15 Oct
2006
15 Oct
'06
6:35 p.m.
>I am looking for a DOS program to turn my computer
into an answering
>machine.
There was a dedicated ISA-bus card for the PC called "Watson" that did
exactly that under DOS. It had a character-based user-interface. It
allowed remote access to the voicemail boxes. It could also serve as a
"demon dialer", intercepting touch tone signals to do speed dialing and
other functions. The device had two RJ-11 jacks, one for the phone line
coming into the house, and the other which fed all of the rest of the
phones in the house. It could also, with optional software, be set up
as a basic AVR system. It could also serve as a 1200-baud (IIRC) modem.
I don't recall any FAX capabilities.
I have one of these around somewhere, and even the "voicemail" software
(on 5 1/4" DOS floppies), along with the documentation. I used it for
quite some time on a clone "XT"-class machine utilizing a NEC-made
8088-compatible micrprocessor. It worked pretty well, though the
biggest problem was that there was no indication at the phone that
voicemail was waiting. You either had to check it, or go to the PC to
see if there were messages.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Web Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
15 Oct
15 Oct
8:38 p.m.
While we're discussing answering machines, etc., I should mention that I've
got not one, but two Toshiba Infinia systems loaded with Win95. It
includes not only the usual Data/FAX modem, but a through-connection to the
sound card for answering machine and voice mailbox facilities. Oh yeah, it
also include a TV and FM radio card.
The software is something belonging to Intel called Synchro Connect.
The machine has power management that pops into "sleep" mode after
inactivity and will wake up to answer the phone or (via a button on the
front panel, or on the remote control console or the wireless remote
control) wake up for normal PeeCee type use.
The answering machine isn't half bad, but I've got an answering machine
that consumes negligible power and has a battery backup to save things in
case of power failure, so what's the point?
Didn't IBM also introduce a Win9x based PeeCee "multimedia computer" at
around the same time? (1996-98--probably violates the 10 year rule, but is
interesting enough that it merits a mention in that it tried to be the
Swiss Army knife of home peecees.)
Cheers,
Chuck
10:09 p.m.
New subject: DOS answering machine ??? --> Complete PC
Chuck Guzis wrote:
While we're discussing answering machines, etc.,
I don't have a modem based answering machine, but a 286 dos box
running CompletePC. It involved an add in board set of some number
of revisions.
The company was one of those with the "we have the best ever, look
out" attitude and were not that great. Nor was the technology open
so that other things could be done with it, but it was workable, and I
ran it for probably 10 or 12 years.
I just saw my pile of stuff that ran it, if anyone else ran it.
I think the dregs of the company after it imploded was bought up
by Boca research, and then vanished.
It ran nicely on a 286 system and dos for the time, and really
didn't ever run well with Windows. I never liked the windows
interface when I tried it, and stayed with the dos box.
The thing it offered was remote retrieval of messages, and I could
do some amount of remote control with a dial in.
Jim
16 Oct
16 Oct
7:25 a.m.
New subject: DOS answering machine ??? --> Complete PC
On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:09:22 -0700, jim stephens wrote:
I don't have a modem based answering machine, but a
286 dos box
running CompletePC. It involved an add in board set of some number
of revisions.
The company was one of those with the "we have the
best ever, look
out" attitude and were not that great. Nor was the technology open
so that other things could be done with it, but it was workable, and I
ran it for probably 10 or 12 years.
I just saw my pile of stuff that ran it, if anyone else
ran it.
I think the dregs of the company after it imploded was
bought up
by Boca research, and then vanished.
It ran nicely on a 286 system and dos for the time, and
really
didn't ever run well with Windows. I never liked the windows
interface when I tried it, and stayed with the dos box.
The thing it offered was remote retrieval of messages,
and I could
do some amount of remote control with a dial in.
Jim
I signed up as a dealor for the CompletePC about 1985'ish when I ran into them at
comdex.
It supported 99 mailboxes and switch hook forwarding of calles if you had MaBells
Centrex lines which supported dialing 9 for an outside call and direct dialing of other
extension.
There was a guy in Dayton Ohio that buily a multi-line system using the
CompletePC cards who purchased my extra cards about 12-15 years back.
I kept one, it is in an IDR 386/16 boxed away in storage with the optional fax scanner.
The windows 3.1 version left a lot to be desired, I always ran the DOS version.
The other Bob
12:45 p.m.
New subject: DOS answering machine ??? MS-Phone
Microsoft came out with "The Microsoft Cordless Phone"!
900MHz cordless, with a voice modem in the PC.
Some neat voice recognition stuff that didn['t work very well, and some
features such as TTD that were touted, but never documented on how to
invoke.
15 Oct
15 Oct
10:21 p.m.
Didn't IBM also introduce a Win9x based PeeCee
"multimedia computer" at
around the same time? (1996-98--probably violates the 10 year rule, but is
interesting enough that it merits a mention in that it tried to be the
Swiss Army knife of home peecees.)
There was the Tandy Sensation!, I remember that. That ran 3.1. I don't
remember if it had phone answering capabilities, but it did have most of the
other "MPC" spec goodies.
--
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-- A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. -- Carl Sandburg ------
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caveguy＠sbcglobal.net -
cclist＠sydex.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu -
rickb＠bensene.com -
spectre＠floodgap.com