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Introduction
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If you've got a tip or a trick that you think would benefit other Open Mike readers, please share it with us. Readers whose tip or trick we use will receive a free issue of Open Mike. Such a deal!
Icon Bar Patterns
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Are you tired of the staring at the same old grayish icon bar? Wish you could have it displayed in a different color, or maybe with a cool pattern? If you know how to use ResEdit, the solution is simple; you'll need to replace MicroPhone's ppat resource ID 1000 with one of our own. Make sure you perform the operation on a copy and not the original! Now, you are probably asking yourself, where can I get other ppats? Do you have a utility that changes the background pattern of your desktop? If you do, you'll find a plethora of ppats. Open the utility or one of its accompanying files with ResEdit and look for resources of type 'ppat'. When you copy and paste the ppat into MicroPhone, make sure that it is resource ID 1000. Otherwise, it won't show up.
Stationary Stationery
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If you find yourself opening untitled documents only to change several hundred settings (baud rate, terminal type, etc.), consider creating the settings document once and making a stationery pad out of it. You'll need to be running System 7 or higher to do this.
First, open an untitled document in MicroPhone. Make your Communication and Terminal settings changes (as well as any other changes you want, including adding scripts, etc.). Then, quit MicroPhone. From the Finder, select the settings document. Go to the File menu and choose Get Info. Check the Stationery pad checkbox. Then, close the Get Info panel. That's it! Now, whenever you double-click on this settings document, you'll be asked to give it a new name so that MicroPhone will open a copy of it.
Call Waiting Cure
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Ever been on the receiving end of a call and not been able to turn off your call waiting, only to have a call come in right in the middle of a 20 meg file transfer, disconnecting you from your remote host? Well, most modems can be tweaked to not disconnect, even if the carrier is temporarily lost. To do this, you need to play with S-registers, S-register 10 to be specific. This register controls the delay between a lost carrier and a hangup. Usually, the modem is not very tolerant at all and will almost immediately hang up. S-register 10 can be set to any number from 1 to 255, the number corresponding to tenths of a second. To increase the time your modem will wait for the carrier to return, use a big number in this S-register. My suggestion is the following:
ATS10=50&W
This will cause the modem to wait up to five seconds for the carrier to return before disconnecting the call.
