Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!nebulus!root
From: root@nebulus (Dennis S. Breckenridge)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: voice mail for 386ix
Keywords: voice mail vpix 386ix
Message-ID: <1989Nov21.141602.12220@nebulus>
Date: 21 Nov 89 14:16:02 GMT
References: <4525@gaboon.UUCP>
Organization: Alchemy Mindworks, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 33

asv@gaboon.UUCP (Stan Voket) writes:

>I've been toying with the idea of putting a voice mail board in my 
>386.  The Dialogic I saw at Unix Expo has 386ix drivers but is an OEM 
>priced is Watson.  It is DOS only.  I know it would be a cpu hog but I 
>wouldn't be at the machine if I had it enabled.  

DOS only means serious limitations for vpix. The board probably is 
interrupt driven and requires a device driver (config.sys). Vpix 
will not work very well in this environment! VPIX is a user process
to unix. That is, it can be preempted by another process and if it
becomes a CPU hog the Unix scheduler does not give it an entire tick
of runtime. What this means to a DOS program is that the interupt
your voice board needs to be serviced now may or may not get serviced
now. This usually croaks the application. 

DO NOT RUN ANY HIGH INTERUPT DRIVEN hardware under VPIX and expect it to work
Hell I even tried the joystick under vpix and found it too unreliable
and it's just a polled bitwise port.

>Has anyone run this or other voice boards under vpix?  

Nope but I have run AT&T Voicepower Under UNIX/386. They provide some
pretty cool software for handling and creating message files. One a file
has been created you can UUCP it to another site and play it back. 
I hear (grapevine stuff) that they are going to announce an AUDIX like
package for Voice Power. This would be very cool.
-- 
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NAME:     Dennis S. Breckenridge   UUCP: uunet!tmsoft!nebulus!dennis
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