With the ISDN-Surfer, you enter the information highway the digital way, because an ISDN board allows the direct connection to your phone company's NTBA. There is no key telephone system, no modem and no terminal-adapter in the way to reduce performance. The connection is purely digital, your Amiga is directly connected to the telephone switch in your phone company's premises!

The one requirement is an ISDN phone line, that is offered by many phone companies all over Europe. All these products have one thing in common: The NTBA, the interface for digital communication devices. You can connect a digital phone, a key phone system, or a computer to it. You don't have to worry about compatibility at all: Due to the drivers being totally CE96 (Q931) compliant, we can guarantee the function in practically every European country. Even the ISDN lines of American phone companies that use an S0-NTBA are supported.

Although ISDN technology is totally different from analog modems, you won't have any problems getting familiar with it's use, because the drivers emulate a Hayes-compatible modem with an AT-command set. This enables virtually any software that can handle a modem also to go online with the ISDN Surfer (exception: Fax-software). Special commands in the set let you use the ISDN-specific services that your phone company provides. As the most popular example, the caller identification is to mention.

This means for you: With some quick changes in the settings of the software, you can adjust your TCP/IP stack to make use of the ISDN Surfer, no matter if you are using Miami, MiamiDX, AmiTCP or Genesis. After these small changes, you can go online with 64KBit! We're even working on a way to make use of both ISDN channels at a time, so you can use the maximum speed of 128KBit to surf the net (so-called channel bundling or multilink-connection, only with OS3.9 or higher). What's already possible ist making two independant connections at a time, just like having two separate modems or terminal adapters. Your Amiga can be connected to the internet while taking another call on the other line with an answering-machine-software for example. Naturally, the ISDN Surfer only occupies as many channels as it really needs, leaving the bus free for other ISDN devices at the same time. This enables you to surf the net and make a call at the same time - the most popular reason for buying an ISDN line. It does not make any difference what type of telephone you use: A digital phone, an analog phone connected to a key phone system, or the telephone module for the ISDN Surfer:

With the telephone module (sold separately), your ISDN Surfer becomes a convenient ISDN telephone with many added features.

In addition to the connector for the phone module, there is two more connectors on the ISDN Surfer: One clock-port as known from the Buddha Flash and X-Surf Ethernet boards, and one 26-pin expansion port. The Clock-port can be used to connect a Silversurfer serial port, or the Catweasel MK2 floppy controller. connecting the Goldsurfer (Hypercom 3 module) to the 26-pin expansion port is electrically possible, but the HyperIO drivers do not support this yet.

The structure of the drivers is an added value for programmers: The driver understands Capi 2.0 commands as known from other platforms, so porting existing ISDN software will be an easy game, and writing new programs that make use of the ISDN Surfer is supported by some example sources written in C.