Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] Re: OK, what did I start now... Gerry Duprey Tue, 25 Aug 1998 12:05:49 -0400 (EDT)

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On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Wayne Wittenberg wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Mark Gilmore wrote:
> > My concern with this effort is the desire for background
> > recording and multi-line processing, both of which could
> > be nightmares. I may try to tackle bkg recording with
> > phn-c first. That way, I can test these waters without
> > committing. I need to think on it.
> 
> I am not a programmer and NOT trying to tell you how to do your job or
> programmer, but please make sure you investigate the Dialogic web site
> before jumping into plain old modem stuff.  These Dialogic boards ARE more
> expensive, but they are built for background & multi-line processing.

Another point (yeah, I've been blathering on a lot about them) - you'll
most likely get a working product going way faster (less time - less cash)
using one of these boards.

Based on my expereince, with a TAPI based modem, you'll get the thing sort
of working quickly, and spend the rest of your time forever running into
annoying inconsistancies.  You'll also get a lot more support calls with
people stumbling into wierd problems that never seem to get solved.

The product I wrote using the DIalogic boards has worked almost as I
wanted it to from the start and I very rarely get any "odd-ball" support
calls on it (it's installed in about 25 schools now, with anywhere from 2
to 12 lines in use).

If you want to get things up and going *quick*, get a Dialogic board,
install the TAPI drivers and get VisualVoice from Artisoft.  I bet, after
reviewing the docs a bit, you can get a basic answering machine style
program going in 2 hours (no bells and whistles, but pretty reliably
recording and playing back messages).

Just make sure to test for possible returned errors (there are a few
tricky spots with proper error handling/recovery, but only 2-3 and *way*
less than using TAPI directly). 

Gerry Duprey                     EMAIL: gerry@msage.com 
Micro Sage Software Systems      VOICE: (734) 663-0444
130 South First Street             WWW: http://www.msage.com/~gerry
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA

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