"dean collins" <dean@collins.net.pr> wrote:>Rajeev, supporting Digium enables Asterisk to exist in the first place. > >Don't come asking for support here should you not be able to get these >work alikes to operate correctly. >I don't know Rajeev's situation, but here is mine: I am all for supporting Digium, and when I get ready to set up my production PBX I will buy their cards. However, those of us not working with hefty corporate budgets may not have the option of spending $100 for a test machine when there's a more cost effective option available. When I build my production machine, I will need multiple E1 ports; the FXO from the test machine will then land on my pile of no-longer-needed hardware. I'd rather use a $7 card for that than spend $100 which I will not be able to recover. (By the time I get two such Intel cards over here to Austria, I may well have spent $100 on shipping and customs charges, anyway). If that warrants "don't come asking for support" then you guys are not much of a community but a sales machine for Digium.
Wolf. I agree with you as far as buying the inexpensive cards when it is warranted, but if everyone bought the cheap cards for production use, etc digium would have a hard time supporting the product due to their costs and not making money. I believe there is a happy medium there where home users and business users will get what they need, why else would Digium even sell the generic card themselves. Just my 2 cents. I don't know why the statement was made "don't come asking for support here" Ther have been several posts on these lists asking for help with generic cards. I think most people on these lists will try to help whether you have an actual Digium card or not. -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Wolf Paul Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2004 12:09 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards "dean collins" <dean@collins.net.pr> wrote:>Rajeev, supporting Digium enables Asterisk to exist in the first place. > >Don't come asking for support here should you not be able to get these >work alikes to operate correctly. >I don't know Rajeev's situation, but here is mine: I am all for supporting Digium, and when I get ready to set up my production PBX I will buy their cards. However, those of us not working with hefty corporate budgets may not have the option of spending $100 for a test machine when there's a more cost effective option available. When I build my production machine, I will need multiple E1 ports; the FXO from the test machine will then land on my pile of no-longer-needed hardware. I'd rather use a $7 card for that than spend $100 which I will not be able to recover. (By the time I get two such Intel cards over here to Austria, I may well have spent $100 on shipping and customs charges, anyway). If that warrants "don't come asking for support" then you guys are not much of a community but a sales machine for Digium. _______________________________________________ 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
Lol, you're kidding right, go and look at what it costs to buy an alternative ip-pabx in comparison, and sorry but no corporate budget here, this is just a system for my home $100 on an old P3-700, and about the same on a card, and 2 $55 grandstream handsets along with some free sip softphone software. Hardly a fortune. On the other hand I think we are very fortunate that asterisk exists and cant help but get excited about where they will grow to. Dean -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Wolf Paul Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2004 1:09 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards "dean collins" <dean@collins.net.pr> wrote:>Rajeev, supporting Digium enables Asterisk to exist in the first place. > >Don't come asking for support here should you not be able to get these >work alikes to operate correctly. >I don't know Rajeev's situation, but here is mine: I am all for supporting Digium, and when I get ready to set up my production PBX I will buy their cards. However, those of us not working with hefty corporate budgets may not have the option of spending $100 for a test machine when there's a more cost effective option available. When I build my production machine, I will need multiple E1 ports; the FXO from the test machine will then land on my pile of no-longer-needed hardware. I'd rather use a $7 card for that than spend $100 which I will not be able to recover. (By the time I get two such Intel cards over here to Austria, I may well have spent $100 on shipping and customs charges, anyway). If that warrants "don't come asking for support" then you guys are not much of a community but a sales machine for Digium. _______________________________________________ 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
Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists
2004-Oct-10 11:12 UTC
[Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards
On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 19:08:43 +0200, Wolf Paul <wnp@doulos.at> wrote:> I am all for supporting Digium, and when I get ready to set up my > production PBX I will buy their cards.If you are a newbie, then I'd actually recommend you consider spending the extra money on Digium's X100P because it comes with installation support included. The first time you build an Asterisk box with FXO and/or FXS interfaces you'll find Digium's support very handy and worthwhile paying a bit more. Having said that, you have a good case in favour of the Intel modems if you are in a country where the X100P doesn't have type approval but you can find an Intel modem (with the right chipset) that does. In such a case, using the Intel modem might be the only legal way to connect your Asterisk box to an analog PSTN line. In respect of contributing back to the community, there are many ways how you can do that. You could always pay Digium for support directly or you could hire them for some work you need done. You could write some piece of software like an add-on utility or a useful script etc etc and release it under an open source license. You could help writing documentation or amend the Wiki with something you have done that is of interest to others. Finally, as you learn more about Asterisk you can help newbies by answering questions on this list or in the IRC channel. rgds benjk -- Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. NB: Spam filters in place. Messages unrelated to the * mailing lists may get trashed.
