[Asterisk-Users] Is the X100P a WinModem?

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

> I agree with the above 100%.  In fact the best thing that could
> happen to Asterisk would be for someone to figure out how to make FXS
> cards priced at $10 per line.  I'm thinking all that is really
> required is full duplex sound card and a ringer.  Ringers can be made
> with a 555 timer IC, a trasister and a voltage source and controlled
> from a bit on a parallel port.

Go for it.  Get FCC ClassB approval and Part68 (I think that's the #) 
approval and sell it for $10 a line.  I am not going to dink around with 
that though -- I want a nice PCI card that has the various agency approvals 
and doesn't tie up a sound card, a printer port and cabling inbetween so 
when the cat rubs up against the computer it goes flaky.

I'm an electronics hobbyiest... hell I design and support industrial power 
electronics for a living.  I know what things cost and why they're priced 
at 5x the BOM cost.  Customers cost a lot of money to keep happy and nobody 
wants to pay for support.

> Have you guys looked into the origens of the Zaptel hardware?
> The whole idea was to make the hardware design public so anyone
> could build and sell it, even a home hobbyist. (Yes you can
> build ISA cards with simple hand tools. I've got a few
> one-off cards.  PCI is harder though)  The goal was to drive
> down the cost of hardware.

The T100P is a pretty trivial design.  All the hard work's being done in the 
DalSemi T1/E1/J1 framer IC and interfaced through the Tiger320's parallel 
interface.  I am pretty sure all the PLD is doing is some logic routing to 
make things smaller and cheaper than going discrete.

In general, audio-grade circuits and basic computer interfacing is trivial.  
However experience has taught me that the difference between theory and 
practise is that there isn't much difference between them, in theory.  Yes 
these things are pretty cheap but there's a lot of NRE costs they're trying 
to recover in the price, not to mention supporting the building and people 
in it.  

Regards,
Andrew