[Asterisk-Users] Digium should develop and sell just Dummy card. For timing...

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2003-10-15 at 09:17, Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
> > Its a free world and everyone is entitled to their opinion.  Here's mine
> > on this topic.  The cards aren't so expensive (99.95 USD).  If they have
> > their own hardware then they don't have to depend on the target system
> > having a particular configuration.  Example:  right now I am running * on
> > a system that has NO USB ports so couldn't use USB for timing. That makes
> > their programming much easier.
> 
> Agreed, as I'd mentioned in my post.  
> 
> > As has already been pointed out, nothing keeps someone from writing
> > patches to use some other timing device.  Digium is nice enough to put
> > Asterisk as public software. Lets don't screw that up. Be part of the
> > solution, don't complain about the problem. If you have a solution
> > suggestion then post it.. probably others would be happy to help you
> 
> Also as I'd written.  It seems we're arguing the same side of the argument.  
> :-)   My compliant was not that the timing was needed, but that Digium 
> seems so damned secretive about it.  I mean this is OSS -- just tell us 
> that having a common timing source across all platforms makes things really 
> easy, you don't have to screw with looking at writing an alternative driver 
> for RTC or USB or XYZ and hey, we happen to make some money selling these 
> boards too.  If you are running a SIP-only * box then here are some 
> alternative timing drivers, point them at some URLs and oh by the way, we 
> didn't write 'em, we don't support 'em, they seem to work fine with others 
> though.

I've been doing my best to stay out of the newbie bashing, but this one
deserves a moment.

It seems you are fairly new to this list. I only see postings going back
about a month from you.  So with this bit of looking up, I am wondering
if you have bothered looking back in the archives at the fact that all
of this has been addressed in the past. The only reason you haven't seen
someone from Digium getting into this every few months when one of you
lazy newbies get on the list and can't be bothered to look back through
the archives is because it would quickly get to the point of always
answering the same stupid questions to a select small lazy group.

Some one else here has mentioned the quality of software design due to
the need for hardware timing. This should be addressed by the fact that
many tools are using hardware timing. Mp3 players use the sound device
as a timing source. They can only be feed so much data at a time as it
is being serviced. When you can feed it more, you do. In the case of the
mp3s on voip only systems, the mp3 player no longer is directly coupled
to a device that can control speed. The mp3 player is dumping data as
quickly as it can, and as asterisk tosses it into the correct format and
gets it out on the ethernet wire, it can then service more data. In the
case of Digium hardware, or the appropriate dummy drivers, we get a
timing source to directly couple to the channels.

Also as it should be known, Zap devices seem to be the first drivers
supported. From this others have been added on.   
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>