Wolf Paul wrote:> > However, those of us not working with hefty corporate budgets may not > have the option of spending > $100 for a test machine when there's a more cost effective option > available. >. . . . .> > If that warrants "don't come asking for support" then you guys are not > much of a community but a sales > machine for Digium. >Cheap shot. Digium does Asterisk FOR FREE. They support themselves, which I hope you agree is a necessary thing, by selling hardware, one instance of which is the low-end X100P. Essentially the X100P is a slightly modified generic voicemodem THAT COMES WITH CUSTOMER SUPPORT. That is, along with its hardware functionality comes the ability to call up and get help if you encounter problems. This list is intensely active, and the developers and others who provide advice here are necessarily limited in the amount of attention they can devote to (the often repetitive) questions coming from first-timers. Stir into that mix a first-timer who is undercutting the profit model that enables Digium to offer us this wonderful software, and then sprinkle your obnoxious insult to the community on top, and you're going to find that people (correctly) tell you to go away and solve your own problems. From my perspective your primary problem isn't hardware; its your attitude. B.
On Mon, 2004-10-11 at 00:10 +0100, David J Carter wrote:> I beleive Telappliant in the UK are doing them for ?55, ($35) > > http://www.voiptalk.org/products/index.php?cPath=27Your conversion above is going the wrong way. a British pound is worth more than a US Dollar. In fact, 55 British pounds is nearly $100USD now. Look at http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi -- Steven Critchfield <critch@basesys.com>
On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 00:10:26 +0100, David J Carter <david.carter@codepipe.com> wrote:> I beleive Telappliant in the UK are doing them for ?55, ($35) > > http://www.voiptalk.org/products/index.php?cPath=27 > > Dave?55 is more like US$100 :-)
Hello, this is not really much of an issue any more in Europe, the old state-owned monopoly phone companies have had to loosen up in the face of private competition and de-regulation (or rather, fairly liberal re-regulation). I something I hook up causes an actual technical malfunction in the switch, the telco will turn my line on and might charge me for any actual damage, but otherwise I am free to use whatever hardware I want. But your descriptions of the situation in Japan (i.e. a week ago or so on the way NTT sells/leases pbxs) is very much the way it was here as little as 8-10 years ago. And it is not that long ago that things were that way in the US, but we tend to forget that rather quickly (if we ever were aware of it). Ten years ago if you had a PBX connected to PSTN you had to have a support contract with a licensed vendor ... four years ago the telco sold us an Alcatel PBX and couldn't care less that we didn't want to pay for a support contract. But of course, since PBXs were not designed to be customer-maintained, there is virtually no documentation available. But things are changing. Regards, Wolf Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists <benjk.on.asterisk.ml@gmail.com> writes:> From: Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists > <benjk.on.asterisk.ml@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards > To: Brian West <brian@bkw.org> > Cc: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion > <asterisk-users@lists.digium.com> > Message-ID: <10913b9f041010114326f93b0c@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 13:28:46 -0500, Brian West <brian@bkw.org> wrote: > >>>(Benjamin) Having said that, you have a good case in favour of the Intel modems >>>if you are in a country where the X100P doesn't have type approval but >>>you can find an Intel modem (with the right chipset) that does. In >>>such a case, using the Intel modem might be the only legal way to >>>connect your Asterisk box to an analog PSTN line. >> >> (Brian West) Not really the X101P is really just a modem that already has the approvals. >>They stick a heatsink of the md3200 chip and call it an x101p. > > > (Benjamin) You are mistaken. The approval is given for a certain production run > of a certain design, not for the chipset nor for any similarly > designed modem. It's got to be the exact same make. > > Here in Japan for example, there used to be a Taiwan made modem based > on the Intel/Ambient chipset which has type approval while Digium's > X100P does not. The manufacturer of this modem released an updated > model which is not imported to Japan anymore and that updated model > does not have type approval even though it is just a slightly > different version of its approved predecessor.
