We are collecting all PDF files available on CD and other sources with the original Ascend file names added with some more infos within the filenames. And thats a lot.

It did start with the MX-SL-8MOD-V34 as a direct competition to the well known Cisco 4000 and 5200 dial-in routers. As we found out, Ascend was better, even this very old version was better, but thats our view of the facts.

On the right side you see one of the first digital "converters" from analog to ISDN, plugged into a MAX 1800, 2000 or 4000 - and not 6000, it is too old.

The little paddle board holds the Rockwell chipset, which was "state of the art". Remember, this was in 1994 or earlier. Most stand alone modems had a lot of discrete components. This first Rockwell chip made it possible, to have 8 digital modems inside one extension slot, consuming a lot of power. But this chip handles all modem speeds up to 33 Kbit.

In 1994 that was a lot for one chip and a huge step in technology.

Here is a better view, what was on that first paddle board in1994. Later in 1996 all these components including the buffer RAM have been integrated in the next generation of Rockwell chips, in one single chip.

That was the type II - S56 series with up to 16 digital modem ports. And again later then, in one of the last Rockwell chips was room for 2 and/or 4 modem channels.

But with the DSP technology the functionality was floating, you could do everything with that chip.

The last version of modem boards was the so known type III or S563 revision. Lucent did pack up to 60 AD converters onto one board. So with two of them , a MAX 6000 was fully equipped.

Within the TNT series, there was a 48 modem board an later 192 modem board. However, these boards ar bigger than the MAX 4000 / 6000 slotcards and the MAX TNT was able to handle up to 756 ISDN channels in one chassis.