[Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 08:57:52 -0500 (CDT), Joe Greco <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:
> 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.

It depends on where you are and whether or not is is ok to use a
second hand vintage Mac.

I picked up a PowerMac 8500 with 128MB RAM and a 700 MB SCSI disk for
1500 yen (ca 13 USD) from a second hand store here in Tokyo. It's got
three PCI slots, so for a home, lab or pilot project, it could be
turned into a 3 PSTN line PBX for as little as another 20-25 USD
(using generic modems) and it would work, unlike the Sipura which is
unable to take incoming calls on a Japanese PSTN line.

A five or six PCI slot PM 9xxx can be found for 50-75 USD, so you
could build a five or six port FXO gateway for as little as 100 USD.
It'll be a pretty ugly, heavy and bulky FXO gateway but at that price
I'd say "don't look a gift horse in the mouth". Even using Digium's
X100P, it would still be less than most 4 port FXO gateways and it
will be multi-protocol including IAX, which no other FXO gateway will
do at any price.

With a bit of luck one might find a bunch of second hand modems that
were originally sold in Japan and thereby even get the type approval,
unlike the X100P which doesn't have Japanese type approval.

I know of people in South America (Brazil and elsewhere) who use
vintage Macs with 5 and 6 generic modem cards. Those vintage Macs are
far more expensive down there (about 200-300 USD) but since they save
the exorbitant and in my opinion criminal import duties on those
modems, they still save at least 1000 USD which is a lot of money in
those places.

But even in the US, you should be able to pick up a vintage PM 9xxx
series Mac for well under 100 USD. The chance is that such a junk yard
bargain will give you much less headache than a bargain Intel box that
is new and any bet that the vintage Mac will outlive almost every new
Intel box. There are lemons amongst Macs, too, of course, but if it
has already survived since 1997 or 1998 then it will probably go on to
last forever because those machines were built for eternity.

> 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.

And therein lies the opportunity. How else could you possibly expect
to get so much quality computer for so little money? ;-)

rgds
benjk

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