Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!pacbell!ames!lll-winken!uunet!fciva!dag
From: dag@fciva.FRANKLIN.COM (Daniel A. Graifer)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: The future of FAX
Message-ID: <491@fciva.FRANKLIN.COM>
Date: 8 Aug 89 13:18:49 GMT
References: <90@csnz.co.nz>
Reply-To: dag@fciva.UUCP (Daniel A. Graifer)
Organization: Franklin Capital Investments, Inc. McLean, Va.
Lines: 28

In article <90@csnz.co.nz> paul@csnz.co.nz (Paul Gillingwater) writes:
... Lot's of stuff justifying:
>So am I dreaming?  Why can't I just treat a FAX machine as a
>spool queue, able to accept X.400 or RFC message formats?
>I'm convinced this is better than an inboard FAX board in a 
>UNIX box.  Of course you might be able to achieve some of this
>functionality with a cheap PC linked via a LAN...  but why not
>add the intelligence to the FAX machine, and have optional
>interfaces such as V.24, SNA, IEEE-802.3, SCSI or Centronics?
>-- 
>Paul Gillingwater, Computer Sciences of New Zealand Limited
>Bang: ..!uunet!dsiramd!csnz!paul    Domain: paul@csnz.co.nz
>Call Magic Tower BBS V21/23/22/22bis 24 hrs +0064 4 767 326

It seems to me that, given the degree of functionality and flexibility
you are asking for, and given the direction of hardware prices, the
ideal solution to you dream is exactly what you said:  Buy a cheap PC,
put a faxboard and whatever communication controllers and printers 
you want on it, and run unix on it to manage the queues and device
drivers.  You might want to add a DSP board of some kind if you have
a heavy load, but I doubt that would be necessary.  

The cheapest programmable fax machine I've seen is about $1400.  Buy
a pc w/monochrome monitor ($1300?), a fax board ($400), unix ($500),
and a laser printer ($1600?), and you have $3800 system that does 
what you want, and allows for future expansion.

Dan