the auto mechanic charging someone I would keep looking. If I were the person who owns the car and drives it, I might think twice.

How about someone who doesn’t care about shiny? Because let me touch on some of the things you have said.

Installing FreePBX to replace a failing soft PBX while keeping 100 phones will be less than someone doing FreePBX + 100 new phones. That is not an absolute truth at all. See if the failing soft PBX is, for example, a Cisco UCM and the phones are 79XX not using SIP. Well that is not as easy to do as you think. Are you going to flash all the phones to SIP? If not then you’re going to patch Asterisk (which then means you can’t upgrade without a patch too)? How will you address the feature losses? See if replacing all the phones for $600 seems too much but in the end it cost $600+ for making the old phones work and getting all the features to work as they should because it took extra steps and some fancy footwork to make them work on FreePBX as they used to, then that is sunken costs. Not only that, it is lost time. Going with the other option would have had them up and running faster and not losing business of calls not working.

In regards to the “what does it matter to you, it’s their money” mindset. You are absolutely right, it is their money to throw into a paper shredder if they so choose. However, as the outside tech who is doing this job I also have other customers. I have other revenue generating projects that need work. While customer X is throwing money at me for my time, it is time that is now being taken away from other projects, customers and revenue generation.

In business there are project plans, in those there are cost benefit analysis to determine if the project is worth it. Part of that is to also determine the impact this project will have on others. Such as “We need Bob for this project.” but Bob is already working on 2 other projects, so now adding Bob to this projects means the other projects now have to be re-adjusted due to Bob having to split his time three ways. So deadlines for the other projects could be pushed back, there could be stoppage on one of the projects. If things like a stoppage of another project are not viable and cannot happen, the cost of this project just lost value.

So at the end of the day making the choice to not support outdated, unsupported equipment that not even the vendor will touch isn’t about “Oh it needs to be new and shiny”. It can totally be about it not worth the actual time/cost to do so. I could spend the extra time (and make money) on supporting a 100 fifteen year old devices or I can choose to not do it and use that extra time on long term revenue generating projects.

At the same time, I have also just given a customer $100’s in equipment (like a new router) because the cost a $125 router to solve me having to spend hours constantly fixing a problem caused by their current router is a cost benefit to me.

But hey, “shiny” right?

You forgot on the 79xx scenario that used 79xx have considerable more value on the used market for other people still supporting old Cisco UCM’s that their customers don’t want to replace, so that factors into it. You could in that scenario sell the entire lot of those phones and replace them with an entire lot of used instruments of similar market value that are more compatible.

But both of you are actually, (possibly unknowingly) making my argument for me. It is not simply a case of “old is not worth dealing with” any of these projects have many variables. Yes it could be that Bob doesn’t have the time for a more profitable extensive upgrade that is cheaper for the customer but does have the time for a quick forklift replacement more expensive for the customer that is less profitable. In which case the customer might be better served going to a different vendor who does have the time and Bob might be better served not even doing the quick forklift replacement and concentrating on his other stuff.

But all of this is project discussion of those many variables using hypothetical situations, and that, my friends, is a disproval of the automatic “sunk cost fallacy” applying every single time.

Did you find the firmware? I was going to suggest looking for Cisco 504G firmware to see if that worked but I’m glad you figured it out.

This thread got a tad tangential lol

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