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 22:32 -0500, Steven Critchfield wrote:> On Mon, 2004-10-11 at 00:10 +0100, David J Carter wrote: > > I beleive Telappliant in the UK are doing them for ?55, ($35) > > > > http://www.voiptalk.org/products/index.php?cPath=27 > > Your conversion above is going the wrong way. a British pound is worth > more than a US Dollar. In fact, 55 British pounds is nearly $100USD now. > Look at http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgiNo Steve, He works for NASA. :) -- Dave Cotton <dcotton@linuxautrement.com>
Ok, plenty of "Cheap Shots" all the way around... Can we call this a draw? I believe what Paul was saying is IF the attitude from the list is don't buy digium hardware don't come around here for help, than that is not in keeping with the general OS community. I happen to agree. I buy Digium hardware because I love the idea of sell the hardware open source the code. (precisely the same reason I own a Squeeze Box) Not to mention great quality, great services, etc. etc. However, you have to understand $10 vs. $100 for proof of concept. Let's work together to make OS the norm and not the exception. ~c ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 13:49:39 -0500 From: Brian Capouch <brianc@palaver.net> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion <asterisk-users@lists.digium.com> Message-ID: <41698443.1060308@palaver.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Wolf Paul wrote:> > However, those of us not working with hefty corporate budgets may not > have the option of spending > $100 for a test machine when there's a more cost effective option > available. >. . . . .> > If that warrants "don't come asking for support" then you guys are not > much of a community but a sales > machine for Digium. >Cheap shot. Digium does Asterisk FOR FREE. They support themselves, which I hope you agree is a necessary thing, by selling hardware, one instance of which is the low-end X100P. Essentially the X100P is a slightly modified generic voicemodem THAT COMES WITH CUSTOMER SUPPORT. That is, along with its hardware functionality comes the ability to call up and get help if you encounter problems. This list is intensely active, and the developers and others who provide advice here are necessarily limited in the amount of attention they can devote to (the often repetitive) questions coming from first-timers. Stir into that mix a first-timer who is undercutting the profit model that enables Digium to offer us this wonderful software, and then sprinkle your obnoxious insult to the community on top, and you're going to find that people (correctly) tell you to go away and solve your own problems. From my perspective your primary problem isn't hardware; its your attitude. B. *******************************
> -----Original Message----- > From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com > [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of > Adam Goryachev > Sent: 12 October 2004 04:20 > To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards > > > Wow, that's a really sucky attitude. I would expect > *Digium* to tell > > him to go away and solve his own problems. However, if the user > > community does that, then this is one of the suckiest user > communities > > I've run across in the free software world, and I've been > doing free software for many years. > > Well, IMHO, I would expect it perfectly reasonable for one of > three responses from the 'user' community (in order of likelihood): > > 1) A resounding non-response > 2) A response of "Well, get a X101P or TDMx0P and try it > 3) Some advice on how to resolve the problem. >I think it's a good thing the rest of the user community (IMHO) doesn't appear to follow your lead then! I bought a ?20 generic X101P from a local voip hardware supplier, and am rather pleased I did. It works most of the time, but drops calls occasionally. I originally thought this might be due to it being a cheap card, but I now find out that the Digium X100P/X101P is the same card with a heatsink, and is 5 times more expensive. Nice. Additionally, the problem appears to be that the AMD Duron/VIA chipset combination in my server doesn't get along with the X10(0|1)P cards, and so if I'd bought the pricey card, I'd still have problems, only solvable by another purchase, and also be significantly out of pocket. FYI: I found all this out by use of Google, and the user community. I go searching for my solutions, and have not called Digium once, and would not expect them to answer calls on my card. To resolve my problem, I may buy a Sipura-3000, I may buy a Digium TDM card. One I woiuld expect support from Digium for, one I would not. Both I would expect to be able to *ask* a question here, and I would *hope* that people that had heard of what I'm using would respond. I would also hope that people that had ever heard of it would keep quiet rather than waste my bandwidth baiting me as to why I didn't buy their pet hardware choice of the moment. Cheers for now, Karl ________________________________________________________________________ This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. The service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit: http://www.star.net.uk ________________________________________________________________________
