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- Practical Peripherals Tech Tip ---- Distinctive Ring
-
- Distinctive Ring is a generic term used to describe a phone
- company service that gives you two (or more) telephone
- numbers for the same phone line, each with a distinct
- sounding ring. This can be an economical way to have a
- separate fax or data number without paying for another line.
-
- The modem can be configured to only answer the phone when it
- detects a particular ring type, allowing you to insure that
- the modem doesn't try to answer every call that comes into
- your house. This is controlled by the modem's S101 register.
-
- The following are the settings for the S101 register:
-
- Range: 0-63
- Factory Default: 0
-
- Bit Value Meaning
- 0 1 Enable "RING <type>" report instead of "RING".
- 1 2 Disable reporting of type A ring.
- 2 4 Disable reporting of type B ring.
- 3 8 Disable reporting of type C ring.
- 4 16 Disable reporting of type D ring.
- 5 32 Disable reporting of type U (unidentified)
- ring.
-
- Examples: S101=0 commands the modem to detect all ringing
- cadences and report them with "RING" result code.
-
- S101=1 enables the RING <type> result codes; all ringing
- types will be reported.
-
- S101=58 tells the modem to report only ringing type B, with
- the RING result code.
-
- S101=59 tells the modem to report only ringing type B, with
- the RING <type> result code.
-
- S101=62 disables all ringing detection.
-
- Notice that to specify a particular ring type, you must
- DISABLE the other ring types with this register.
-
- How does a bit mapped register work?
-
- While a bit mapped register looks confusing, it's actually
- quite easy to use once you understand the basics. The
- register will have a certain number of bits, in this case,
- six of them (0-5). Each of these bits has a number
- associated with it called a value. In this case bit 0 has a
- value of 1 and bit 4 has a value of 16. Each bit controls a
- feature of the modem, in this example bit 0 controls what
- the RING report looks like and bit 4 controls ring type D.
-
- When you want to define the features of a bit mapped
- register, make a note of the values of each bit you want to
- be used, then add them together. In the above example, if
- you wanted to disable ring type D and enable the ring type
- reporting you would add together the values of bit 0 and 4,
- which is 17. Set S101=17 and you would have the correct
- setup. To have the modem only respond to ring type D and not
- show the ring type in the message, you would need to add
- together bits 1,2,3 and 5. Setting S101=46 would be the
- correct setup for this situation.
-
- Example
- First you will need to have the modem identify the ring
- types you have by letter. This is done by using a terminal
- program such as Windows Terminal and entering the command
- AT&FS101=1 and pressing enter, you should get an "OK." Now
- have someone call into each number and let the modem report
- back the ring type for each number. You will see something
- like:
-
- RING A
-
- RING C
-
- In this example if RING A was your voice number and RING C
- was your data number, you would set S101=54 (arrived at by
- adding the values for the ring type you want the modem to
- ignore, 2+4+16+32=54) so that when RING C was detected, the
- modem would report RING and answer the call based on the
- settings in your communications program.
-
-
- Contacting Practical Peripherals Customer Service
- If, after reading through this Tech Tip, you are still
- unable to answer your questions or resolve a problem,
- contact Practical Peripherals' Customer Service at the
- following numbers:
-
- Corporate Headquarters
- Tel. 770/840-9966
- Fax 770/734-4601
- Practical Peripherals BBS 770/734-4600
- WWW http://www.practinet.com
-
-
- Copyright 1996 Practical Peripherals. All rights reserved.
-