CompuServe Thread

#Phone Pak

16 messages in this thread
#77657From: Leslie T. BartiromoMar 25, 1994 5:08 PM
Could someone give me a list of features for GVP's Phone Pak? I haven't seen an ad for them in a while and I'm curoius about getting one.
#77665From: Richard GraffMar 25, 1994 8:12 PM
You can call GVP and they will mail you the specs on Phone Pak, thats what I did <G>. If you can't wiat that long, c-mail me your fax number and I'll fax what I received to you. I plan on ordering one shortly, just as soon as I get over the shock of my recent tax payment <G>. =Rick=
#77743From: Leslie T. BartiromoMar 26, 1994 9:17 PM
I sent in one of those reader service cards requesting info on several GVP products as well as other venders. Most of the stuff from the other venders has arrived but nothing from GVP yet. I'll give them a few more days then give them a call. Thanks for your fax offer but I don't have a fax.
#77944From: GVP TechMar 29, 1994 7:47 AM
> Could someone give me a list of features for GVP's Phone Pak? I >haven't seen an ad for them in a while and I'm curoius about getting one. There are too many things to list here, and the product information sheet is several pages long. I would suggest that you contact GVP's Customer Services department at 610-354-9495 and they can send the literature to you. GVP TECH
#78177From: Leslie T. BartiromoMar 31, 1994 10:32 PM
Thanks, I have called the voice mail number to order info on Phone Pak. By the way, does Phone Pak take a lot of hard drive space when you digitize voices?
#78205From: Gary GilesApr 1, 1994 4:03 AM
Hi I've given phonePak it's own 20MB partition. It's never gone past 65% full. There was about 30 voice messages and 6 fax's. This should give you an idea about how much hard disk space needed. -Gary Gary Giles Yap Yap all the way from the UK Via Autopilot
#78213From: Leslie T. BartiromoApr 1, 1994 10:08 AM
Do you use Phone Pak AS a business or FOR your own business?
#78220From: Gary GilesApr 1, 1994 12:16 PM
Hi We use it for home. There are 3 mail box's – Master, this is the default if the person calling dose not have a touch tone phone. 1 for my girlfriend who is a freelance violinst and 1 for myself. We were going to buy a Fax machine anyway which is about the same price. Having call forwarding is realy useful as we both have mobile phones. -Gary Gary Giles Yap Yap all the way from the UK Via Autopilot
#78225From: Jerry ThompsonApr 1, 1994 1:41 PM
Leslie, the PhonePak records about 9K per second. You can figure out how much space you'll need from how many calls you normally get and how long they are. There is a low quality recording mode that you can use when you are low on space or when you are going to be gone a long time. You won't want to use the low quality recording mode all the time though. -Jerry
#78341From: Leslie T. BartiromoApr 3, 1994 3:56 PM
Thanks for the information. How much RAM does Phone Pak need to operate? Can more than one phone line be run into each Phone Pak board? Can multiple Phone Paks be pluged into the same Amiga?
#78363From: Jerry ThompsonApr 4, 1994 12:44 AM
PhonePak uses about 600K of disk space for all the files and default system sounds and messages. So 3 meg of free hard drive space before installation will allow a usable configuration. The program, Lineman, has to be running in order to automatically answer incoming calls and FAXes and it only takes up about 60K of RAM. The user interface requires about 200K of Fast and 100K of chip. The largest FAX display mode requires about 350K of chip RAM. You just might be able to squeeze everything into a 512K chip/512K fast RAM system, but everything will work fine if you have 1 meg of chip RAM. Of course, if you have an A3000 you will need some kind of Zorro card with RAM in it to make PhonePak work. You cannot run multiple lines into a single PhonePak card. One line into the card, one line out of the card to a modem of phone. You can have multiple PhonePaks in one machine and the software can be flexibly configured to answer (or not answer) each line in different ways. -Jerry Thompson
#78530From: Leslie T. BartiromoApr 5, 1994 10:08 PM
Thanks for the VERY complete information. I got GVP's info today. It, and your messages, have been helpful. Gettinng back to RAM; from your message can I assume that more than 1 meg of chip RAM on an A2000 isn't needed or even helpful?
#78580From: Jerry ThompsonApr 6, 1994 2:33 PM
More than 1 meg of chip ram is not needed and won't buy you anything when running one or even 2 instances of PhonePak. Of course if you want to simultaneously run 3 or more copies of PhonePak AND open 3 or more hires FAX screens, then 2 meg (or more?) of chip ram would help. I have done this, BTW. On an A3000 with 2 meg chip, a large Workbench screen and AutoPilot running, I still had over 300K chip ram left. -Jerry Thompson
#78702From: Leslie T. BartiromoApr 7, 1994 9:58 PM
I've been thinking of running a voice mail service and I was interested in Phone Pak hardware and software. Thanks very much for the information.
#78789From: Leslie T. BartiromoApr 9, 1994 12:15 PM
Could you tell me if PhonePak can do this: Generate a call and if there is no answer after, say, 10 rings, dial another number? Can PhonePak also generate a call if a number has been busy after a certain number of hours? Thanks.
#78813From: Jerry ThompsonApr 9, 1994 10:28 PM
If you are not afraid of ARexx programming, you could write scripts to do the two things you described. PhonePak has a very simple command sequencing capability by itself. It is very weird to program the PhonePak. You can't do everything through ARexx, so you have to write some PhonePak scripts, but you can't do anything sophisticated with the internal command sequencing so you need to call ARexx scripts… You wind up with a PhonePak sequence executing when the phone is answered which calls an Arexx script. The Arexx script will call a different PhonePak script. And you have to create multiple PhonePak "dummy" mailboxes to load new "states" (playback messages and touch tone menus). Nothing terribly difficult. It's just a strange hybrid of ARexx, command sequencing, and using phone mailboxes for controlling the branching. A very unusual discipline of "programming." So, yes, I think it would be possible to do what you wanted. But you'll need some ARexx experience and something like AmigaCRON to kick off an ARexx script at a certain time. -Jerry