[Asterisk-Users] FXO probs in Aus. Should I give up?

[Jamie Carl]

Hey all,

I've been trying to get my X101P working again as of late (it used to
work great) and before I decide to trash the card I thought I'd post up
my symptoms to see if anyone has any ideas.

My old working config was basically 1 channel running fxsks signalling.
It was working great with no echo, busy detect worked well and I was
very impressed considering this is all off and Australian PSTN line for
which the X101P is not certified.  (sssshhh).  So one day I update the
zaptel drivers (not sure if this caused it however), and now it cannot
go off-hook on it's own.  

Outbound Symptoms are:

Placing a call from a SIP softphone, * will cease the zap channel and
look like it's working, but no audio can be heard (ring tone, etc) on
the softphone. Now, if I go off-hook on a POTS phone running parallel to
the X101p suddenly everything comes to life.  If I go off-hook on the
parallel phone before the X101p tries to dial, everything works fine.
But on it's own, it's a no go.

Inbound Symptoms:

The zap channel detects ring, ceases the channel and begins normal call
flow and in my test setup going straight to voicemail.  The caller can
hear the call is answered but again, no audio.  Going off-hook again on
the parallel phone kicks everything back into life.

Now here's the kicker.  I have an old frame-relay voice switch I
'borrowed' from an ex-employer and have configured some slots for FXS to
run back-to-back with the X101p.  It works first time, every time.  Only
difference I can think of between them is that the voice switch is from
the US and therefore uses US tones, etc.  ??

I have tried both Loopstart and Koolstart signalling.  Groundstart will
not load when I use 'ztcfg' for some reason.  So is there something I'm
missing.  This used to work fine.  Has something changed in the zaptel
driver? Are there any undocumented settings I can tweak to possible get
this working again?

I'm about to chuck the card and go for a SIP or MGCP gateway but if I
can not spend the cash, I will.  Anyone with ideas?

Thanks heaps.

Regards,

Jamie Carl
Chief 'Stuff' Officer
J-Code
Web:    http://www.j-code.net
Email:  geek at j-code.net