Amiga GVP PhonePak - fax, voicemail, answerphone

[alewis]

last bits of Amiga kit I found after moving house. Currently on ebay, will end the auction if anyone here wants it.

Provides Amiga with voicemail, fax send/receive, and answerphone capabillities.


ebay auction here

Will be adding A1200 zorro expander board, FastATA-IV IDE controller, Eyetech A-MON scandoubler, HD floppy interface, and 1GB SCSI drive  as a bundle on Tuesday.

[alexh]

The card that broke a thousand Amiga's.

[Homer]

alexh: tell us more  !

I had a Pace Solo with my A1200 doing a similar function until lightning claimed the modem  :cry:

My claim to Amiga fame is still seen on Oliver Roberts webpage as I was one of the beta testers for his Solo upgrade ports  

Thanks to Andy Thomson, Don Cox, Tim Grainger, Will Stanton, Simone Tellini and Ben Vost for beta testing this software.

I can rest now
 :lol:

[alewis]

eh???  No problems in my B2000 or A4000! And never heard of any others having problems either. But please share :-)

[amigadave]

alexh wrote:
The card that broke a thousand Amiga's.

What!?!

I have two cards and was going to set them up in one of my Amiga's to run my business phone to receive FAXes and Voicemail.  So, please let me know why you wrote the above quote.

[alewis]

@Dave

I experienced no problems at all with the PhonePak. You do need to do some planning - I recommened on paper - prior to installation/configuration; notably mailboxes and mailbox routing, and answerphone messages. But this is the same with any VM or PBX software. I've been managing IVR systems for years, and without prior planning it gets very messy, very quckly.

[bloodline]

alexh wrote:
The card that broke a thousand Amiga's.

A thousand Amiga's what?


Oh yes... the grammar pedant is back! :-D

[motorollin]

bloodline wrote:
A thousand Amiga's what?


Oh yes... the grammar pedant is back! :-D

:lol: You beat me to it! I thought exactly those words ("a thousand Amiga's what?") when I read that, but I corrected somebody's grammar a couple of days ago so thought I should give it a rest ;-)

--
moto

[alexh]

Perhaps broke was the wrong term.

The Phonepak card famously refused to work with the A4000/40 (until rev 3.2 of A3640)

As 4 grammar jst l%k w@ hs hapnd 2 lang n d lst 10 yrs!

[bloodline]

alexh wrote:

As 4 grammar jst l%k w@ hs hapnd 2 lang n d lst 10 yrs!

I'm just happy English doesn't have a Genitive case*... :-)



* -Edit- Anymore...

[adolescent]

Also didn't work in the A3000 without available Zorro2 RAM.  Not sure if this was ever resolved.

Edit: I guess an updated Super Buster fixes this.

[amigadave]

alewis wrote:
@Dave

I experienced no problems at all with the PhonePak. You do need to do some planning - I recommened on paper - prior to installation/configuration; notably mailboxes and mailbox routing, and answerphone messages. But this is the same with any VM or PBX software. I've been managing IVR systems for years, and without prior planning it gets very messy, very quckly.

Thanks for the warning and advice, but I have experience with two IVR systems that I managed over the last 15 years, up until two years ago when I changed jobs.  

The setup and recording all the prompts is time consuming, but not too complex.  I think I can handle the 2 or 3 mail boxes and FAX option.  

I am just hoping that receiving and sending FAXes with the PhonePak is well implemented and works well, as my other FAX machine broke a while back and I have need for one about two or three times a month and I expect that to increase by 300% to 500% in the coming month of August (I have a client project that will require a lot of FAXes back and forth and not all of them can be converted to email documents).

I was going to install the cards in an A2000, then decided to change that to perhaps my A3000T.  I hope that they will not have problems with Buster11

[alewis]

Ah, apologies - the egg sucking that may been perceived was entirely unintentional! I've met a number of very inexperienced people, who have come unstuck very rapidly, trying to use solutions such as Asterisk to create IVR... the resultant maze of dead-end options is a joy to troubleshoot ;-)

If you are interested in it, I'll highlight again that I mislaid the original disks but have copies on CD-ROM.

[weirdami]

So what's a "B" 2000 anyway?

[amigadave]

alewis wrote:
Ah, apologies - the egg sucking that may been perceived was entirely unintentional! I've met a number of very inexperienced people, who have come unstuck very rapidly, trying to use solutions such as Asterisk to create IVR... the resultant maze of dead-end options is a joy to troubleshoot ;-)

If you are interested in it, I'll highlight again that I mislaid the original disks but have copies on CD-ROM.

Thanks for the offer, but I have a couple sets of original floppy disks.  If I find that both are corrupted, I will contact you to ask for a copy of your CD-ROM.

Do you have any experience sending and receiving FAXes with the PhonePak?  Also, do you know if it can be connected to a VOIP phone service instead of the local phone company.  I was thinking of checking out Skype or Vonage business plans to get a couple of phone numbers (voice and FAX) for my consulting business that I run from my home.  I guess I could just use one phone number and set an option in the PhonePak menu to send or receive the FAXes.

As for trouble shooting dead end options on any IVR systems, I know what you mean.  What is worse is being on the other side of the problem and being lost while trying to use the IVR system.  I really don't care for IVR systems when I am the customer, but they are only slightly worse than being transferred to a customer service representative that is from another country and barely speaks your language and doesn't understand common sense, or the problem you are calling about. :madashell: