[asterisk-users] Newbie Questions

[Ken Williams]

I've been doing a lot of reading over the last few weeks on Asterisk,
and will be implementing a test system this week to play with.

I've got two questions in regards to the ideal implementation for our
company.  First, has anyone written any drivers to interface with
proprietary phones?  Specifically we have a comdial system and if we
could use our existing 35 phones instead of having to buy all new
there'd be huge savings there.  I can't find anywhere that anyone has
written any type of interface for proprietary (no reverse hacks or
anything anywhere from what I can find), so I figure this is a no.

Now for the more complicated question, that I have my doubts on the
ability to perform.  Would it be possible to throw an Asterisk PBX
system between our Comdial system & the Internet, and then throw another
Asterisk PBX system at a remote location with Comdial phones to tie in
to our system that way?  I'm imagining using a TDM400 or the likes,
connecting to the Comdial via FXO and connecting the to Asterisk PBX's
via FXS.  

Rereading on the FXO & FXS I think I'm misunderstanding how FXS works
and this won't work at all.  

Any suggestions for what I'd like to do aside from scrap everything and
start over with IP phones?