ISDN Hardware question
Hi all, A local ISP is offering a one year ISDN subscription bundled with either an internal PCI ISDN card or external USB ISDN modem. Neither of the two packages specify what sort of hardware is in the box (and they won't open it so I can see what's inside. So do we also get "software" ISDN modems like the winmodems, or are they at least all hardware? If I buy one of these, are the chances good that it will work without hassles? Thanks Hans
Hi, Am Montag, 1. September 2003 19:32 schrieb H du Plooy:
A local ISP is offering a one year ISDN subscription bundled with either an internal PCI ISDN card or external USB ISDN modem.
I don't know of any PCI ISDN card that is not supported under Linux. Om the other hand: there are USB ISDN devices that won't work. So go for the PCI one. Greetings from Bremen hartmut
Thanks to all who replied. It's comforting to know that at least ISDN is still real hardware! Hans
H du Plooy
Thanks to all who replied. It's comforting to know that at least ISDN is still real hardware!
It ain't necessarily so :( Faxing with passive ISDN cards needs software to emulate the FAX modem. With semi-active or active cards you don't need software as the boards have their own DSP and processor to emulate a FAX modem in HARDWARE. And BTW, DSL adaptor cards do most of the DSL stuff in software too :( Philipp
On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 00:13, Philipp Thomas wrote:
It ain't necessarily so :(
Faxing with passive ISDN cards needs software to emulate the FAX modem. With semi-active or active cards you don't need software as the boards have their own DSP and processor to emulate a FAX modem in HARDWARE. Wow, I didin't even think about this - I wasn't thinking about faxing with ISDN - I didn't know you can do that. I would still prefer an external thing that sits on a normal standard serial port...
And BTW, DSL adaptor cards do most of the DSL stuff in software too :( That's sad. So do these work in linux? Luckily the local phone company has only external ones that I believe connect to your computer through network. I'll have to double check.
Sadly DSL doesn't make economic sense for my needs. We're limited to 3gb a month, which is just stupid. The local phone company has a deal whereby you can connect with a normal phone line all weekend for a set price. This works out at a quarter of the price of DSL per month, and if you use it for something like downloading movies (or the new SuSE, when it comes out!), it works out at much more data per month. A friend of mine has this and he manages between 700mb and a gig per weekend. Hans
H du Plooy
On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 00:13, Philipp Thomas wrote:
Wow, I didin't even think about this - I wasn't thinking about faxing with ISDN - I didn't know you can do that.
ISDN even defined its own (and faster) FAX protocol but this never caught on.
I would still prefer an external thing that sits on a normal standard serial port...
An active ISDN card is a nice thing, *if* you need the processing power it offers. Otherwise it's much cheaper to just dig out the old 14400 modem and use that for faxing.
And BTW, DSL adaptor cards do most of the DSL stuff in software too :( That's sad. So do these work in linux?
Some manufacturers do offer drivers for their cards, but these are all binary-only. Philipp
participants (3)
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H du Plooy -
Hartmut Meyer -
Philipp Thomas