[olug] PC ringer for POTS phone

[Will Langford]

>   Since the phone station is digital, how do you propose to hook it up to an
>  analog modem?  Is it a single cable with both digital and analog lines like
>  i believe some Toshiba phone systems are capable of.  Otherwise, to use a
>  modem, you would need an analog telephone adapter and program the ksu
>  to ring on both the phone station and ATA simultaneously.

Our phones at work are digital in, but also have a second jack for
regular analog out so ya can hook up regular wired/wireless phones to
that particular phone (ie: it'll act as an analog/digital converter).
I'm unsure if you can make out going calls with the analog phone
hookup, but I do know you can receive them (handy to have multiple
lines or perhaps a wireless thing attached to that line).  Attempting
to do a regular data modem connection would undoubtedly fail, but
you'd get RING's at least.

I.... can't recall the brand of phone / system at the moment :(.

There's also the zaptel library stuff used by Asterix that ya can
prolly use to create a flashy proggy or something... google turned up
hits for a '$10 answering machine', but looking at the extremely
simple source provided, ya can undoubtedly not have it pick up but do
whatever alert ya'd like it to.

-Will