flexfax: followup/summary on faxing to line shared between voice and fax

[Ronald Greenberg <rig@cs.luc.edu>]

I'm following up on my question about faxing to a line that is first
picked up by an answering machine and then has a fax machine pickup
during the message and is supposed to respond according to whether or
not a fax is coming in.

I got three responses, of which the latter two apparently went to the
list.

The second response seems to be the one that has hit upon the right
issue, but it has led me to a new question.  Here's the second response:

  in theory yes, imho. Using modem settings it should be very possible to
  tweak the code to do almost anything... eg you may want to enable blind
  dialing and also set the modem to assume carrier is always on. AT<something>,
  have a look at your modem manual. Of course this eliminates your chance
  to identify a call to a real phone.
  
  Perhaps you just have a way to increase the time you wait for carrier
  for some 20 seconds to get past the initial voice message played by the
  remote fax machine, but I didn't find that in the documentation.

I didn't know how to pursue the first two suggestions, and I didn't
think the carrier wait time was the problem; after all, the modem
manual says the default waiting time is 45 seconds.  But when I set
ModemDialCmd in the config file to "*O\nDT%s@" so that the email
response after a sendfax shows all the modem settings, I found that S7
(carrier wait time) was 30 seconds.

I tried to set S7 to 45 and write that into the nonvolatile memory of
the modem by using the ModemDialCmd "S7=45&W\nDT%s@".  I got the right
waiting time for that particular invocation of sendfax (and my fax
went through).  But then when I set ModemDialCmd back to the normal
"DT%s@" and used sendfax again, the waiting time had reverted to 30.
I then tried using the "tip" command to send instructions straight to
the modem rather than via sendfax.  When I do ats7=45&w, I get the
right thing from at*o at that point.  In fact, I get S07=45 even after
doing "~^D", retyping "tip scout", and then doing "at*o".  But if I
wait a little while, and then use tip to recheck S7, it's back to 30.
How can I get it to stay at 45, without needing to encode that in the
config file?

******

In case you need more information regarding my system, here it is:

First, I'm using flexfax with binaries dated April 1994.  I can't find the
exact version, because I don't know where the source has gone.  (I know
this is old software, but I don't think this should matter.)

Second, the system it's running on shows the following with uname:
   machine hardware name: sun4c
   operating system release: 4.1.2
   system name: SunOS
   operating system version: 5
 Again old, but I don't think that should matter, either.

The modem is a DSI (Digicom Systems, Inc.) ScoutPlus.  I don't know
the firmware revision, but the manual is copyrighted 1992.  Also,
there is an old file of stuff about modems that has a page about bugs
on which the entry for Digicom Scout+ 2A19/2931 has been highlighted.
(I don't know where the modem is physically located, but I should be
able to track it down, if that will help.)

******

For completeness, here were the other two responses:

   You might want to drop that '@'. It is a good idea in theory - it waits
   for a 5 second silence before listening for a carrier, however it has
   caused me lots of trouble with not connecting.

I had originally asked about the "@", but dropping it didn't solve me
problem, and changing the waiting time did.

   you might have the same problem I have: While dialling, the modem sends
   its beep-tones to tell the other side it wishes to send a fax, but once
   someone
   picks up the phone and says something, the beeps stop...
   Has anyone a solution to this problem?

No, that's not my problem.  The beep tones keep going until there is a
timeout.  Sometimes, there's an FCERROR first; I'm not sure why.

R.