ISDN4BSD removal (was: FreeBSD 6.4 and 8.0 EoLs coming soon)

[Peter Much]

<vadim_nuclight at mail.ru> aka Vadim Goncharov schrieb
mit Datum Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:31:46 +0700 in m2n.fbsd.stable:

|You do not understand the problem. It is not in notices & volunteers, but  
|rather in the Project's policy - delete something which could still work.  
|Personally, I don't use ISDN, so didn't said anything that time, but now,  

Hi all,

at this point I would like to speak up, because I am practically
using ISDN4BSD.

I just decided to upgrade to RELENG-8, and found out that I cannot.
So now I have 1 1/2 years (until 7.3 EOL) to figure out a solution.

I will not complain, because I think people here do an incredible
good work, and the only very small thing I can contribute is 
occasional bug reports and sometimes patches.

But what I want to say is:

It is *NOT TRUE* that the I4B feature has become of limited
usefulness today!

I am using I4B as an answering machine for my phone-line, with
the feature to monitor these calls and to download them as MP3
from anywhere in the world (could even be a web-interface, but 
I hadn't yet the time to write that). 
I don't want everybody to know my cellular nr;  I don't want to
(costly) forward calls to my cellular; but I want to be able to
monitor and react on calls nevertheless!

This is very easy and very comfortable - and currently I have no
idea which other equipment could provide me with such functionality
(if any would exist at all). And - my router is running anyway, 
it doesn't consume extra power when doing this - in fact, I think
this is one of the most useful things one can do with a computer
that is kept running all the time...

So, I am sure my demand for this functionality will continue to 
exist for an indefinite time into the future, and in fact I 
am sad.


To be honest, I am quite clueless now. Theoretically I do 
understand the problem with I4B. (Practically I do not understand 
it, because for me it has nothing to do with networking - I do
only use the phone call monitoring/handling.)
But staying with 7.3 will cut me off from other improvements/fixes,
which I would much enjoy.

Anyway, there is another open issue for me: my ISDN adapter card 
is ISA technology, so I will have to get a PCI type card as soon 
as I replace the mainboard of that system (which is imminent because
it's too slow and too power-consuming - the ISDN being the main 
reason why I didnt do that already).

But maybe, now I should look for some completely different approach?

Any clues, ideas, pointers, hints, ressources,... are greatly
welcomed!!

rgds,
PMc