October 1997

Don’t even think about running a computer-telephony application on anything but an industrialgrade computer. When the system crashes, you’ll never hear the end of it: “Hey, didn’t you know that whereas a PBX is only down a few seconds each year, a PC will … blah, blah, blah. Haven’t we heard enough of all that?

Just use an industrial-grade computer (or a fault-tolerant computer). It will help close the “downtime gap” with respect to PBXs. Also, you’ll get various benefits and features you don’t get with traditional phone systems. A good example of a highquality industrial-grade computer, one perfectly suited for high-end computer-telephony integration applications, is Crystal Group’s CS1000. It is available in three configurations:

• Ten-slot standard ISA passive backplace.

• Ten-slot standard ISA/PCI passive backplace (five ISA, three PCI, and two ISA/PCI)

• Ten-slot standard special ISA/PCI passive backplace (seven ISA and three ISA/PCI)

Exceedingly compact, the Crystal CS1000 can be rack-mounted or used as a stand-alone unit.

INSTALLATION
The design of the inside of the case was very good. It made installing and removing boards very easy. However, we had some minor difficulties removing the case. Overall, we gave installation a 4.5 rating.

DOCUMENTATION
The documentation was your basic computer hardware manual, which included the hardware specifications for the CS1000. The documentation also included your “typical” board layout maps for locating different components on the passive backplane board. The instructions made it easy to find the pin numbers for the reset connector, hard drive LED, and speaker connector. The documentation also included sceenshots of the BIOS setup screen and explained the settings.

FEATURES
Compactness: 8.75” (w) x 8.75” (h) x 17.9” (d).

Power source alternatives : 120/240VAC, -48VDC, or +24VDC. Standard power supply: 200 Watt unit. Hardware: 3.5” floppy drive, hard drive (size varies), four internal fans, serial and parallel interfaces, steel case, LEDs (for power and hard drive), keyboard and reset locks.

Safety: Compliant with UL 1950, CUL 22.2-950, IEC950/EN60950. Emissions: FCC Class A, CISPR Class B.

Immunity: ESD 1000-42, Susceptibility 1000-4-3, EFT 1000-44.

Marking: UL, CUL, CE.

Security: Key lock feature.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
We opened the box and removed the CS1000, which was quite compact. Indeed, we were delighted at how compact it was. We’re always glad to save desk space in the lab.

In our unit, which arrived containing a Pentium 200 chip and a 2-gig hard disk, we installed a PCI video card, a PCI network card, a sound card, and 4 voice processing boards. And we still had one free ISA and one free PCI slot to spare! As for software, we installed Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server. This procedure was basically trouble free, except that we had to place the CD-ROM drive on top of the unit (see Room For Improvement).

We absolutely loved this machine, except for one thing. (Yes, there is always a catch!) When we first tried to install boards into the PC, it took us a while to remove the case, which was held in place by several tiny screws. The screws were so small that none of our Philips screwdrivers fit. It was a struggle not to strip the screws when removing them. We removed about 10 of the screws before we realized that we only had to remove the top four screws on each side. We got to the last screw, which as Murphy’s Law would have it, was screwed in pretty tight – tighter than all the rest. We had a choice: try to remove the screws with the tools at hand, or run to the hardware store and buy a smaller screwdriver. Well, we were impatient to check out the Pentium 200 board with the 64 meg on board, so we chose to make do with what we had (as we suspect most users would). After much struggling, we took out three of the four screws. The last screw, however, was really tight. We pretty well mangled its head. Imagine our frustration: one screw away from removing the case and peering into the guts of the machine! Fortunately, we found a smaller screwdriver, and, after some more struggling, we were able to take the screw out, even though it was stripped.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Since our biggest frustration was dealing with those tiny screws, our main suggestion is this: Use bigger screws!

Also, we found we didn’t have room for a CD-ROM, which we missed when installing the software. When we installed Windows NT, we had to leave the case off and put the CD-ROM drive on top of the unit. Of course, you can always access a CD-ROM over the network, but when first installing Windows NT, you will need the CDROM to be local to the machine.

We looked at the design of the CS1000, and we concluded that there is simply no way you could fit a CDROM within the case. However, we do have a suggestion to solve this problem. If you use SCSI, you won’t have a problem, since you can hook up an external SCSI drive to the SCSI card. If you use IDE drives, however, you will have a problem. You will need to run the cable from the IDE controller in the case to the CD-ROM outside the case. You can draw the cable through an open slot not being used by a hardware board, but if all the slots are taken, then you won’t be able to draw the IDE cable to the outside of the unit. What to do? You could cut into the unit near the serial and parallel ports, thus creating an opening for the cable. But that could compromise the case’s sheilding, which might jeopardize the FCC license.

Of course, your best bet is to install an SCSI card and use an SCSI CDROM. However, if you like to pinch pennies (we do), you would probably prefer sticking with IDE. Also, IDE CDROMs are easier to install than SCSI and don’t require buying a SCSI adapter.

CONCLUSION
The CS1000 is perfectly suited for use in any computer telephony application, whether it is a voice mail system, a TAPI/TSAPI server, a fax server, or a unified messaging system. We should know, because we use this machine a lot to test various CTI software applications and CTI hardware. It’s a favorite of ours because it helps cut down on clutter (always a problem in our lab). The unit occupies hardly any space. Also, inserting boards is a snap. Thus, not only is the unit compact, it is well designed.