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Philip Pemberton | 1 Jan 2005 01:19

Re: [OT] Happy New Year!

In message <1104534003.15257.192.camel <at> pII266>
          Herbert Graf <hgraf@...> wrote:

> Happy New Year! Greetings from Austria. No snow here though... shame
> really... TTYL

Greetings from England too :)
No snow here either, but there's still plenty of fireworks... Not gonna get
much sleep tonight :-P

Later.
-- 
Phil.                              | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB,
philpem@...              | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice,
http://www.philpem.me.uk/          | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI
... This is a Tagline mirror><rorrim enilgaT a si sihT
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Josh Koffman | 1 Jan 2005 01:26
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Re: [OT] Happy New Year!

Don't fret Herbert! We went from a snowstorm the day before Christmas
to rain the last couple days, which has turned the city into a giant
drab puddle. Very little snow left. I expect accidents galore tonight
though with the combination of frozen puddles and less than sober
drivers.

Happy New Year :)

Josh
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completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools.
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On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 18:00:03 -0500, Herbert Graf <hgraf@...> wrote:
> Happy New Year! Greetings from Austria. No snow here though... shame
> really... TTYL
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Josh Koffman | 1 Jan 2005 01:32
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Re: [OT] Can old PCs be used to provide voice mail for the homeless?

What a nice idea James. One thing you may want to look into is
Asterisk. It's an open source VoIP PBX. I've never set it up, but I've
heard it isn't exactly easy. However, it would have a ton of benifits,
especially in this application. I understand it will handle all
voicemail, just like a big professional PBX. You can set up an
automated response system (ie press 1 for XXX) as well. Then all you'd
need is VoIP service (Vonage is I think one of the biggest right now)
and a connection to the net. People could dial in and leave messages,
and others could dial in and check them. Since you don't need to
interface to any local telephones (ie a real POTS phone in your house)
you don't even need any special hardware. All calls coming in would
come over the VoIP number.

I think the real problem here is the setup/maintenance.

Josh
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A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools.
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On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 15:20:38 -0800, James Newton, Host
<jamesnewton@...> wrote:
> I've had a request from a social worker friend (Dept of Veterans Affairs and
> he is one of the ones who really cares, and does a lot of good) to look into
> the possibility of recycling old PCs into voice mail servers to be used to
> provide homeless people with a place for prospective employers to call and
> leave messages.
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Aza D. Oberman | 1 Jan 2005 01:37

Re: [OT] Can old PCs be used to provide voice mail for the homeless?

<James Newton, Host, writes in part>

> I've had a request from a social worker friend (Dept of Veterans Affairs
and
> he is one of the ones who really cares, and does a lot of good) to look
into
> the possibility of recycling old PCs into voice mail servers to be used to
> provide homeless people with a place for prospective employers to call and
> leave messages.

What about using standard modem services to pick up the line and send a
message like "press 100 for Joe Jones, press 101 for Mary Smith, etc"?

I believe you can then use the sound card to read the DTMF tones and record
into an appropriate file for playback later.

I'm sure there are automated answering systems out there that run on stuff
as crummy as '386s.  Perhaps if you poke the usual suspects (eBay, junk
dealers, and telcom resellers) you can give these homeless folks access to a
pretty slick, professional sounding system on only one phone line for
peanuts.

Hardly a PIC adventure, but it seems like it would get the job done.

Happy New Year,

Aza D. Oberman

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Spehro Pefhany | 1 Jan 2005 02:08
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Re: [OT] Can old PCs be used to provide voice mail for the homeless?

At 07:37 PM 12/31/2004 -0500, you wrote:
><James Newton, Host, writes in part>
>
> > I've had a request from a social worker friend (Dept of Veterans Affairs
>and
> > he is one of the ones who really cares, and does a lot of good) to look
>into
> > the possibility of recycling old PCs into voice mail servers to be used to
> > provide homeless people with a place for prospective employers to call and
> > leave messages.
>
>What about using standard modem services to pick up the line and send a
>message like "press 100 for Joe Jones, press 101 for Mary Smith, etc"?
>
>I believe you can then use the sound card to read the DTMF tones and record
>into an appropriate file for playback later.
>
>I'm sure there are automated answering systems out there that run on stuff
>as crummy as '386s.  Perhaps if you poke the usual suspects (eBay, junk
>dealers, and telcom resellers) you can give these homeless folks access to a
>pretty slick, professional sounding system on only one phone line for
>peanuts.
>
>Hardly a PIC adventure, but it seems like it would get the job done.
>
>Happy New Year,
>
>Aza D. Oberman

Some of the fax programs (Winfax, Easy Fax) have this capability, when
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Russell McMahon | 1 Jan 2005 02:07
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Re: [OT] Perspectives on the Earthquake Tsunami net

>> BTW, I just realized that I've failed to point out that a few years 
>> of
>> traffic related deaths in the US more than matches this
>> tsunami for number of people dead.
>
> Anyone aware of what is happening (and what has already happened) in 
> a
> few different regions of Afrika?

