[Asterisk-Users] hardware question

[tmassey at obscorp.com]

asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com wrote on 03/25/2005 09:14:42 AM:

> Hello
> 
> I want to to know if the motherboards VIA are fully supporte by 
asterisk.

This is a complex question.

The *software* is fully supported.  Depending on the CPU you use, you may 
have to modify the makefiles (some VIA CPU's do not implement the CMOV 
instruction), but with that change the software will work just fine.

However, Digium *hardware* is a different story.  The TDM and X100P boards 
require that the card be placed on its own interrupt.  Interrupts are 
scarce on a VIA platform:  there's no IO-APIC, and there's a lot of 
integrated hardware.

It is doable, however.  I'm using a TDM board with a VIA EPIA-MII board 
with zero problems.  No clicks, no static, nothing.  I'm even sharing an 
interrupt (the TDM board and an unused (and AFAICT not-diableable) Cardbus 
controller), and still no problems.

However, YMMV...

> And also, some of those motherboars say that with 1 pci slot , using a 
> special riser card you can connect 2 pci cards. Will that work to have 2 
pci 
> cards (FXS or FXO ) on asterisk?

Again, a complex question.  The short answer is yes, the dual riser in and 
of itself will not cause a problem.  The long answer is that it is highly 
unlikely that you'll find an interrupt for it.  I have the dual riser and 
the second port wants to use an interrupt that already has a couple of 
devices on it, including the Ethernet interface.  So, that's probably not 
possible on my system.

The really annoying part is that my system has *SIX* unused interrupts: 
3,4,6,10,11 and 13.  Now I know that two of those are traditionally used 
by legacy devices (math coprocessor and floppy controller), but what about 
3,4,10 and 11?!?  I can find no way to get the computer to use those 
IRQ's.  Everything's onboard, so changing PCI slots is not possible.  It's 
frustrating.  15 interrupts is not exactly a lot, but when you ignore 
nearly half of them, it's real hard to use your motherboard...

Tim Massey

> thank you
> Fabian
> 
> 
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