I don’t have £500 to spend on a digium pci card and I was wondering if there are cheaper alternatives worth buying. I only want one or two fxo ports on a legacy pci card (not pci-e). I’ve seen some cards on ebay around the £30 - £50 mark (tdm110p, tdm400p) but I wondered has anyone tried these? are they any good and do they work ok in freepbx 13? I could afford up to £150 if there are good alternatives but I know little about what’s available in that price range. thanks for any advice.
Hi!
You could most likely get a used PCI Sangoma A200 (preferrably with echo canceller since it can’t be added later) for around those prices…
Sellers on eBay rarely know the exact specs of their telephony hardware so you would have to look at the pictures to see if it comes with echo canceller (there is an additional printed circuit board on that card which is held in place by two screws).
The Sangoma A200 is still sold by Sangoma and supported by FreePBX so you would have no problem getting it working.
Good luck and have a nice day!
Nick
If you have a pci bus then the good old digium stuff is a great value on ebay at bargain basement prices. The fxo/fxs hardware is no different fom the pci-x cards. Be careful to not buy the cloned digium stuff though. . .
thanks dicko, how would one be able to tell a cloned digium from a genuine?
thanks marbled, I’ve been checking out the Sangoma A200 and it looks a little confusing, as though it won’t work unless you have two cards bolted together. Is that right?
They will have Digium artwork on the pcbs.
Hi!
That depends on what you mean, the card itself looks like two cards bolted/joined together…
See
PCI-e
PCI
(I put the PCI-e card picture first since it is much bigger than the other one so it’s easier to see the details…)
As pictured, the PCI-e card has an FXS module on the left, an FXO module on the right and an echo canceller (the little printed circuit board you see sandwiched between the top printed circuit board and the bottom one). The PCI card has the FXO on the left, the FXS on the right and I can’t say if it has an echo canceller (I can’t see its little printed circuit board or its screws (you would see them on the back of the card)).
Each FXS/FXO provides two ports (to connect two phones or two phone lines depending on what it is).
The reason I said “that depends on what you mean” earlier is that you can stack additional printed circuit boards Sangoma calls “remora” to the card so you can add additional modules (the card comes with a “remora” already bolted to it, when you add additional ones they are just joined together by a small PC board similar to the ones Nvidia SLI video card use).
See
(The Sangoma A200 is on the left, an additional remora to the right…)
Good luck and have a nice day!
Nick
Not to take any marketing from Sangoma or Digium, but I also like the “Synway” cards. They’ve been rock solid for me and work fine in PCI and PCIX motherboards. They are a single board card with two personality module slots (FXSx2 or FXOx2) with a backplane capability so that you can connect up to 16 phones (via four cards connected together). They also sell a 32-port card that connects to a pair of standard 50-pin “telco-style” cord that you can run to a punch-down block.
The downside is that they are usually a DAHDI version or two behind, so you would have to install their DAHDI driver source and replace the code that comes with FreePBX. In spite of that, it’s not a super-challenging set of steps. The price is nice too.
thanks for your feedback dave.
Downside to using unsupported cards is you have to recompile DAHDI ans after every distribution upgrade DAHDI will be broke. I suggest you stick with only Sangoma or Digium cards as they are the only ones we support in FreePBXDistro.
FYI our card designs are over 12 years old. Always flattering to see knockoffs.
Just so we’re clear:
- Most people don’t do distribution updates that often. When they do, they should know that lots of things are going to need work.
- Synway (even though you don’t sell them) has been around for a long time. They were one of the contenders when I installed the Rhino cards in my first PBX. I’m not convinced they are a “knock-off”. They produce carrier-class telecom equipment.
- Just because it doesn’t put a dollar in your pocket is no reason to not do something. Shameless self-promotion is probably how Sangoma thinks they need to run FreePBX, but insulting me to do that doesn’t put you on the high road.
The OP didn’t ask for a commercial - he asked for options. His original point (that the Digium card that came recommended was too expensive) was met with “well, just buy used ones.” There are options out there, and not all of them are “fly by night”.
Wow I did not just plug Sangoma Cards. I said Digium or Sangoma and the reason was because DAHDI does not support those other cards and asking people to recompile DAHDI after they yum update things through distribution upgrade will break their card. I was clear on the reasoning and I clearly show I work for Sangoma. I never said they were Fly by Night and all I mentioned was they ere knockoffs meaning Sangoma was the first to do backplane concepts over 12 years ago with asterisk cards well before anyone else. Just relax man.
1 The OP doesn’t have a budget for Retail Sangoma nor Digium.
2 He found the “knock-off” clones on e-bay
3 His options are limited, if he wants a safe solution, he needs supported hardware , Sangoma and Digium only
4 Few machines have PCI slots anymore, thus the bargain basement prices in the “Gently used” market
5 I have never had a Digium or Sangoma Card fail
6 I have revived many third party systems that “went cheap” and regretted it.
7 I agree with @tonylewis
8 QED, no?
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