[asterisk-users] TDM400P: Lifetime & Replacement

[Greg Woods]

I have a Digium TDM400P card that appears to have died. The first noted
symptoms were that dahdi would fail to reload on boot. On closer
inspection, the card looks totally dead; no lights on at all. I have
tried moving it to a different PCI slot, and removing the other PCI card
(a 3com 10/100 NIC) completely.  I have not tried removing the PCI-E
graphics card, of course, because I can't boot the system without it,
but that is unlikely to be fruitful anyway.

So the questions are: first, what is the expected lifetime of one of
these cards? It just passed its 5th birthday. Is that as long as it
could be expected to last?

Second, since the parts of this card are very expensive, I am wondering
if these symptoms likely mean that the main board of the card is dead,
but the FXS and FXO modules might still be good. In that case, I could
just get a new main card and move the modules to the new main card. The
problem is that I can't find any TDM400P cards anywhere, all I can find
are TDM410P's. Will the modules I have (assuming they are still good)
work with a TDM410P?

Last question: the TDM410 card is available in PCI and PCIx1 forms. I do
have a free PCIx1 slot. Is there any advantage in one over the other?

Thanks,
--Greg