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My Protel Pay Phone with issues

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

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Protel8000

Haha yeah, I'm not sure if I'm ready to jump into the rabbit hole yet! maybe just one foot first...

What part of the timer should I be looking for the drops? I think I may just have my timing off as to when I'm pausing. It seems to be resuming now, may have just been a hiccup with the virtual machine.

Sigmaz

#31
HAH!
I was just posting something about this and my browser crashed.

Mistake 5: You can't use ExpressNet in a VM.. The hypervisor totally freaks out the timing.

This should help you out a little..

Note: the image will partition your device to ~30MB that's all. The remaining space will be inaccessible to the OS.
So i recommend that you only use a smaller stick or card for the project..

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WOrBpDpGfahQN3zpFV1NKHSscMhxww0t

Protel8000

Oh wow! Maybe down the road I'll build the ultimate 486 Payphone Server lol.

I just downloaded the image, thanks for sharing! I have a few extra USB sticks that I can try it out on. Thanks again! I'll post back later on how it's going.

Sigmaz

Also, MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE CORRECT TARGET WHEN WRITING THE IMAGE!!
The Win32DiskImager has no problem writing to your local drives.. make sure you select the USB or SD card before you click write.

Protel8000

Good to know! I was able to make it boot via USB for my ThinkPad.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to find a machine with a native serial port, or get an adapter to expose my ThinkPad's hardware serial port. I've been using a USB to Serial adapter, which Windows can see but obviously DOS can't.

I think my desktop computer has on-board serial but I'd need to get a port to plug into the pins on the motherboard to expose it.

Or another option may be to just find a late 90's era laptop and make it a dedicated payphone controller.

I'll give everyone an update once I decide which route I'm going to do!

The more options I think of, the more money I think of needing to spend  :o ;D

Sigmaz

I'm looking forward to reading about your progress.

Yeah, serial ports are just one more of those useful peripherals that seem to be disappearing with every tick of the clock.

Protel8000

I've ordered a serial port bracket with header connections to connect to my desktop's motherboard, and also a docking station for my ThinkPad, which has a native serial port that is passed through from the motherboard. We'll see which one gets here first!


Protel8000

#38
Running Sigmaz's Bootable USB image on real PC hardware with a real serial port worked on the first try! No special setup, 1200 baud over VoIP even!

Thank you Sigmaz for your help and for the Bootable image. Now I need to learn ExpressNet....  :o ;D

Edit: I had a few issues with subsequent connections, probably due to latency/noise from the VoIP line. I changed my settings to force 300 Baud and that seems to have improved the results.

Sigmaz

Woo hoo!
I'm glad it worked out man!

Payphone_Installer gave me a brief trainer on how to use ExpressNet.
Most of the features you will not use. It's the most robust and remarkable software and controller.
It really is a miniaturized central office in a box.

One good thing is that every screen has detailed help but terms and workflow may still take a little while to get.

Depending on what you plan on doing with your phone, I could probably help you get it configured thanks to my professional training session.
Lol

Protel8000

Thank you! I've been playing with ExpressNet all evening, it's really powerful! I even created a rate band for the "new" toll free 833-844-855-866 numbers and made them free calls.

So Call Centric gives out free phone numbers (NY area codes) with unlimited free inbound calls, which I went and registered to my Obi 110 box. Now my phone has an actual dial-in number to use! Next step, get a low power PC and make a dedicated "server"

If anyone has a personal Protel phone that they'd like programmed a certain way (and it's compatible with ExpressNet) I'd be happy to try to set up a site record for you and let you dial in - I can't guarantee how well it'll work with my VoIP connection, but at 300 baud it seems to be working for me where the phone is dialing out via my "home" line (Obi200 adapter) via Google Voice, and then going out to the internet, and back into my network via my Call Centric inbound line (Obi110 adapter). So far, so good!

Also, is there a table of what the Phone Status Flags indicate? Maybe I'm just overlooking it in the documentation but I can't seem to find it.

Sigmaz

I'm glad you got it working well..
I think my Protel MODEM is to be delivered today.

I may ask you to test it out for me as there aren't that many remote people actively working on hobby protel phones at this moment.

Oh and BTW, I believe that all of the flags enable/disable are listed in the bottom of the options file section.

Protel8000

Awesome! Yeah I'm happy to help you test it out.

Protel8000

Quote from: Sigmaz on April 19, 2018, 04:21:16 PM
Oh and BTW, I believe that all of the flags enable/disable are listed in the bottom of the options file section.

Here's all of the flag codes from the reporting setup screen

Sigmaz

Or they may be on the bottom of the reporting setup screen. Lol