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From: JD on 17 Jul 2010 15:25
Hey Experts :-)

I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.

It can accept faxes too but only when I set it to do
that. If it is not set, it does not answer. When
it is set
to take them, no other calls can get through.

Is there any such thing as a little prog for the
PC that
can recognize fax tones and answer the fax calls.

TIA
From: Mike Easter on 17 Jul 2010 15:57
JD wrote:

> I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.
>
> It can accept faxes too but only when I set it to do
> that. If it is not set, it does not answer. When it is set
> to take them, no other calls can get through.
>
> Is there any such thing as a little prog for the PC that
> can recognize fax tones and answer the fax calls.

I think it is useful for you to understand how a normal freestanding fax
machine works when it is trying to share a voice line with such as an
answering machine and people.

The typical situation is that when such a machine is configured to be
able to answer a fax, but not 'mess with' the line when it is being used
as a voice line by the answering machine or the people, the machine has
to know "Who/what is going to 'pickup' (go offhook) when the phone rings?"

Then, besides telling the machine who is going to pickup (you the fax
machine are after 4 rings -or- the person or the answering machine will
always pickup/ go offhook) there is also the necessary ability for a
dedicated fax machine to be able to silently 'snoop' on the line.

When a dedicated machine is snooping, it is quietly listening for
sending fax tones. When it hears sending tones, then it 'locks onto'
the line with receiving tones and the two fax devices get themselves all
hooked up and now the fax machine is controlling the line.

Many/Most typical fax modems aren't so good at snooping. They want to
either answer faxes or not. There're some other things they can't do.

So, the problem with your computer fax modem system is that you can only
tell it to answer the phone or to not answer the phone. When it answers
the phone, it is not 'snooping', it is trying to engage a fax.

In addition, most computer fax modems and apps don't have the ability to
'pick up' the line which is already in use by a person or an answering
machine. So, if you the human answer the phone and you hear incoming
fax tones, you can't get the fax modem/app to (belatedly) 'answer'
because the phone is 'in use' by you the human.


You didn't name the fax modem you have and its capabilities and you
didn't name the fax software you have and its capabilities.


--
Mike Easter
From: David H. Lipman on 17 Jul 2010 16:49
From: "Mike Easter" <MikeE(a)ster.invalid>

| JD wrote:

>> I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.

>> It can accept faxes too but only when I set it to do
>> that. If it is not set, it does not answer. When it is set
>> to take them, no other calls can get through.

>> Is there any such thing as a little prog for the PC that
>> can recognize fax tones and answer the fax calls.

| I think it is useful for you to understand how a normal freestanding fax
| machine works when it is trying to share a voice line with such as an
| answering machine and people.

| The typical situation is that when such a machine is configured to be
| able to answer a fax, but not 'mess with' the line when it is being used
| as a voice line by the answering machine or the people, the machine has
| to know "Who/what is going to 'pickup' (go offhook) when the phone rings?"

| Then, besides telling the machine who is going to pickup (you the fax
| machine are after 4 rings -or- the person or the answering machine will
| always pickup/ go offhook) there is also the necessary ability for a
| dedicated fax machine to be able to silently 'snoop' on the line.

| When a dedicated machine is snooping, it is quietly listening for
| sending fax tones. When it hears sending tones, then it 'locks onto'
| the line with receiving tones and the two fax devices get themselves all
| hooked up and now the fax machine is controlling the line.

| Many/Most typical fax modems aren't so good at snooping. They want to
| either answer faxes or not. There're some other things they can't do.

| So, the problem with your computer fax modem system is that you can only
| tell it to answer the phone or to not answer the phone. When it answers
| the phone, it is not 'snooping', it is trying to engage a fax.

| In addition, most computer fax modems and apps don't have the ability to
| 'pick up' the line which is already in use by a person or an answering
| machine. So, if you the human answer the phone and you hear incoming
| fax tones, you can't get the fax modem/app to (belatedly) 'answer'
| because the phone is 'in use' by you the human.


| You didn't name the fax modem you have and its capabilities and you
| didn't name the fax software you have and its capabilities.


I use an ASAP TF 555 Fax Switch.

If it is a fax, it routes the call to the PC.

If it is a voice call it routes it to the phone and answering machine.


--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp


From: Mike Easter on 17 Jul 2010 17:10
David H. Lipman wrote:
> "Mike Easter"
> | JD wrote:
>
>>> I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.

> | You didn't name the fax modem you have and its capabilities and you
> | didn't name the fax software you have and its capabilities.
>
>
> I use an ASAP TF 555 Fax Switch.
>
> If it is a fax, it routes the call to the PC.
>
> If it is a voice call it routes it to the phone and answering machine.


That would certainly do it.

http://www.command-comm.com/technical_support/operators_guides.php?tech=tf555intro
or http://snipr.com/zitir This guide is designed to introduce you to
the various installation and operational procedures for using the ASAP
TF 555

The device takes the line offhook and listens/snoops for fax
calling/sending CNG tones and if it doesn't hear them it lets the voice
line functions deal with the call. If it hears them, it lets a fax
device handle the call. Those devices are plugged into the command-comm
device.

