Re: [hylafax-users] T.30 T2 timeout, expected signal not received

["Arshavir Grigorian" <grigorian@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I didn't realize you were in the business of making modems. As I said, first and foremost, I want the card to work flawlessly. However, there are probably dime a dozen cards that satisfy that requirement and probably range from cheap to very expensive. 
I am just trying to figure out a lower bound, that's all. Currently, I need to buy a modem so I can install and test HylaFax at home, before I can offer it to a client. Since I am a graduate student, the less I spend, the better. That said, my time is indeed very valuable and I would not want to have to deal with chipset/firmware issues. Hence, the question.
Cheers.

On 8/14/06, andrew rinaldi <andrew.rinaldi@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Arshavir,

 

We don't try to make the cheapest we try to make the best..... therefore I can't really give you a response to your question !

 

What I would say though is that if you value your time (and that of your customers) then 'cheap' is not what you are looking for.

 

Regards

 

ANDREW RINALDI

Mainpine Limited Support

USA +1 503 822 9944 | Asia/Europe +44 1225 869439  

andrew.rinaldi@xxxxxxxxxxxx  | www.mainpine.com

---

From: Arshavir Grigorian [mailto:grigorian@xxxxxxxxx]

Sent: 14 August 2006 20:21

To: andrew.rinaldi@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Lee Howard; SCIN - Danilo Bottino; hylafax-users@xxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: Re: [hylafax-users] T.30 T2 timeout, expected signal not received

On 8/14/06, andrew rinaldi <andrew.rinaldi@xxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:

Hi Arshavir,

This is a complex area and does not have a simple answer....

Agere (aka Lucent) have manufactured something like thirty different modem
chipsets over the years and none of them are 'perfect'.  The Venus chipset
is pretty robust after almost ten years of development although the firmware
supplied by Agere still requires something like seventy bug fixes to produce
the code that we use in our RockForce products.

The Agere OCM and OCF ('One Chip Fax') chips are intended for low cost
products which do not require external Flash or Ram to operate.  We tested
these chips extensively during 2003/2004 when we considered them for our
RockForce IQ product range.  Unfortunately, we had lots of issues with the
firmware (not surprising when you consider that the OCM/OCF chips use a
different controller chip from Venus) and eventually abandoned the chipset.
Interestingly, Agere no longer promote the OCM/OCF products for fax
applications on their website http://www.agere.com/entnet/modem_dsp.php

Choosing a modem can be difficult and you will get lots of differing
opinions from HylaFAX users.  In my opinion a lot depends on what you intend
to do with the HylaFAX server.... Few businesses can accept lost fax's
and/or poor performance, and this is one of the reasons that Mainpine
invests so much effort in testing and approving fax software for use with
our hardware.

Hope this helps !

Regards

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the note. Based on your comments, I guess my question is:

what's the cheapest, most reliable modem I can buy that will work under Linux and be compatible with HylaFax? Speed is not an issue, as long as it always works (sends and receives faxes flawlessly). I would prefer to avoid ISA modems since the newer boards don't have ISA slots anymore.

I think the best analogy would be a Postfix email server running on Pentium I (200-300MHz) box. There is probably a limit of how much traffic it can handle, but unless we reach that level, it will always work.
 

Again, thanks for any comments/ideas.

Arshavir