While waiting for my various components to arrive for the Asterisk install, I decided to see if I could simply play around with soft phone technology, experiment, and so forth. I didn't actually accomplish anything so far, but I did stumble across this Live CD Asterisk product. In case you are unfamiliar with the concept, a Live CD is a rather nifty little thing -- it's a complete, task specific operating system on some bootable media (typically a CD ROM or DVD ROM, but you can use it on a compact flash card, USB key, etc. -- anything that has sufficient storage space and can boot your PC). This is a complete, fully functional Asterisk install on a CD ROM. I actually downloaded it, burned it, and used it to boot my PC. It worked -- at least I think it did. Once again, I'm waiting for some gear to arrive to be able to complete the install and see how it works.
The adventures of a seriously cheap guy who wants safe, stable, secure technology for nothing (or as close to nothing as he can get).
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. -- Robert Heinlein