> -----Original Message----- > From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com > [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of > Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists > Sent: 12 October 2004 09:36 > To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Intel Modem vs Digium Cards > > On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 09:05:02 +0100, Karl Dyson <kd@junesta.com> wrote: > > It works most of the time, but drops calls occasionally. > > and: > > > To resolve my problem, I may buy a Sipura-3000 > > I don't know how much effort you have already made but keep > in mind that there are parameters in the Zaptel drivers which > can be tweaked to at least reduce false hangups significantly.It doesn't look like false hangups (IMHO). Calls drop mid call, regardles of volume. You can go for a week with no drops, and then get 5 in a day (with fairly consistent usage patterns). Don't worry about effort involved -- it's installed in my house, and I "tinker" when ever possible, and enjoy it. My wife isn't especially over the moon with the dropped calls, but is a patient woman :)> There is also a patch now which allows you to disable the > disconnect supervision on outgoing Zaptel calls only because > that's the scenario where you are most unlikely to need it. >I get dropped calls occasionally on both in and outbound calls, and to aid diagnosis have a phone plugged directly into the line as well now (a splitter now has the connection to the X100P and this additional handset). If an inbound call drops, you can pick up this handset and continue the call, this indicating the X100P is dropping the call. I'd quite like to keep the internal card, and hence like the idea of "upgrading" to a TDM400.... This would allow me to continue to use distinctive ringing, especially as I have a use for it(!), but I don't want to spend money on a TDM11B kit only to find that it doesn't get along with the amd/via combination. Is anyone using a TDM400 of any description (preferably FXO *and* FXS just in case) with an AMD/Via combination? I don't think the Sipura does DRING, so would have to loose that functionality if I go that route. On the plus side, I get failover FXO<->FXS on the sipura in the event the * server dies, or in the event of a power failure. Swings and roundabouts! Thanks, Karl ________________________________________________________________________ This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. The service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit: http://www.star.net.uk ________________________________________________________________________
Hi Matt, On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 22:10:24 +1300, matt.riddell@sineapps.com <matt.riddell@sineapps.com> wrote:> Seeing as this is off topic I thought I'd post to you directly.I don't think it's off-topic because I always get a lot of email from Asterisk users who want to know more about how to turn an old Mac into an Asterisk server, be it for testing, playing or serious use. So, I hope you don't mind that I post this reply to the list.> I have an old PowerPC mac 7200/120.That's a PCI bus Mac, so yes, in principle it can be used to run YDL, Asterisk and Zaptel with Zaptel cards. The 7100 which looks just like the 7200 was still using Nubus, so that wouldn't have been a suitable machine, but the 7200 is. For checking up on the hardware specs of those old Macs, see this site: http://www.everymac.com and here is your particular machine: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/stats/powermac_7200_120.html Perhaps one comment on the apparently low clock rate of only 120 MHz. Since the recommendation for Asterisk is PIII with at least 300 MHz, it would seem that a PPC 601 with only 120 MHz is too weak to run Asterisk, but my experience is that those legacy Macs do surprisingly well even at those apparently low clock rates. Having said that, I have not yet tested Asterisk on any Mac with a PPC 601, which was the first generation of the PPC CPU line. The ones I have been using and that I know of other people have been using were all PPC 603 and 604 models. So, it will be interesting to see what feedback you come back with once we get this working for you ;-)> It won't boot...Is this because it hasn't got a system installed or is broken?