Screening for Fax Calls with Panther?

Peter Brodsky asks: "Panther advertises faxing as one of its cool, new features. If you're like me, and you have one land line, which you use for DSL and voice, you don't want to hook up a fax machine that will answer after X rings, because if after X rings it picks up and starts beeeep, beeep, bleeeeping at you, you cut yourself off from voice mail... which is programmed to pick up after Y rings. Is there a way to make your Panther box 'screen' for fax calls before it picks up?"

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[m0rph3us0]

You can get some software to turn your mac into a voicemail server. Then you can screen it effectively. Otherwise you'll need to pickup a device that will screen the call and then direct it to the appropriate device.

It would probably be more cost effective to signup for that efax service where faxes come into your email box.

Basically, you'll end up wasting alot of time for a few buck a month.

a guess

[ross_winn]

(I haven't upgraded to Panther) Find out if the Fax recognizes a distinctive ring. If it does the use the distinctive ring number for your faxes.

All your base belong to MacOSXHints

[Brontojoris]

Once again, you can find the answer to this question on MacOSXHints:

10.3: Enable Disctinctive Ring fax answering [macosxhints.com].

Answering machine or voice mail?

[Anonymous Freak]

If you are using voice mail (phone co-provided, not a box at your house,) then you're pretty much out of luck. Because in order to detect a fax call from a voice call, you have to answer it. If you have a device (like one of those silly 'Catch-A-Call's,) pick up the line to detect what kind of call it is, then the phone company provided voice mail won't pick up.

If you use a physical answering machine in your home (digital or old-fashioned tape,) then you're in luck. You can set your fax machine to 'TAD'. (Or 'External Answer') This sets it to passively listen to the phone line, but not pick up the line ever. Then, if someone faxes in, and either you pick up and answer, or your answering machines picks up the fax machine will detect the incoming fax, and pick up. (That's how I have my multifunction machine set up.)

Unfortunately, I can't find such a 'TAD answer' setting in Panther. Panther only seems to support having itself answer after 'x' rings.

So, for having PANTHER do it, you're out of luck period. If you're using phone company voice mail, you're out of luck. If you're using an answering machine and a separate fax machine, use 'TAD'.

Re:Faxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not like Apple invented the PDA, or coined the very term itself [wikipedia.org]...

Re:All your base belong to MacOSXHints

[daveschroeder]

I check all these daily:

MacInTouch [macintouch.com]
MacNN [macnn.com]
MacMinute [macminute.com]
MacFixIt [macfixit.com]
Mac OS X Hints [macosxhints.com]
MacSurfer [macsurfer.com]

Great software update resources:

VersionTracker [versiontracker.com]
MacUpdate [macupdate.com]
OS X freshmeat [freshmeat.net]

Other great sites:

O'Reilly Mac DevCenter [macdevcenter.com]
O'Reilly Mac OS X Page [oreilly.com]
Apple Mac OS X downloads [apple.com]
Apple Third Party Products Guide [apple.com]

Developer sites:

Mac OS X Developer Home Page [apple.com]
Mac OS X Developer Documentation [apple.com]
Darwin [apple.com]
OpenDarwin [opendarwin.org]
fink [sourceforge.net]

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Re:All your base belong to MacOSXHints

[mdarksbane]

You completely forgot xlr8yourmac.com.

An absolute necessity if you want to use off-the-shelf hardware (ie, ide cd-burners, $5 realtek ethernet cards, or "unsupported" wireless cards) on your mac. It's also my first stop if something going on with my system; they report almost any weird incompatibility anyone's ever had.

hivelogic has instructions

[jub]

just written up and posted:
http://hivelogic.com/macfax.php [hivelogic.com]

basically, you get a distinctive ring tone from your phone company for the fax line, and the panther fax software will distinguish.