FOOD FOR THOUGHT Need Support? Start Here!

[atsak]

Why do people complain about the support they get for something that is free? I can't understand it.

 

[wardmundy]

 

[kenn10]

It has to do with the entitlement mentality which has become pervasive in our society. Its always someone else's fault and you should get whatever you want for free. Self reliance and accountability no longer exist.

 

[darmock]

Yah it pushes my buttons also especially when the devs spend so much time correcting this and that, making it work, and creating new stuff, and all we get is people complaining about that our products won't run on a vic 20....

Lately is is just easier to let the whiners/complainers/flamers/et al stew in their own juices. My favorite complaint is "well we do XXXXX on our project and you MUST do it the same" Live free or die...


Flames ignored

Tom

 

[wardmundy]

 

[PBX@Home]

So I have this Apple IIe laying around collecting dust, I want to put Incredible on it. Ward - when will there be something for 1.44 floppies? Can you do that tonight for me? I know you are not busy.

 

[PBX@Home]

Can it make phone calls? If so, we should install PiaF!

 

[krzykat]

Glad I found this thread with all these experts. You say I can use any hardware to make phone calls. I have a project due tomorrow that I will get paid money on, and even though I never tried your software ahead of time, it is your fault and I demand you fix it for me (by tomorrow). Please find enclosed a photo of the hardware. I mean this has been around forever, so I fail to see why its not working.

 

[PBX@Home]

I see you have wires coming from the monitor to the keyboard, but not to the "automated" voice recorder. You need a wire from there. On a completely unrelated note, I am trying to sideload Bria onto my phone, but I keep getting an error, can someone please tell me how to do it correctly (and free)?

 

[darmock]

Thanks all! Although I still have my Kaypro II which I modded and put in a 20 mb (Yes megabit!) hard drive in and it still boots although I bet the capacitors are going to blow up on it.... Ah basking in the glow of green phosphor.... CPM was a very good O/S

Tom

 

[kenn10]

CPM was a very good O/S

Tom

Does that mean that you're releasing PIAF for CPM machines with 48K of memory?? What took you so long?

 

[darmock]

I know I have been working on it for years.... Trouble is when I plug the phone into the back of the kaypro it won't call out

Tom

 

[wardmundy]

Please run status. If you want us to help you, you've got to provide more information. May just be an echo problem. Or try adjusting the volume thingy.

 

[darmock]

ROFL!

 

[kenn10]

Wow! Is that a new ATA?

 

[Jay Deal]

Wow! Is that a new ATA?

Doubles as a charging port for a defibrillator...... CLEARRRR

 

[nightstryke]

You know speaking of old equipment, I found the old answering machine the family used to use between the 80s and 90s before things started going digital. Looks similar to one of these.

 

[Lavarock7]

I posted this in April on the Obi conference, but it seems Germaine here now.

---

I am using an old-style crank telephone and wanted to pass along how it works. I am hoping to interface it with my Asterisk system.

The phone is a wooden box that attaches to the wall. It has a crank, connected to a magneto to generate a signal to "Central" (the phone company), and when I crank it, they answer (essentially giving me a live "automated" attendant"). I tell them who I want to speak with and they connect the call. Thus my outbound call routing is quite simple. All calls go out to the the attendant who processes the call by some kind of lookup table.

Inbound calls are a different matter. Everyone in my neighborhood has selective ringing. This is like the new-fangled system the telephone company came up with that lets two parties share a single phone line. My ring is two short and my neighbor is a short and a long ring. I believe that if we needed to, we could change the ring tone.

I have heard of this FAX stuff, but have been unable to get a photo to fit into the mouthpiece of the phone. I don't think I can send pictures directly. What I have resorted to is describing the photo to the party on the other end. For some people I must slow that down considerably and use error correction, especially with my great grandpa.

However, calling the police or fire department works pretty well, but it is not a direct call. I pick up the receiver, crank a few times and when the attendant comes online I ask for the police or fire department. In an emergency, the attendant will redial and relay the message, especially if my phone line goes dead. There is no extra monthly charge for that service!

For directory assistance, well first there are few people in my neighborhood and I have a list of their numbers already. For long distance, not that I know anyone there, I just describe who I want and hang up and await a callback.

Our phone company does not let us own any equipment and we have to lease it from them. The wall-crank phone comes in two versions, a standard one and one with a piece of wood as a shelf that we can write notes on.

Service is pretty good, but come high water, sometimes the phone line goes off until the phone guy can get his truck up on to the bluff to reposition the pole that has fallen into the mud.

As for caller-id, we don't have it specifically. I can call the attendant (I call her "Operator") and she can tell me if someone called me. She appears to have a list of all inbound and outbound calls. Sometimes, if I "press the right buttons" I can get news items and personal opinion about local and worldwide events, but often that information will be interrupted when someone else makes a call or her boss comes in the room.

Extra personalized service is often given with no extra charge, but sometimes I take a cherry pie with me when I go to the phone company office to pay my bill.

I am not quite sure how the Asterisc system will interface, so mI hope people out there can help.

Oh, and "April Fools!"

--

Now you see why I posted it last time in April.

 

[redstonemason]

You need one of these:

These are still used in Cardiologists offices so that patients with portable monitors can call the cardio technician and transmit an ECG to a Windows based system when they think they are having a heart episode of some sort. Saw one the other day first hand!

 

[Kimberly]

While we are joking about old hardware, I like trying to push the boundaries of what can be done with old hardware. My first PBX was built with an old Gateway 500 meghertz Celeron with 512 megs of ram and it worked quite well for my purposes. When I went to upgrade and put CentOS on it a couple years back, it reported that I needed a gig of ram to continue the install. I searched my parts bins but was unable to find any dimms that the Gateway supported. Therefore, I fished another old system; I forget the specs, out of the shed and found the memory sticks and set up the PBX and it worked well. Last year a rectifier went out on the MB and I was unable to find a replacement. I left the PBX down until recently when I decided to set up a new PBX; I found a recondition ASRocks K7S41GX that would handle the AMD Athlon XP 2700+ CPU I had on hand; the memory sticks from the dead box and the hard drive from the dead box. The new PBX is up and running now with PIAF3; Asterisk 11 and IncrediblePBX 11. All that is left now is to start configuring it for use. Old hardware is not always useless.