> is there some way that I can get it to boot up with > YDL so I can try and format the drive and install asterisk etc?On this particular machine you need to first boot into a minimal system and have the linux bootloader launch from there. Not a problem, I'll show you how you get there. First a bit of background on this. There are two kinds of Macs: Old world Macs and new world Macs. New world Macs have Open Firmware (like for example SUN Sparc and other real computers). This means they can boot an alternative bootloader directly from Open Firmware. Old world Macs only boot their own bootloader, so booting Linux is a two stage process. A new world Mac can boot YDL directly off CD by holding down the C key while the machine is starting up and the YDL install disc is in the CD drive. Unfortunately, your 7200 is an old world Mac, so you have to do a little extra work to boot into Linux. You will need an install CD of an older version of the legacy MacOS, for example MacOS 8 or 8.5. Apple has made all their old system software available for free download, so you could download MacOS8 off their website, but I haven't done this in years so I don't know the pointers. If you don't find it, I can create an image of the OS8 CD I have and put it up on my server (100MBit connection, so don't worry about d/l speeds). You can burn that on CD and then boot your Mac into the system installer. You would then use a utility called "Drive Setup" to partition the disk because you only want a tiny OS8 partition and keep the remainder of your disk as "Free" for Linux. I have installed OS8 for Linux bootstrap in as small a partition as 22MB, but you may want to give it -say- 50-60MB just to be on the safe side. No point spending much time with that pesky old legacy OS. Make sure you include support for ISO CD format because you want to be able read the YDL CD. Once you have a minimal OS8 system on your Mac, boot into that system and insert the YDL CD. Then you install the Linux bootloader, kernel and some other utilities onto your OS8 and follow the instructions in the README on the YDL CD. When your'e done, simply reboot the machine and it will first boot into OS8 then autostart a utility that asks you if you want to boot Linux or continue to boot into OS8. It can be set to time out to a particular default, ie Linux, so even if you let it alone, it will end up booting Linux. The first time you boot into Linux, it will boot into a minimal kernel and launch Anaconda, the YDL system installer. This will look very familiar if you have installed Red Hat before. Just proceed as you would on any Intel box and you will end up with a Linux system on your Mac. In some cases I have seen Anaconda having trouble with certain graphics cards on some Macs which had VGA cards that were not original or pretty exotic ones. If you know Linux installations in and out, you might still be able to guess what is showing on the screen even though it is largely incomprehensible and complete the installation even if the graphic card is unsupported. If it's just too bad, you could get some vanilla VGA card from the junk yard and do the installation with that. Or you could install using the serial console. I haven't done this myself but some YDL folks told me that they did. Then again, I don't think your 7200 will have such a fancy VGA card that the YDL installer cannot handle it. Last but not least, I'd like to mention that there is always TerraSoft Solutions, which is in respect of YDL what Digium is to Asterisk. You can buy a retail pack of YDL and get installation support and you can also purchase a hard disk with YDL already pre-installed then put that into your Mac. Of course this is less likely something you'd be interesed in but some folks who read the list and want to try a Mac with YDL as an Asterisk platform might be interested in this option. hope this helps if you need any further assistance, let me know. rgds benjk -- Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. NB: Spam filters in place. Messages unrelated to the * mailing lists may get trashed.
On Oct 10, 2004, at 10:08 AM, Wolf Paul wrote:> "dean collins" <dean@collins.net.pr> wrote:> However, those of us not working with hefty corporate budgets may not > have the option of spending > $100 for a test machine when there's a more cost effective option > available.I'd seriously suggest, in your situation, that you just forgo connectivity to the PSTN altogether for testing. Grab a soft phone, such as X-Lite or gnophone, and experiment with the dialplan and features that way. If you want to go further, you can invest in an E1 card and the E1s to go with it.> If that warrants "don't come asking for support" then you guys are not > much of a community but a sales > machine for Digium.I think it's more that past experience has shown us that the Digium hardware just works out of the box with a minimum of effort. They've done a very good job on both the hardware and the drivers to talk to it. You're welcome to use whatever you want (that's the beauty of Asterisk!) but you'll have *far* less trouble with a Digium board.