[Asterisk-Users] FXO/FXS card

Thu Sep 30 22:14:45 MST 2004

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:59:55 -0700, Geoff Nordli <geoffn at gnaa.net> wrote:
> It is good to know that they are that committed Asterisk and you are
> successfully using their cards.  No, I haven't been talking with them.  This
> is just what I have read on the list and when you go to their web site they
> promote their own Open Source PBX software.

It would seem that they have realised some time ago that OpenPBX is no
match for Asterisk. Various sections on their site appear to hint at
that if you can read that between the lines.

For example, they are no longer happy with the Perl code and are
thinking about rewriting it from scratch in Python with a more layered
architecture.

In my opinion their main driver behind keeping OpenPBX alive is that
it runs on Windoze and that would affect their bread and butter
business which is selling telephony cards after all. If they were to
give up Windoze support by throwing away OpenPBX, then they would
loose their Windoze customer base. Even I wouldn't be able to justify
such a step and I am the most stubbornly anti-Windoze biased person in
this solar system, trust me on that ;-)

> They may want to highlight
> their Asterisk support more on their web page.

I have been telling John Kostogiannis, the main guy in their sales and
marketing department, the very same thing and he agreed that they need
to work on their Asterisk support *visibility*.

However, I think it would be extremely helpful if you and any other
Asterisk users who might have a potential interest in Voicetronix
products would get in touch with VT and tell them what your concerns
and your issues are. You will find that VT are interested to hear your
feedback.

For example, I told VT that I see a great potential to support their
cards with Asterisk on SPARC/Solaris because the mainstream telecom
world largely runs on Solaris and there is a total void on that
platform as far as telephony hardware support for Asterisk is
concerned. Since Digium cannot and should not try to do too many
things at once, this would seem to be an area where other vendors such
as VT could fill what would appear to be a lucrative gap. John seemed
to like the idea, but like any business development decision, it needs
feedback from potential customers to commit to something that will
require resources.

So, whatever vendor you are looking at, Voicetronix or others, please
tell them your wishes for Asterisk support. We are not a fringe
minority anymore. The Asterisk community has grown big enough to have
a voice. We may as well use that voice. So, please, tell those vendors
what you want. If there are a significant number of us doing so, then
we will be heard.

> Is there a minimum MAC version that you recommend?

As far as hardware is concerned, you need to have a PCI bus Mac, obviously ;-)

Stay away from any Nubus Macs, they are doorstops and belong into a
dumpster. Also, there is one model which I call the Lemontosh: The
Blue & White G3 tower. Rev.A of that machine had a problem with the
hard disk controller which leads to disk corruption on Unix OSes (ie
Linux and MacOS X). Rev. B fixed that, but it is difficult to find out
what the revision number is on those models. So, if in doubt, don't
buy a Blue & White G3 tower.

Other than that, any PCI bus Mac will do.

Any G3, G4, G5 equipped Mac is a PCI bus Mac. Earlier models with PCI
bus are the PowerMac 8500/8600 and the PowerMac 9xxx series (tower
models) and the PowerMac 7200, 7500 and 7600 series (desktop models).
Don't buy any 7100 or 8100, they look the same but they didn't have
PCI yet.

The pre-G3 Macs are interesting for anybody who wants to do get into
Asterisk on the Mac platform because they are available for next to
nothing. This is because only Macs with a G3 and later officially
support Apple's Unix based MacOSX and that makes the older machines
increasingly unpopular amongst Mac users who by now have grasped that
a nice GUI alone doesn't make a good overall platform and that UNIX
rulez. As they are making the switch to MacOSX, they are dumping their
pre-G3 hardware which is a great opportunity to get some decent Linux
hardware because those run LinuxPPC just fine. I picked up a PM 8500
with 128 MB, 700MB SCSI HD and 3 PCI slots for 1500 yen (ca 13 USD)
two weeks ago.

Of course, once you have satisfied yourself that the Mac is a viable
Asterisk platform, there will be no harm in spending a little more on
more recent Mac hardware with a bit more horsepower.

However, the pre-G3 PCI bus PowerMacs are sufficient for small company
PBXes even though they seem hopelessly underpowered if you were to
judge them by CPU clock rate. In my experience you can generally
multiply the clock rate by 2 or 2.5 and roughtly get the equivalent of
an Intel CPU at that rate. As for CPU generations, think of PPC 604
(pre-G3) as roughly comparable to PII, G3 to PIII, G4 to P4 and the G5
to Opteron 64.

In terms of Software, you will probably use Yellow Dog Linux, which
basically is a Red Hat port for PPC done by TerraSoft Solutions. BTW,
TerraSoft also commissioned the original work Digium did to make
Asterisk and Zaptel work on LinuxPPC. Kudos to them!

YDL 3.0 has problems building Asterisk and Zaptel, use YDL 3.0.1
instead, on which Asterisk and Zaptel build out of the box. YDL 4
(Fedora based) has just been released two days ago and it supports the
G5 and POWER5 with lots of HPC features.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/tss_home.shtml

As for debunking myths about Macs being expensive or slow, read this
articly from Paul Murphy, the "UNIX Guide to Defenestration" guy.
Note: He's not a Mac head, he's an old fashioned Unix guy.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36964.html

Last but not least, you can run Asterisk on MacOSX, using our
installation package (takes 10 seconds on a G4 867MHz Powerbook) and
GUI based configuration tools, the Asterisk Assistants for MacOSX, BUT
there are no drivers for Zaptel or other hardware for MacOSX yet so
you'd have to use external VoIP gateways.

For more info see the Wiki

http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20MacOSX%20Support

http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk%20Assistants%20for%20MacOSX

rgds
benjk

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Tokyo, Japan.

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