Much reduced effects in Africa due to distance BUT still 100+ known 
dead, probably 100+ actually dead, and many thousands injured and 
homeless.

Most (> 95%) buildings swept away on Somali island of Hafun.

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4129639.stm

       http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041229/ap_on_re_af/eastern_africa_quake

US dept of state notice re Tsunami 1 Jan 2005

        http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_tsunami.html

        RM

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Russell McMahon | 1 Jan 2005 02:11
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Re: [OT] Can old PCs be used to provide voice mail for the homeless?

>> I've had a request from a social worker friend (Dept of Veterans 
>> Affairs and
>> he is one of the ones who really cares, and does a lot of good) to 
>> look into
>> the possibility of recycling old PCs into voice mail servers to be 
>> used to
>> provide homeless people with a place for prospective employers to 
>> call and
>> leave messages.

I would have imagined that someone paying for capacity on an existing 
commercial system would work out to be more satisfactory in the long 
term. You swap dollars for labour blood and tears. If you have more 
LBT than $ then maybe you do this. You still need phone line(s) 
dedicated to the task. Arguably a person acting as receptionist would 
provide a better result (first catch your receptionist). "I'm sorry Mr 
Jones isn't in at present, would you please provide contact details 
and a message and I'll .... "

        RM

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Jose Da Silva | 1 Jan 2005 02:11
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Re: [OT] Can old PCs be used to provide voice mail for the homeless?

Search for voice modem software.
These programs used to be DOS programs that came with a modem, so old 
computers running DOS would work fine with them. You mention Pentium class 
machines, but these programs have existed since the x286 and x386.

Today's computers may be a little trickier since most modems back then were 
ISA slot cards versus today's PCI cards.

Doing a search, got this:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/modems/ZyXEL/FAQ/part5/section-4.html

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/voice.asp

http://www.soft411.com/software/voice-modem.html

http://www.simtel.com/welcome.php  is a large reserve of shareware, freeware, 
etc, and may also contain one or more versions of voice modem software.
(check the answering machine section)

Hope that helps.
Happy New Year!

On Friday 31 December 2004 03:20 pm, James Newton, Host wrote:
> I've had a request from a social worker friend (Dept of Veterans Affairs
> and he is one of the ones who really cares, and does a lot of good) to
> look into the possibility of recycling old PCs into voice mail servers to
> be used to provide homeless people with a place for prospective employers
> to call and leave messages.
>
> If you think about it, one of the harder things for a homeless, or just
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Howard Winter | 1 Jan 2005 02:51
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Re: [OT] Happy New Year!

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:19:13 GMT, Philip Pemberton 
wrote:

> Greetings from England too :)
> No snow here either, but there's still plenty of 
fireworks... Not gonna get
> much sleep tonight :-P

...And from Scotland (Edinburgh to be precise) where the 
fireworks at Midnight were like World War III had broken 
out - and the sky was gleaming brightly over the castle!  
But it's all quietened down now, so sleep shouldn't be a 
problem...

Happy New Year!

Cheers,

 Howard Winter

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pic | 1 Jan 2005 02:46

RE: [PIC] Bootloader for PIC18F6720 required

Thanks all for the links to bootloader.

I will take a closer look at the freeware version as it has source code and
I am not sure if the
commercial one can be configured for the serial ports I am using, Crystal
frequency and Baud rate.

As previously mentioned, the PIC18F252 runs the current bootloader fine and
allows the micro to be reprogrammed,
put back in debug mode etc. The PIC18F6720 allows the bootloader to be
installed but then does not allow the
Boot Code Protect bit to be cleared (Bulk erase will only operate down to
4.5V).

This is a very frustrating issue as the Micro is the "LF" version and runs
down to a couple of volts. All other functions
seem to operate EXCEPT the bulk erase. The IC is TQFP package ha is
difficult to remove or isolate from he 3V circuitry.

It would have been great if there was a warning somewhere in the datasheet
so I could have considered this during design of the hardware.
It appears the TINY loader resides in upper memory rather than the boot
sector and does not protect the memory where the loader resides. (Downside
is that if something goes wrong during upload the customer would need to
send back the hardware for us to reinstall the bootlloader, but advantage is
that the micro does not get stuck in the protected state from which it
cannot be recovered) .

I suppose if I want the loader memory area to be protected I will have to
redesign the hardware for 5V and add 5V - 3V level translation hardware to
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