I recently discovered Hylafax, a piece of software that lets you turn a linux box and a fax modem into a fax server. It’s really slick, supporting things like fax printing from windows machines (with a windows client), scheduling, caller id and distintive ring (for incoming calls if your modem supports it). These last two are the ones that have been causing me all the problems. I have a seperate number with a distinctive ring (it comes with the package) and figured I might as well put that to use as a fax number. So I found an old modem that supports both those features (a US Robotics 5686)… at least the box says it does. It took me quite a while to get it to support the distinctive ring. I finally discovered that I had to turn it on (ATS41 = 1) and then save the setting (AT&W0). Once I did that, the modem reported “RING A” for the main number and “RING B” for the second one. Perfect. After that it was easy to tell Hylafax to only answer the second number. What seems to be giving me great fits is the caller ID setting. I found out how to turn it on, but not how to save that setting:
ATZ OK AT#CID = 1 OK RING A DATE = 1018 TIME = 2021 NMBR = XXXXXXXXXX NAME = STEENHAGEN JACO RING A ATZ OK AT#CID? 0 OK
It just goes away as soon as an ATZ gets sent. I’m not sure how to solve that, but I made a newsgroup post hoping that maybe somebody else out there has an answer :).
I’ve got exactly the same problem, however, I also have the issue that occasionally my modem resets on it’s own, I’m not sure if it’s heat. Could be.
I wonder if you ever found a solution to this?
Cheers,
Peter.
Jake, thanks for this entry, I didn’t know I had to explicitly enable distinctive ring. Now hylafax is picking up quite reliably on the first ring, while leaving voice calls alone.
FYI, it would be worth mentioning in the blog entry itself that you were using minicom to communicate with the modem. Discovering and installing a good modem comm tool was the single longest step in getting this working for me.
Thanks again!