[Asterisk-Users] TDM400P??

[Sean Rodger]

Here is my system:
POWER SUPPLY 450W ALLIED ATX450P4 R(41)
MB NFORCE2 A7N8X DELUXE ASUS RTL(Standard)
CPU AMD|2500/333 ATHLON XP BARTON R(Standard)
DDRAM 256M|DDR333 PC-2700 -K %(Standard)
HD 40GB|WD 7200RPM 8MB   WD400JB%(70)
VGA ASUS|V8170MAGICII/T 64M MX440SE(58)
CD ROM 56X|AOPEN CD-956 RTL(22)

Besides the above parts, i have 2 X100P FXO PCI cards,
and 1 TDM40B

I bought 2 phones from radio shack:
1: "trim phone with caller id"  this is a standard phone with caller id, no
wall plug - $14
2: 2.4Ghz radioshack single line cordless phone with caller id (looks
similar to uniden phones)

The system has a minimal server install of RH 9 with all patches

There seems to be a problem with the (not "my") TDM400P hardware.

Here is the origional problem:

Sometimes there is a clean dialtone.
Sometimes there is a loud crackling sound over the dialtone.
Eventually, over the course of 2-4 hook transitions, the TDM40B fails
consistantly with the message:
"Power alarm on module N, resetting!"
where N is the number of the module that the phone is plugged into.
This usually, or always happens on the transition from on-hook to off-hook.
Once this happens i lose dialtone on all of the modules, and it doesn't come
back until the drivers are reloaded, * restarted
Battery is lost sporatically, but usually comes back with no dialtone

Here is what i looked at so far:

First i looked over the software setup; drivers, config files, and linux
I tried both loop start and kewl start signalling. Results were more or less
the same with both.

I called Digium.  They are very friendly, and they worked with me to try to
find the problem.
The wcfxs driver was modified so that it now doesn't need to be reloaded
when the module resets.
The problem of the card reseting was not solved here, and the operation of
the card is more or less the same.

If a good dialtone is found (which does happen occasionally) it won't last
more than a few hook transisitons.

They suggested i try the cards in another machine.  The other machine is a
P2 MMX with what
i think is an asus AB-BX6 motherboard, 512MB ram, fresh RH 9 installation.
The motherboard has
both PCI and ISA, and AGP busses.

I pulled some cards out of the older machine and installed the 2 X100P's and
the TDM400P into this machine.
After installing asterisk, and the drivers I found that the FXS driver was
not loading.  I looked at the box and the
4 green LED's on the card were not lit.  I double checked the power
connector on the TDM400P, and it was
 connected to the same power cable as the HD.  I doubt there is a problem in
this PC as i have been using it
for years, and quite a bit lately.

At the request of Digium tech support i ran 'lspci' and the TDM400P card did
not show in the list of cards, while
 the 2 X100P's were represented.

At this point I thought that i had gotten a bad TDM400P.  Digium agree'd and
sent me a new one.

I just put the new one into my origional system and i have the same
intermittent operation.
The error message is a little different since the driver was edited, but the
problem is the same.
The card operates exactly the same as the one i just sent back to Digium.
It is unusable.

The origional system is about 2 weeks old (i bought it for this project),
and I have no reason to beleive that there
is something wrong with it.
I've tested the voltage at the TDM card's rear power plug, and both the 12V
and 5V busses are there.

Could this a systemic problem with all new TDM400P cards???
Could the driver be reseting the tdm400P's modules erroneously??? (my
fingers are crossed)

Has anyone else who has used this card with analog phones had the same
problem?