The author is assistant chief engineer of Radio One Dallas. For years, Radio One Dallas had a Nortel phone system that seemingly required a service call for anything beyond switching out a handset ...

So, you need to deploy a Private Branch eXchange (PBX) system for your small office. Or, maybe you want a voice-mail system running on your Linux box at home. What about an interactive voice response ...

This article describes how to build an embedded Asterisk IP-PBX with four analog (FXO or FXS) ports. Total parts cost is about $500 US, which is competitive with PC/PCI-card based Asterisk solutions.