Re: Faxing

On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 14:26 -0700, Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu wrote:
> (Not to suport MS)
> Microsoft had a free Fax App on their web site a while back. In fasct it came
> bundled with Win2K, Win XP, Outlook 2000, and I think Office 2k Pro... So if
> you have a win OS and time to look, you can proably still find the app on the
> MS site and use it to test your modem conection.
>
> Once you know it is good with a Win product then we can see if it works under
> *nix... I should mention that I had a cheep 33.6 modem that faxed under
> windows but not under RedHat... But I always thought it was an experance
> problem on my part...
----
sometimes the efforts don't provide clarity.

modems like all hardware I guess have condensed everything down to a
single chip or a few chips and they use software control of data entry
points and other functions which has been of benefit to the Windows OS
because it allows them more functionality of the very few hardware IRQ's

So we have an explosion of 'software' driven modems which are very
cheap. These are typically referred to as Win modems. They provide
drivers for the Microsoft OS types in order to sell them. They haven't
necessarily provided 'drivers' for Linux because they haven't identified
the Linux market as having value to them and they are probably less than
eager to release their drivers in 'open source'.

So that leaves only 2 real options...

- buy a real hardware modem, internal or external that actually uses an
IRQ or
- search for information regarding your specific chipset in your 'win
modem' on the website - something like lin-modem.org and do whatever is
necessary to make it work. This can be a hassle

Of further note - Apple, not one to miss an opportunity to cheapen
things up has gone to a new version of the Motorola SM56 chipsets in the
modems on new G5's and they suck big time. Try receiving a 10 page fax
on one...they will fail 80% of the time. Whether we used Apple's built-
in mimimalist fax software, Page Sender or Fax STF Pro was immaterial.
Smith-Micro swears that their new version of Fax STF Pro fixes this
issue (which is clearly an Apple problem) but it only fractionally
reduced the percentage of errors. Finally ended up going to a Zoom USB
external modem to solve problem.

One last note - some of these modems work poorly in Windows too.

Craig

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