[Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards

[Joe Greco]

> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 23:58:30 -0500 (CDT), Joe Greco <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:
> > what I've read leads me to believe that it won't be
> > feasible to have large numbers (specifically, many more than two) of
> > the X100P's in a single system.
> 
> The limitation you mention stems from interrupt conflicts which is a
> problem unique to the x86 architecture. Use a Mac running LinuxPPC (ie
> YDL3.01) and you can use as many X100P as the Mac has PCI slots (some
> have six slots), no interrupt problems, no sound artifacts, it just
> works.
> 
> This has been discussed on this list before, but since you seem to
> have overlooked it, I thought you might be interested to be told about
> this option.

I haven't overlooked it, but appreciate your thoughtfulness anyways.  My
take on this is that with the X100P costing $100, and a Sipura 3000 
costing $130 (all $USD), you'd likely need to have a Mac laying around
in order to justify this from a cost point of view, because even at a
loaded configuration with six cards, you only save $180 ($30 * 6 slots)
and that's not a lot of money to buy a Mac with.

There may be other factors influencing decisions at a particular site,
and that's fine, but I suspect that there isn't going to be a mass run
on Mac PPC systems just so people can go do this.  

It's almost certainly more cost effective to do the PPC thing than to
do things like the Multitech MVP, but then again the Digium T1 card and
channel bank are pretty cost effective too, without the interrupt hit of
all those X100P's.  :-)

> Perhaps we need to put this on the Wiki, so more people
> will be able to find out about it.

By all means.

> Perhaps we should also put the idea into the heads of TerraSoft (the
> sponsors of YDL) to start selling their own Intel modems with support
> for Asterisk and Zaptel on YDL, just like Digium does.
> 
> TerraSoft sponsored the work Digium did to make Asterisk and Zaptel
> work on PPC/YDL and they once were a Digium reseller. They lost
> interest beause they didn't get enough orders. Would be a win for the
> community to get them on board again.

Regards,

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
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