asterisk users - Jan 2004 - ultra-cheap asterisk box

hi all

what about this...
I just put together a box on a web shop (komplett.no) that will cost me
NOK ~1850 (? 216) plus a small ?50 drive and cables, so say ?300. This
consists of a cheap MB with a duron 1400, 256MB SDRAM and two HFC-PCI
cards (if capijod will finish off the zaptel-driver soon). This is all
in a cheap PC case.

What do you think? Should this be doable? as a product? With only IP
phones and potentially a fax solution? any ideas?

thanks

roy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com 
> [mailto:asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of 
> Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
> Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 11:08 AM
> To: Asterisk Users
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] ultra-cheap asterisk box
> 
> 
> hi all
> 
> what about this...
> I just put together a box on a web shop (komplett.no) that 
> will cost me NOK ~1850 (? 216) plus a small ?50 drive and 
> cables, so say ?300. This consists of a cheap MB with a duron 
> 1400, 256MB SDRAM and two HFC-PCI cards (if capijod will 
> finish off the zaptel-driver soon). This is all in a cheap PC case.
> 
> What do you think? Should this be doable? as a product? With 
> only IP phones and potentially a fax solution? any ideas?
I've got one system with 10 IP phones + SIP term + 2 FXS + 4 FXO running on
a P700 with 256 MB RAM.  It works just fine, and the CPU is rarely over 40%.

Sounds like that box will work from a capability standpoint.
Daryl G. Jurbala
BMPC Network Operations
Tel (NY): +1 917 477 0468 x235
Tel (MI): +1 616 608 0004 x235
Tel (UK): +44 208 792 6813 x235
Fax: +1 508 526 8500
INOC-DBA: 26412*DGJ

PGP Key: http://www.introspect.net/pgp

I'm looking to do about the same thing, build very low cost
systems.  (I'm looking at putting Asterisk at some
non-profit organizations.)   but one thing you can't make
a compromise on is reliabilty.  It has to work and keep working
for years to come.  I was able to keep the price of a new PC
to about $300 ad still use an ASUS mainboard and an AMD XP2600+
The trick is to add absolutly nothing not needed.  No floppy,
no CDROM so you can run off a 200W P/S.  Next I'll experiment
with a notebook sized IDE disk drives and to see if _underclocking_
the CPU reduces it's power comsumption enough that we can save
one fan.

Ideally Asterisk will be ported one day to Linux/ARM or some
other very low cost platform.  for VOIP you do not need the
PCI slots.  In theory Asterisk could run on a Lynksys router
box with re-flashed EEPROM.  After all Lynksys' latest wireless
router runs Linux inside

Low cost to me means "low total cost of ownership"  To get this
I don't think buying the lowest priced parts is the way to go.
I want quality mainboard, and a quality power supply and, this
is importernt:  A low internal case temperature.  for this reason
I'll spend the extra $50 to go with Antec cases and ASUS mainboards
over the generic ones.

What I'm finding is that the PCs are so cheap that the cost of
electric power to run them is now a large part of the cost.
(assume 0.20/kwh times 200W times 365 days = $350.  So you
pay for the PC again every year in electric power to run it.
Worse.  In an office with airconditioning _all_ of that PC's
200W goes to heat and your A/C unit will use about 220W of
power to remove that 200W of heat.)
and at a small office they will not have a server room so noise
from the fan is an issue.

--- Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk <roy@karlsbakk.net>
wrote:
> hi all
> 
> what about this...
> I just put together a box on a web shop (komplett.no) that will cost
> me
> NOK ~1850 (¤ 216) plus a small ¤50 drive and cables, so say ¤300.
> This
> consists of a cheap MB with a duron 1400, 256MB SDRAM and two HFC-PCI
> cards (if capijod will finish off the zaptel-driver soon). This is
> all
> in a cheap PC case.
> 
> What do you think? Should this be doable? as a product? With only IP
> phones and potentially a fax solution? any ideas?
> 
> thanks
> 
> roy
> 
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====Chris Albertson
  Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com
  Cell:   310-990-7550
  Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson@aero.org
  KG6OMK

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus

It's not what I would want to depend on day in and day out. I know that
you can buy Dell PowerEdge SC400 servers for $299 with HDD, memory, and
either a celeron or p4, depending on what day of the week it is. I'd put
my name on the Dell based solution before the white box solution for the
same money.

--Mike
> hi all
>
> what about this...
> I just put together a box on a web shop (komplett.no) that will cost me
> NOK ~1850 (? 216) plus a small ?50 drive and cables, so say ?300. This
> consists of a cheap MB with a duron 1400, 256MB SDRAM and two HFC-PCI
> cards (if capijod will finish off the zaptel-driver soon). This is all
> in a cheap PC case.
>
> What do you think? Should this be doable? as a product? With only IP
> phones and potentially a fax solution? any ideas?
>
> thanks
>
> roy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>

Hi,

I'm interested in participating on the embedded side. One of our R&D 
labs is working on a number of embedded server solutions, including 
servers that are built around a 3" square PCB, linked to a 2" square 
PCB with a compact flash interface. It's robust, and up to military 
standards (but it's within the civilian domain, so there are no 
import/export restrictions).

I'm looking to build a solution, with a custom Linux dist  (that's not 
my domain, so I'm looking forward for other people to take this up!), 
which can be built into a number of sizes:

- 1u 19" rackmount, but only 400mm deep, so circa that of a router or a 
switch. Think -> Cisco
- 1u 8.5" rackmount, mini-Lan cabinets for residential applications
- 3u 19" rackmount, only 400mm, but with front loading for drives, 
compact flash (two interfaces for swapping Asterisk loads) and LCD 
status or LED status
  (basically, enough room inside to have two PSU's for redundancy and 
space for two or three E1/T1 PRI boards.
- Robust IP66 grade outdoor unit - for emergency applications, and for 
temporary backup solutions

We have the capability to manufacture these - so I see potential in 
developing some robust solutions for the small-biz, and even medium-biz 
markets.

Contact me offlist for specific's, or onlist for more group-orientated 
specifics.

Ad.


On 15 Jan 2004, at 7:10 pm, asterisk-users-request@lists.digium.com 
wrote:
> Message: 14
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] ultra-cheap asterisk box
> From: Nicolas Gudino <nicolas@house.com.ar>
> To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
> Organization: House Internet S.R.L.
> Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 15:52:43 -0300
> Reply-To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
>
> On Thu, 2004-01-15 at 14:31, Chris Albertson wrote:
>> I'm looking to do about the same thing, build very low cost
>> systems.  (I'm looking at putting Asterisk at some
>> non-profit organizations.)   but one thing you can't make
>> a compromise on is reliabilty.  It has to work and keep working
>> for years to come.  I was able to keep the price of a new PC
>> to about $300 ad still use an ASUS mainboard and an AMD XP2600+
>> The trick is to add absolutly nothing not needed.  No floppy,
>> no CDROM so you can run off a 200W P/S.  Next I'll experiment
>> with a notebook sized IDE disk drives and to see if _underclocking_
>> the CPU reduces it's power comsumption enough that we can save
>> one fan.
>
> I'm also looking at this. I was thinking on a system without a hard
> drive, booting from a pendrive or flashdive. I want to avoid moving
> parts, they always break or get dirty and are noisy. If there are other
> people working on this, we might join efforts and work together and 
> came
> up with a small linux version with asterisk included, that can boot 
> from
> a pendrive or a cdrom.
>
> -- 
> Nicolas Gudino <nicolas@house.com.ar>
> House Internet S.R.L.