I’d like to ask sort of a computer-related question.
At work, I have set up a faxmodem on my PC, and I’d like to use it to send faxes. But when I plugged it into the wall jack, I always got a “no dial tone” message.
After googling for info and checking with others in the office, I think the problem is that they have some kind of digital phone system set up, that doesn’t produce an ordinary dial tone.
Now, I have looked online for a digital to analog converter that seems able to solve the problem of how to use this modem on this system. But such devices run at least $200.
What I’d like to know is why can’t I find some way to plug the modem directly into the digital phone that’s already on my desktop, and get a usable dial tone that way. (Using the phone itself as a kind of converter.)
The only problem is that the phone wire that comes out of the modem is standard, wall-jack width, whereas the phone would only accept something to plug is that is a narrower width that I see on the end of the handset cord. (For example, the headset that I use has such a narrow plug on the end.)
So is there some kind of adapter that would allow me to plug a regular phone line in one and and a handset cord into the other, allowing me to connect my modem to my desktop phone? Do they make such a think, and if so where might I find it?
Hmm… at my work, the main phone system is all digital. For modem lines going to the desks of tech support personnel, they had to run in analogue lines specially.
A handset adaptor, though? Interesting. I don’t know whether handsets are standardised in any way.
This is what I was going to say as well. I don’t know how big your company is…but, what you have to do is find out where the phone line comes into the building. Around that area there will be a box that the phone line runs in to. There will actaully probably be several boxes and other things along the way, but what you’re looking for is a big box (again, don’t know how big the company is, so it’s hard to say what exactly you’re looking for), but it’ll have phone lines running into and out of it. What you need to do is a get a line from before the box and use that for the modem. If you don’t know exatly what you’re doing, it’ll be best to call a phone tech in. Just tell them what you’re trying to do and they’ll get you wired up.
Most Analog -Digital conversion devices are kind of expensive & kludgy. You need a direct analog line per Joey P’s example for smooth functioning. There are also fax services that will operate over the weblike this.
If you have to abilty to print a document to an Adobe PDF file you also can send these graphic pages as email attachment files. This (for me) is a lot more handy than faxing if I have the document already on my PC.
It’s been a long time since I had a modem, but I remember having in the configuration file the ability to tell it not to wait for a dial tone, just dial already.
Now that I think about it, do you have to dial anything to get a line? You might have to tell the compute/fax to dial a prefix to get out of the building. Doing that AND telling it not to wait for a dial tone might do what you need. Though running a direct line will be the best bet, then you can use that jack for other things as well (answering machine, modem, fax etc…)
I shoudl stress that you should definitely not continue mucking about by plugging your modem into the digital line for your phone. The voltages are slightly different between degital and analog phones, and the difference has been known to render modems useless if left attached for too long.
I don’t think this is possible. The handset interface is very different than the telephone interface, particularily on a PBX (digital) system. The fact that the connectors/jacks look similar is a coincidence. The handset interface on a PBX phone is going to be low power – just enough to drive the handset speaker and microphone.
You’ll either need one of those expensive analog-digitial converters mentioned earlier or you’ll need to get an analog line run to your desk. Also, I think the analog-digitial converters are PBX-specific, so it would need to match your company’s system.
Well, yes they ARE different. Not just slightly different, but VERY VERY different. Digital typically operates at less than 5 VDC. Analog phone systems, on the other hand can typically supply as much as 48 VDC and up to 90 VAC. The low voltages of digital aren’t going to damage an analog modem at all. The converse is not necessarily true.