Hello I'm looking at my options to build a compact, silent, headless Asterisk server to handle one or two FXO ports. Out of curiosity, I got one of those babies on eBay for 20E: http://silicon-verl.de/home/flo/software/netstation-8364/ Before I spend time on this, can someone tell me if... 1. it's easy to install Linux on those things (am willing to add a CF-to-IDE adapter to use a hard-disk instead of tweaking Linux so that it doesn't write too many cycles to the CF card), and 2. whether it has enough horsepower to use a PCI TDM card (The OpenVox A400P01 clone of Digium) to handle incoming PSTN calls, and possibly a couple of conference calls with MeetMe? BTW, am I correct in understanding that the difference between TDM cards and the X100/X101 cards is the same as between controller-based modems and win/softmodems: The former is self-sufficient since it has a CPU, while the latter is cheaper because it outsources signal processing to the computer's CPU? Thank you.
Michael Graves
2007-Dec-12 01:24 UTC
[asterisk-users] Asterisk on IBM Netvista 2800 8364-EXX?
On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:51:44 +0100, Vincent wrote:>Hello > > I'm looking at my options to build a compact, silent, headless >Asterisk server to handle one or two FXO ports. Out of curiosity, I >got one of those babies on eBay for 20E: > >http://silicon-verl.de/home/flo/software/netstation-8364/ > >Before I spend time on this, can someone tell me if... > >1. it's easy to install Linux on those things (am willing to add a >CF-to-IDE adapter to use a hard-disk instead of tweaking Linux so that >it doesn't write too many cycles to the CF card), and > >2. whether it has enough horsepower to use a PCI TDM card (The OpenVox >A400P01 clone of Digium) to handle incoming PSTN calls, and possibly a >couple of conference calls with MeetMe? > >BTW, am I correct in understanding that the difference between TDM >cards and the X100/X101 cards is the same as between controller-based >modems and win/softmodems: The former is self-sufficient since it has >a CPU, while the latter is cheaper because it outsources signal >processing to the computer's CPU?There's no reason why that could not work for you. With a 266 MHz CPU you have a platform roughly comparable to a Soekris Net4801. That means limited transcoding. I have been using an HP T5700 thin client as my server platform. It's a little more ideal as it has a 1 GHz Transmeta CPU, upgradable RAM, and multiple USB ports. These are readily available for around $100 each from Ebay or high-tech recyclers. When equipped with the optional expansion chasis the T5700s support one PCI card, and so could handle a TDM400 for your FXOs. My own experience with X101p cards was not good so I eventually went wholly IP, porting my DIDs to a reliable ITSP. You should probably consider Astlinux or Askozia as these are both designed to boot & run from flash media. Astlinux is very flexible, but Askozia has a nice GUI. Michael -- Michael Graves mgraves<at>mstvp.com o713-861-4005 c713-201-1262 sip:mjgraves at pixelpower.onsip.com skype mjgraves fwd 54245