The Geek Gazette - Build Your Own PBX
"What would it mean to you to have your own full-featured PBX system at your home or small office? What would it mean to you if you could build an entire PBX system (minus the phones) on hardware you probably have laying around, AND that it can probably also save you money on your phone bill? Sounds too hard to believe doesn't it, but using old hardware and some open source software, you really can build a commercial quality phone system that would normally cost thousands of dollars.
The Hardware
As I mentioned in the opening, we are going to build our PBX system from equipment that we have laying around the house. After cannibalizing three spare systems, what was left was a PII 450, 386mb RAM, 12gb HD, 48x CDROM drive, and an Intel Pro 10/100 network card. This is all you 'need' to get going as long as you are going to get VOIP dial tone service from a company like BroadVoice (more on this later). If you want to use regular analog phone lines you will need modem card. Not every card will work properly, however, the most recommended card is the Digium Wildcard X100P FXO card which can be purchased brand new on eBay for $6.95 each. So far, total out of pocket expense for the card plus shipping: $12.90.
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While Asterisk can run on numerous systems from Linux to even flash ROM for some LinkSys routers, we will focus on installing Asterisk on our salvaged equipment as simply as possible. To aid in our install, Asterisk@Home is a pre-package ISO image that automates the installation of Asterisk and adds a usable web interface to monitor and configure your system.
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This is a short guide for installing Asterisk@Home on old hardware you may have laying around...
When checking this out, I also noticed that Asterisk@Home released v2.1 on 11/30.
So now I have two tasks. This first is to download 2.1 and play with in a VPC (I had problems getting 2.0 to install in as VPC guest OS... could just be a bad download though). The second is to install it on an old 400mhz machine that I've not turned on for years (it has a beta of Win2003 server on it... yeah, it's been off for a while).
Related Past Post XRef:
"Running Asterisk@Home Under Windows"
Slashdot | Asterisk Open Source PBX 1.0 Release
Update #1 12/3/2005 @ 12:57PM (PST):
My Asterisk@Home install problem was pervasive... I couldn't run/install 2.0, 2.1, 1.3 or even any of the LiveCD's!
Okay, that's not a problem with them/the downloads but must be me/my setup. All would "freeze" when trying to mount the HD (or there about).
You know, it's a wonder what uninstalling and reinstalling can do... ;)
Installing Asterisk 2.1 now (it's in its Package Installation phase now).
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