[Mac-telephony-list] LinuxPPC & * or OpenPBX?

[Benjamin Kowarsch via List]

On Dec 21, 2006, at 4:30 AM, Thoth via List wrote:

> How about linux on PPC?

David Woodhouse is doing his opbx work on a Powerbook G4 running  
Fedora. He also made the opbx RPMs which are part of the official  
Fedora distribution. To install enter "yum install openpbx" at your  
shell prompt.

> Gentoo was able to compile and get the asterisk server running for
> me without my intervention, I merely modified the configuration files.

Ming-Wei Shih has made a gentoo ebuild for opbx and a howto article too.

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=OpenPBX.org#Downloads

> I plan on revamping an old beige mac to see how asterisk runs on  
> modest
> hardware. Does anyone else have experience with linux on PPC as a PBX?

We have several PowerMac 8xxx and 9xxx lab systems running Yellow Dog  
Linux and Asterisk/Zaptel with analog boards. When you need to run  
multiple Digium cards, those are often superior to many Intel boxen  
even today, as Macs don't have any interrupt issues, none whatsoever.  
It simply does not happen.

You can stick as many cards into a PowerMac as it has PCI slots (up  
to 6) and you won't hear a glitch. The only thing to watch out for is  
codec translations (if you use G729 or Speex) as a PPC 604 will not  
be able to handle many concurrently transcoded calls.

A few years ago, Nicolas Gudino, the author of the Flash Operator  
Panel, had troubles with multiple X100P cards, which he preferred  
over a single multi-port card because of outrageous import duties in  
Argentina, where he lives. I told him to look for an old PowerMac and  
run Yellow Dog Linux on it. He was able to get his hands on an old PM  
9000 with 5 or 6 PCI slots and he filled them all up with X100P  
cards. His words were something like life was beautiful after the  
change to the Mac. His company's PBX has been running on that old  
PowerMac ever since.

Note however that the Ambient MD3200 modem chip set used on the X100P  
cards is no longer manufactured today. The Chinese manufacturers are  
now using reject chips to make them. These cards have never been all  
that good as FXO devices to begin with, but now, that they are made  
from junk parts, they should not be considered under any  
circumstances. The moniker "genuine X100P" will not help, because you  
can make any card report as genuine by changing the PCI bus ID (a  
resistor) on the board. There is no difference between genuine and  
OEM anyway, Digium's cards where rebranded OEM cards after all. The  
only thing that makes a difference is whether the card was  
manufactured years ago or not.

As for OpenPBX.org on Yellow Dog Linux, we haven't tested it yet  
because it is considered a bit of a legacy thing and not a priority  
right now, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work.

rgds
benjk