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Article 165 of comp.sys.amiga.reviews:
Path: menudo.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: tonyc@cryo.rain.COM (Tony Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: GVP PhonePak VFX 1.01 FAX and Voice Mail System
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm
Date: 11 Dec 1992 04:00:56 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 403
Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Approved: barrett@math.uh.edu
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1g93poINN1rd@menudo.uh.edu>
Reply-To: tonyc@cryo.rain.COM (Tony Campbell)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: FAX, voice mail, hardware, Zorro, commercial
PRODUCT NAME
PhonePak VFX 1.01
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
The PhonePak VFX is an integrated voice mail and FAX system.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: Great Valley Products (GVP)
Address: 600 Clark Avenue
King of Prussia, PA 19406
Telephone: (215) 337-8770
FAX: (215) 337-9922
BBS: (215) 337-5815
LIST PRICE
$449 (US)
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
Amiga with Zorro II or III slots
2 megs RAM minimum
Hard drive, size depending on how many voice
and FAX messages are anticipated
Accelerator not needed
512k Zorro II RAM required for use in A3000
SOFTWARE
OS 1.3 or 2.04 and above
Some features not available under 1.3
COPY PROTECTION
None
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
Amiga 2500/20
2 megs 32 bit RAM, 1 meg CHIP RAM
OS 2.04
2091 SCSI controller, Quantum 80 meg hard drive
OVERVIEW
The PhonePak is for single line applications, but you can put
in as many PhonePaks as you have slots and phone lines for. The
PhonePaks can share the 'Mail Boxes' you create between them.
It is compatible with the Public Switched Telephone Network,
Centrex, and PBX. DTMF (Touch-Tone) service is required.
An accelerator is not needed, even if you fill the machine with
PhonePaks, unless you operate with voice compression turned on.
FAX conversion will be slow without an accelerator.
DOCUMENTATION
The nearly 200-page, wire-bound manual starts with voice mail
etiquette, and walks you through the setup of several example
applications, from use of PhonePak as an answering machine, to
a product information system with the ability to FAX back
literature on the same call.
The remainder of the manual is a reference to the commands and
options available for each of the programs, along with step by
step mini-tutorials for most functions.
There is a table of contents, an index, menu summary, IFF FAXX
format specification, and more.
There is a lot of detail in the manual, and it is easy to miss
a subtle reference or instruction, so read carefully.
HARDWARE
PhonePak is a Zorro II AutoConfig full size card.
It has two RCA connectors, a line-in (digitizing), and a line-
out (audio monitor), and two RJ-11 telephone jacks, one to the
phone line, and the other for a local telephone.
It uses a Yamaha YTM-401 voice-FAX chip.
There is one jumper to be set if you are using the PhonePak on
a PBX system. There is an undocumented 16 pin header and two
RESERVED jumpers.
SOFTWARE
The PhonePak software comes on two disks, one containing the
programs, and the other with prepared messages.
Commodores' standard installer program is used.
There are several programs that make up 'PhonePak VFX':
* LineMan (60k) This is the program that must be running for
PhonePak (the hardware) to answer or make calls, or to send
and receive FAXes.
It automatically determines if you have more than one PhonePak
board installed, so you can set options for each line
independently.
LineMan opens a small window on your Workbench screen. The
configurations that are made with it are: number of rings
before answer, Auto FAX Detect on-off, audio monitor on-off,
voice compression enable.
LineMan also passes DTMF tones detected to an ARexx port,
depending on which mail box the caller is in.
* PhonePak (300k) This is the program where you setup and
maintain mail boxes, groups of mail boxes (Systems), record
and playback voice and FAX messages (you can do this remotely
of course), and schedule sending FAXes.
The PhonePak program opens on its own 8 color screen, has an
integrated telephone database, and can also open another
screen called 'Switchboard', where you see which mail boxes
have new messages, and can check a mail box 'in' or 'out'.
This determines how a call to that box gets handled.
PhonePak has an ARexx port, with a dozen functions available,
and its own script language, 'Operator', which also can be
executed through ARexx.
* PPakFAX (41k) This is the program/printer driver to
intercept printouts from other applications for conversion to
FAX.
* PPakMonitor (8k) When you start this program, it opens a
window and displays events detected by the PhonePak, like RING
and which DTMF tones are entered. The manual does not say
much about this, other than its being a troubleshooting program,
but I could see this program's output being redirected, or
piped to another program for various purposes.
* ShowMode (3k) This allows you to operate the PhonePak
hardware 'locally' without being connected to the phone line.
This is for demoing and testing.
All of these programs can be run from the Workbench or CLI, and
have various options that can be set by command line or via
ToolTypes in the icons. Both LineMan and PhonePak have on-line
help, by pressing the 'Help' key.
FEATURES
AUDIO:
The PhonePak records and plays back standard IFF sounds at
9600 8 bit samples per second. You can also record from an
attached telephone, but the quality is better using the line-in.
The IFF playback is fixed at the 9600 samples/sec speed, so
imported sound files must be converted to this rate. I also
own a GVP DSS-8, and this software has a resampler. It would
be a good idea for GVP to include a sound editor program, as
the PhonePak software does not allow you to edit your
samples. You must either get it right, or record it again,
just like a standard answering machine.
The monitor jack is to monitor incoming calls, can be turned
off with LineMan, and this can be overridden via an 'Operator'
script.
The Amiga's left audio channel is used for playback of
messages, and PhonePak does not tie up the audio device when
not in use. I ran NComm (which does tie up a channel), DSS-8,
and played back messages with PhonePak, all at the same time,
with no conflicts.
You can also play back audio messages on the local phones'
handset.
Incoming voice messages take 10 megs per 17 minutes, or 34
minutes with compression. Each PhonePak board only needs to
transfer data to or from the hard drive at the rate of 48k per
second.
FAX:
The FAX portion of the hardware is Group III compatible,
send-receive 9600, fall back to 2400, with optional auto FAX
detection.
The software portion allows you to:
* Send-Receive standard and fine mode FAXes, with 1D and 2D
(MH, MR) compression.
* Convert ASCII text files, with your choice of font, to a FAX
format file. A couple of fonts are included.
* Convert IFF graphics to a FAX format file
* 'Print to FAX' from any application (DTP, WP, Paint) through
the PPakFax printer driver
* Display FAXes on screen, print to a printer or FAX machine,
and convert to an IFF graphic file.
* Use an attached FAX machine as a scanner
FAX file sizes vary widely according to the contents, about
250 FAX pages per 10 meg of hard disk space.
MAIL BOXES:
Most voice mail software gives a limit to the number of mail
boxes you can have, but I couldn't find anything that states
the limits with PhonePak. So I finally thought to check the
maximum route number you assign to get to a mail box.
That number is 1 Billion. Yes, that is a 'B'. A mail box can
have a route number from 0 - 999999999. And that is just from
the 'initial' mail box. So the real limit will be the size of
your hard drives.
A mail box uses a standard AmigaDOS directory, b