Here's an animation for a different device made by that company
http://www.commandcommunications.com/technical_support/_faq.php?com_qa=automatic
or http://snipr.com/zitsy

--
Mike Easter
From: VanguardLH on 17 Jul 2010 19:29
JD wrote:

> Hey Experts :-)
>
> I have a fax in my PC and use it often to send faxes.
>
> It can accept faxes too but only when I set it to do
> that. If it is not set, it does not answer. When
> it is set
> to take them, no other calls can get through.
>
> Is there any such thing as a little prog for the
> PC that
> can recognize fax tones and answer the fax calls.
>
> TIA

But to see if there are fax tones REQUIRES that the line be picked up
and listened to. That means answering the call to check for the tones.
Now what if there aren't any tones? Then switch to the phone line to
ring the telephone.

I haven't used WinFax or other fax software for about a decade. No
point to them anymore since the Fax Service is included in Windows (as
of XP). However, most fax modems don't have all the logic mentioned
above to answer (pickup) the line, issue bogus ring tones to the caller
during which your end listens for fax tones and then transfers to the
fax modem if there are some or transfers to the phone if there aren't.
While the line gets picked up, you have to pretend to the caller that
your "phone" is still ringing. It is during that bogus ringing time
that you can listen for fax tones.

What you are looking for is called a fax switch. It picks up the line
but sends out ringing tones to the caller (so they don't the call has
been picked up yet). In about 2-3 seconds, if it hears fax tones then
it switches to the fax output. If no fax tones are heard, it switches
the call to the phone output. The fax output goes to your fax modem's
input and the phone output goes to your telephone. The problem with a
fax switch is that it lengthens how many rings the caller hears before
possibly getting redirected to an answering machine to leave a message.
If you use a telco-provided answering service, it won't work because the
fax switch picked the call on the 1st or 2nd ring.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22fax+switch%22
http://www.google.com/images?q=%22fax%20switch%22

It's possible some newer fax modems include the fax switch function but
it's been a decade since I needed to use my old fax modem or even looked
at what are available. You do NOT need to share your telephone (voice)
line with a fax machine. Nor do you have to buy a 2nd line and pay more
for it (often there is a luxury tax attached to 2nd and additional lines
to a residence). Instead of having senders connect to your home phone
number to send you a fax, have them connect to an efax service. The fax
sender connects to a fax machine at the service and the service receives
the fax. Then the service sends you the fax as a .tif or .pdf file
attached to an email which means you get to use your e-mail client to
organize the inbound faxes, read them when you want and just about
anywhere you want and even on other-user hosts, and you never have to
fight over the use of your home phone line between voice and fax calls.

eFax.com has a free receive-only service (though, as I recall looking
last time, it can be hard to find on their web site - but Google found
it easily at http://www.efax.com/efax-free). You cannot send faxes uses
an eFax Free account but you can receive them without sharing a line,
get the convenience of reading them as viewable attachments in e-mails,
and Windows has a .tif viewer (you can't get .pdf attachments unless you
pay for their Plus service). So you can receive faxes for free and get
them via e-mail.

So how do you send faxes without using your phone line? Well, there are
service providers for that, too. FaxZero is one (2 pages max plus they
prepend their promo cover page with sender/recipient info). GotFreeFax
and MyFax are a couple of other free fax sending services. You upload
your doc to their service and they fax it to the specific target fax
number. However, because you are giving info to a 3rd party, be careful
as to what content it contains. These services (just as when you use
your own fax modem) do not encrypt the content of your faxes. You need
special gear for encryption with faxing and it is unlikely that either
party will have the requisite setup for encrypted faxing. Plus you are
sending that content to the 3rd party to then fax your document so it is
possible that a rogue employee might steal your fax content. So I
wouldn't recommend using 3rd party doc-to-fax sending services when the
content is sensitive, like banking or credit card info.

Unless it is some gov't agency steeped in ancient schemes of electronic
document transmission that they only support facsimile, I've always
managed to force the other party to accept an e-mail. There is nothing
more secure about faxing than in sending e-mails. Anything you send via
faxing is just as vulnerable to spying during transmission as when
sending e-mails. Plus faxes sit around in fax machines so anyone
wandering by can read it. However, unlike encrypted faxing, setting up
e-mail clients to use e-mail certificates to employ encryption takes a
little effort but doesn't cost anything to do the setup (since you can
get free e-mail certs). So regardless of what you do with faxing, I'd
suggest feigning a complete inability to send or receive a fax to see if
you can force the other party to use e-mail. Whether you want to setup
encrypted e-mails means you get more security (which you never had when
faxing) but isn't likely needed.

So you could get a fax switch. Or you could abandon the old hardware
scheme (on your end) and use a free fax receiving service (eFax) and a
free fax sending service (FaxZero and others). Or you could demand the
other party accept the use of e-mail.
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