17 Apr
2014
17 Apr
'14
9:07 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 11:57 PM, drlegendre . <drlegendre at gmail.com> wrote:
And I swear that I'm not a pimp for Viking
Electronics, but they make a
device called a DLE-300 which is essentially a micro-sized Telco Central
Office (with two lines) that sits on your desk. Think of it as two
telephone lines, with different numbers, that both run to your desk. Call 1
from 2, 2 from 1, and use all kinds of features like call waiting, call
progress etc.
I built and sold something like that 20 years ago. It had an
8048-family micro controller in it and real POTS-like front-end chips
(SLICs - Subscriber Line ICs). You could dial one number and get 1 to
call 2 or vice versa like a straight call, or you could call other
numbers to simulate call failures and test your dialing software. I
used it in-house to write up autodial scripts, but we sold a few as a
product.
We once bought a competitor's product with 4 lines to see how it
performed. I still have it. I should go check the model number.
They are great for VCF-type shows, and really handy if you have old
kit that only does dial-up for external comms.
-ethan