Telephones and ZyXel modems...

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Hi Jason!

> Anyway, my one remaining problem is that I need to use the telephone
> interface on my modem to listen to and record messages (not having any
> other means), but I can't seem to get the telephone jack on the ZyXel to
> work 100%.

This is a non solvable hardware problem. The ZyXEL 1496 has one
relais. It connects the ZyXEL to the telco line or the phone.

> Plugging the phone into the "phone" jack seems OK - I get a dial tone,
> and can dial out. 

That's the normal position of the relais. The modem is disconnected
from the phone line and the phone is connected.

> But when I try to use zplay to play a message back, it
> simply clicks, the dial tone disappears, then eight seconds of silence
> later, it hangs up. 

zplay activates the relais, this produces a click in your phone and
it disconnects your phone from the phone line and the dialtone
disappears. Then zplay sends the message to the phone line and
detects a dialtone and aborts playing.

> Playing to the modem's internal speaker via "zplay
> -s" works fine (except it sounds awful) 

This is because of the bad qualitiy speaker inside the modem. The
signal to the speaker is very fine.

> - so it definitely appears to be a hardware issue.  

Yes, it is.

> Currently the only real way I can records messages is to ring
> myself fron another phone - a bit anal-retentive I feel ;-)

There is also a description in the ZyXEL manual how to connect a
microphone to the ZyXEL. I never tried it myself, but other people
reported, that it also doesn't work.

> Finally - does /etc/answer.dev actually work (I haven't tried it). I
> mean, how can vgetty know that an incoming call is voice/data/fax until
> it actually answers it? :-)

It doesn't know. The answer file tells vgetty, which calls it is
allowed to accept. Vgetty reads this file when the phone starts
ringing and selects the way of answering it after enough rings have
been detected. So vgetty _reads_ this file, it does _not_ _write_ it!

Bye,
Marc

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