Re: [hylafax-users] HylaFAX and Winmodems

["Amin Mozafari" <amin85ir@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I'm assuming that your just "assiging" the same serial port
>down to the VM machine with linux/HylaFAX installed, or letting
>windows fax use it directly?

Only one Fax server can use the modem at the same time. I have to shutdown
the VM to test on the Windows host.

>I can certainly help you gather HylaFAX logs and look at them, but
>you'll have to try and come up with a way of getting modem commands
>from Windows FAX, as I'm not familiar with that at all.

Windows actually has a modem log facility but it is limited to call setup
and disconnection. I have yet to find
a way to snoop on serial communications between the host and the modem.



-----Original Message-----
From: Aidan Van Dyk [mailto:aidan@xxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 10:46 PM
To: Amin Mozafari
Subject: Re: [hylafax-users] HylaFAX and Winmodems

Amin,

It sounds like you have a setup where you're in a good position to
compare what's different between HylaFAX and windows fax with the same
modems.  I'm assuming that your just "assiging" the same serial port
down to the VM machine with linux/HylaFAX installed, or letting
windows fax use it directly?

If you have any destinations that fail reliably in HylaFAX but work
with windows fax, and you have a way to getting some sort of log from
windows fax as to what it's doing with the modem (what AT commands
it's sending, etc), it would be intersting to see what it's doing
differently from HylaFAX, what type of undocumented tricks and
non-standard AT command sequences it throws at the modem.

I can certainly help you gather HylaFAX logs and look at them, but
you'll have to try and come up with a way of getting modem commands
from Windows FAX, as I'm not familiar with that at all.

Note that if we find something, and get a winmodem working reliablly
through a windows VM host by HylaFAX, that won't necessarily mean it
can work with a linux host directly, because the linux kernel-drivers
you find for most winmodems may be quite different from the windows
drivers that actually do the T.30 audio modulation/demodulation.

But if you know your way around windows and windows fax well enough to
get logs, etc, I'm willing to help with the HylaFAX side and see if we
can find out what the 2 do differently.


a.

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 1:21 AM, Amin Mozafari <amin85ir@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I am evaluating a fax installation using HylaFAX. My setup is as follows.
I
> have installed the fax server as a VMWare image on a windows host the
modem
> is wired to the linux virtual machine via VMWare. This way I can make sure
> that I have access to the widest range of modems installed on the Windows
> host and get rid of driver issues on linux. Please don't tell me why. Good
> old hardware modems are fast going out of market and cheap Conexant
> Winmodems are a commodity nowadays.
> Now comes the irritation. Fax reception is generally OK but sending fax is
a
> pain in the rear. Out of the various makes and models that I have tested,
> the majority fail with errors like "no response to PPS", "no response to
> EOP", "modem stop and wait failure" and "failed to train the remote host".
> You can argue that they are cheap and sensitive to line conditions... BUT
> why o why Windows Fax works flawlessly on the same machine and using the
> same fax modem when HylaFAX miserably fails.
> Please for the love of God entertain me as to how Windows fax differs from
> HylaFAX from a technical point of view? Isn't TAPI Unimodem an abstraction
> over the AT Commands interface of the modem? And finally is there a hack
to
> improve fax sending capabilities of HylaFAX for Winmodems?


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