Topic: Passive ISDN card for use with NTL in UK

[OSD]

Hi,

Has anyone followed the Passive ISDN Card How-To and got their E-Smith server and gateway working with an NTL ISDN line in the UK?

If you have, could you please tell me which card you've used and whether you'd recommend it or whether perhaps you'd recommend using an external TA and if so which one.

Thanks a lot!

[Richard Bruce]

Hi,

I'm using a Hayes Accura 15700 external TA and can't fault it. I've used it on both BT and NTL lines. If you only want to use a single ISDN channel you don't have to change a thing. Just plug it in and go! The Accura is smart enough to treat ATDT instructions as straight-forward ATD instructions. If you require to use more than one channel (depends on your ISP but most support 128K ISDN now) then a quick edit of a couple of files will sort it out. There's lot's of detail on this elsewhere in the forum, but if you're really interested let me know and I'll dig out my install notes and post the details here. All in all a great sub-£100 product that's given me no problems so far.

Richard

I just remembered one thing though. I had to use a win95 machine to initially configure bandwidth on demand etc, but the utility supplied with the TA kept crashing my machine. Hayes e-mailed me a beta copy of a later utility that worked fine. I can drop you a copy if you want it.

[OSD]

Excellent.  Thanks a lot for the response.  I think we'll go with the Hayes Accura external TA then.  Brilliant.  Its only a single channel ISDN link we have.  So its just a matter of plugging it in then?  When configuring the dialout part of e-smith is it treated as a direct line?
Thanks again.

[Richard Bruce]

Basically yes,

However when you say that you only have a single channel connection I take it you mean to your ISP as both BT and NTL supply 2-channel ISDN as their basic service (you could however be using another ISDN product on the other channel though, or connecting via a PBX). The Accura also comes with two adaptors that allow you to connect two "pots" (Plain Old Telephones!) to your ISDN as well. If you are only using one channel for your ISP connection, you can use the other for a voice connection. I find it quite handy if we have switchboard problems. Feel free to contact me off-line if you have any specific questions about this.

Richard