[Asterisk-Users] PCI Problems

[Rich Adamson]

Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
> On Friday 26 May 2006 11:15, Rich Adamson wrote:
>> Have you dug into the TDM400 far enough to know whether the common
>> complaints are associated with a hardware design issue, TigerJet issue,
>> or driver?  (eg, can any of the issues truly be addressed?)
> 
> My personal opinion is that the TJ320 (the PCI interface chip) is crap.  
> Total, utter, complete, absolute crap.
> 
> It can work, yes, but it's first and foremost an economy PCI interface.  It's 
> like the Plexor PCI interfaces that let you migrate your ISA design to PCI by 
> plugging a PLX9052 between your ISA interface and the PCI interface.  It's a 
> cheap way to get your design on to PCI, but it is very inflexible and 
> VERY ... yuck.
> 
> My THEORY is that Mark started using it because it was easy to use, but when 
> he went to full-scale production and started selling these things he very 
> quickly discovered how different PCI bridges can be and how much trouble the 
> TJ320 can cause for a rapidly-growing hardware company.
> 
> The Xilinx Spartan II is much better and far more flexible (but much more 
> expensive, too).  I don't doubt he has either personally or had is hardware 
> team research alternatives.  They're a very busy and very, VERY smart bunch 
> of people.  Mark has brought PCI hardware to the public and supports it, 
> which is something I have not done in any kind of volume.
> 
> I'd love to hear a detailed, technical response about what they've discovered 
> is wrong, what they are going to do, and where their new products are headed, 
> but I'd also like a 50 acre farm and some horses...  :-)

Those are the same basic conclusions I came to, but I've never designed 
a pci card so don't have the experience to say I could do it better. ;)

I kind of surmised some of that from the fact that the TigerJet has not 
been used on any digium card after the first couple that were built.

R.