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My Protel Pay Phone with issues

Started by Sigmaz, December 19, 2017, 11:45:31 AM

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Sigmaz

#15
OK!
I've got Dos 6.22 and ExpressNet booting off an SD card via USB reader..
It makes a nice tidy easy way of keeping the machine from being a special purpose rig. The virtual machine route had issues and was too finicky.

OS/Hardware wise everything is fine as far as that goes however.. I'm having a little trouble with some other operational things that are most likely the result of a messed up program load in the phone.

Does anyone have the lowdown on programming code 28 I was lead to believe that this is used for forcing the phones modem to use either 300 or 1200 bps ( I was informed to enter 28 01010101 * to force the phone to 1200 but I think this bit may be the source of  some of my trouble.

Also.....
I have to force the PC modem to 300 bps (AT...&N1) to get communications with the phone but then I just hit the next wall.

ExpressNet is reporting I have a problem with my security code (Err 13) and fails the poll attempt.
I tried leaving the code empty, 0000, and a self defined value in the options. no dice. may be because i never got *#3 to work...

I have initialized the phone several times (00 xxxxxxxxxx *, 25 xxxxxxxxxxx *) but still have this issue.
Is there a factory default jumper or code that can be entered to dump the nvram settings from it's previous life?

I'm also interested in any docs on the 29x range of programmable features.
I'm taking a hunch that range pertains to the pin codes for coin box totals, coin box clearing, card pin...
I wish there was more available documentation out there...

So it's a few things I'm running into.. the phone will train down to 300 to accept polls, but I have a security code issue.. and the other way around is that the phone will call the pc and connect at 1200 at the modem layer, but the data is corrupted because the modem assumes I have a protel modem?..
FYI Protel modem Y/N option is set to NO..

I don't care if it takes longer, the one who tells me how to force the phone down to 300 gets a star.


Thanks guys
Jon



Payphone installer

email me on my email with your phone number I can help you. jimrayxx@aol.com it is way to much to type.

Payphone installer

The baud rate or modem speed can be  adjusted in the software. It is set in the site record. Do you have any firmware loaded in the software? Do you have a rate file set up in the software? Do you have a options file set up in the software? These are all imports that are necessary for the phone to take the download. What board are you trying to download? This may help.

Payphone installer

instructions

Payphone installer

more

Sigmaz

Quote from: Payphone installer on December 30, 2017, 04:14:02 PM
The baud rate or modem speed can be  adjusted in the software. It is set in the site record. Do you have any firmware loaded in the software? Do you have a rate file set up in the software? Do you have a options file set up in the software? These are all imports that are necessary for the phone to take the download. What board are you trying to download? This may help.

I do have a site record, costing record, and options record set up.
As for firmware,  I do not know where in the file structure it would be stored or where to get any update packages .
The software copy I have doesn't show any folders.
I am attempting to load an 8000 series board. FYI I have 2 and they are both behaving the same..
They are also both from the same source.
Thanks for the cheat sheet captures..

Jon

I'll email you now.

.....

Payphone installer

I hope you don't mind, I cleaned up your pictures and put them into PDF form.

Payphone installer

I am not in front of a PC with the software running and have not been for a long time,but I can look at it on Tuesday. I do know that as you look at the site record on the right as I recall it says firmware version once you talk to the phone this will populate with the version number. If your chassis has never connected it will not be there. There are certain versions of firmware that work better on certain chassis.

Payphone411

I can post the Expressnet Software manual on my website tomorrow.
Also what screen shots do you want.

Sigmaz

#24
YEAY!!!!

I got it to take a download!!

just on a whim I hit the *#2 command as If I was switching the chassis out.. sure enough it took the Download without complaint!

That's big news for today. I'm so excited!
Of course the phone number and rates and options will be fixed but for now this is a huge deal since I've been hacking at this unit for a couple of weeks.

(Oh, and nevermind the flags, This test was done with a spare chassis laying on the bench)


Protel8000

What modem did you end up using for your setup?

I have ExpressNet installed on Windows 98SE, and was trying to use a Zoom 3049 serial port modem. ExpressNet sees the modem and will answer a call, but after the initial "negotiation" when it seems like it should be sending data it just hangs up. Do you have to use a special init string?

Thanks for any insight you have! I'd love to get this working with my 8000 board phone.

Sigmaz

#26
Ahh here you are..


I first need to recommend that you attempt programing on a real phone line.
That being said, I did get mine to talk on a GV trunk through an SPA1001.

One thing you'll see is that the modem will connect and then the s/w will time out.
This is because there is a lot of error correction going on between the modem and the phone. one thing you can do is watch the modem screen and the physical modem.
once the connection is made the timer will drop 3 times on the third rundown hit the pause button on the keyboard, this will freeze the timer.
watch the modem for activity. when the TX and RX lights burst simultaneously that's an indication that the phone sent its ID string.
This is cached in the modems buffer and if you hit the pause key and release the timer it should show up on the log screen and resume where it left off.
If you get a security code invalid or mismatch error, have the phone call in for programming with *#02 instead of *#03.

This has always worked for me on phones that were removed from service and are being reprogrammed with new info.

I don't think the old security code is deleted when you reinitialize the chassis but *#02 gets around this and the new one is programmed in from the site files.

If you have more questions feel free to PM or simply ask.

Protel8000

I am using Google Voice, and my "home" phone line is powered by an Obi 200 adapter (this is where the payphone is connected).

I also have an old Obi 110 adapter that I have hooked up for my modem. Lots of VOIP/Compression, not ideal...

But the way I'm trying to make this work, is I actually set a speed dial on my "home" phone obi so that by dialing 2, it rings my Obi110 adapter. This all goes over the Obitalk network (since the Obi110 isn't actually linked to any voice providers).

I may need to break down and just buy a phone line simulator to take the VoIP out of the picture.

But I did make progress with the Pause button. After pausing during the connection, when it decided to resume the XNET terminal it actually showed my incoming site phone number that is programmed into the phone, so there is *some* communication going on at least. However now I am having trouble with getting XNET to "Unpause" so it's frozen up completely.

Sigmaz

#28
Maybe if you strike the enter key it'll unpause.. some machines don't release as in "unpause" when the pause button is hit again.. perhaps because the interrupt is ..umm... IDK paused? lol

If you are only going from ATA to ATA you may have some success because you're not making the trip out into an offsite server and then back.

Also I have confirmed that you must run this on the actual machine and not in a VM or otherwise virtualized environment.
The hypervisor totally messes with the timers in the software.

There has been developed an image that can be burned to a USB stick or SD card that would allow you to boot your regular machine into DOS6.22 with ExpressNet.
This eliminates the need to load a bare bones machine to perform these operations.

Sigmaz

I built a simple simulator using a 9V battery and a couple of jelly bean parts.. the problem with that is that you can't force the modem to answer without ring current..

You could build one with a SLIC in it but if you start down that rabbit hole you'd be just as bad as me.