Andrew Kohlsmith wrote: > On Monday 05 September 2005 15:25, Jim Van Meggelen wrote: >> Wait a month or two. > > Until Sangoma's card is in my hot little hands or at a vendor > near me, it's > vapour. I have a hard time believing that FXS/FXO switchable > on every port > will be in the final design, but it will be very cool if this > is the case.
I had heard that Digium is not too far off from their replacement of the TDM400, either. It's all vapourware, at least from an official standpoint, but I'd still advise a short wait, because some of these clouds will coalese . . . >> Ya, but cha-CHING! > > Sangoma's prices aren't any better on T1/E1/J1... It's > priced at what the > market will bear. They're cheap compared ot the old stuff, > but yeah... still > pricey. Well, anything more than free is pricey :-) But BRI, PRI, T1/Channel Bank, or whatever, digital into a small system is going to be prohibitively expensive. >> Don't forget to reboot once per week, not to mention "give up >> on expanding beyond 4 FX ports" . . . > > Jim, really, this is over the top. I don't reboot any of my > asterisk boxes, ever, much less once a week. And I have > successfully put two > TDM cards in a > single box without issue. Well, in retrospect it probably was a bit of a low blow, but I don't know many people that trust those cards, and I *do* have to reboot my system once per week. If those cards are as trouble-free as you are suggesting, I'd say the PR folks had better get on it! > Yes, Digium's cards are picky about the PCI subsystem; > Sangoma's are (much) > less so. Regardless, both still do have issue with some > (admittedly craptastic) PCI implementations and (again, > craptastic) PCI > cards they must > share the bus with. Well, the thing is: knowing what the problem is (or where the fault lies) does not make it tolerable. I have never heard that multiple TDM400 cards are 100% guaranteed to work. For a mission-critical phone system, does that not need to be considered? >> Not only that, but if it's quality you're after, custom-built >> is still the way to go. Tyan motherboards; Seasonic or FSP >> power supplies; Kingston or better RAM; Zalman cooling; >> Seagate hard drives; a decent chassis and you'll be into a >> system that'll deliver far more robustness than a branded >> server could deliver at twice the price. A little engineering >> pain can deliver outstanding quality, at a price that make >> sense. > > Wow that's a lot of money you just threw at a system that I > can match with > Asus or even MSI (yikes!), decent, although not brand-name > power supplies and > RAM and Maxtor or even Fujitsu drives. But if you want cheap, "good enough" gear, why not just buy a low-end Dell? Save a lot of research and shopping around, that would. I'll grant you that I'm proposing twice the cost for a 10-25% improvement in reliability. Still, I would never cheap out on a power supply - especially in an analog-based PBX; quality RAM does make a difference; and why cheap out on the MoBo? As for the Seagate drives, silence is golden. Having spare parts on the shelf is reassuring, but having a system that will go the distance is far more reassuring. > The only thing I do insist on with my Asterisk boxes is Intel > P3 or P4 > processors... I've personally had nothing but trouble with > AMD, but I > haven't spent the time or energy on tracking down exactly > what the problem > is. That, and use good (Intel) network cards. I bought 100 > of them for > $0.50ea at a fire sale and they've been amazing. Well, when it comes to custom-building PCs, everyone has their own ideas about what is worth paying extra for. Jim. -- Jim Van Meggelen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2177 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.18/89 - Release Date: 02/09/2005
