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From: craig@com50.c2s.mn.org (Craig Wilson)
Newsgroups: alt.fax,comp.periphs
Subject: Re: FAX products to be used in a SUN environment
Message-ID: <1990Sep4.124548.18201@com50.c2s.mn.org>
Date: 4 Sep 90 12:45:48 GMT
References: <2119@prles2.prl.philips.nl> <33521@cup.portal.com>
Organization: Com Squared Systems, Inc.
Lines: 85

In article <33521@cup.portal.com> DeadHead@cup.portal.com (Bruce M Ong) writes:
>>FINAL REMARK:
>>There are very few products available which give a real SUN based solution.
>>A lot of offered solutions depend completely or partly on a PC. The only
>>real SUN solution I have had information on is the Bristol Group.

But Hey!  If the network IS the computer, then a PC hung off of the
ethernet is just a distributed controller.  An S-Bus card would be nice,
but you can't put too many of them into one Sparc 1/1+/IPC.  That means
that for multiple fax lines you would have to distribute the cards
around to different Sparcs.  That could be a real administration and
maintenance headache.

By packing one PC with, say, four fax cards and an ethernet controller,
you can get a decent fax server going now for not much money.  Do you
think that an S-Bus fax card is going to be cheap?  Maybe, but I won't
hold my breath.

The way we do it, we have the multifax driver on the network drive.  The
PC's boot off of floppy until they get their network drive 'C' mounted.
Then they finish the boot and startup the fax driver.  The driver runs
as a TSR so that DOS command line control is maintained in case you
want to look at logs, etc.

One installation we have running has three PC's with four fax cards
apiece.  This site receives from 1700 to 2000 faxes a day with the
average fax message being about 2.5 pages.  At this point, all of the
fax messages are run through the UNIX server (Not Sun) and are printed
on one of two laser printers that are three floors away from the
incoming fax lines.

The next phase, starting soon, will display the fax messages on a high
resolution monitor in one window while the data entry operator performs
order entry through another window to the backend mainframe computer.
Signature blocks on the faxes will be used for routing standard forms to
one place, nonstandard to another.  This phase will do away with
printing of most of those faxes.

So, it is all in your mind.  Stuff some fax cards into a PC, hang it on
the network, and forget about it.  If the cards are reputable, the
system WILL JUST WORK, after a wee bit of programming.  Okay, maybe a
bit more than a wee bit.  Not a major task, but if you feel
uncomfortable in the PC arena, a systems solution is available from many
places.

>	If you do look into PC based solution , you have to check out the
>multi-channel cards, otherwise, you'll have to have a pc to host each card.
> ...
>But with MSDOS being single 
>tasking, you'll have to write some TSR of your own to drive multiple cards, or
>use some multi-tasker like DesqView - which will become a nightmare when you
>have to network with the sun...

The cards that we use are XAFAX cards from OAZ out of Sunnyvale, CA.
They are intelligent with their own buffer memory.  You can gadzillions
in one PC, if they will fit.  OAZ sells a multifax board driver with
their boards.  It isn't perfect, but it is pretty good and getting
better.

Tip of the Week:

I personally will not put more than four cards in one PC chassis.  
Primarily due to heat and power supply considerations.  I just like 
to be conservative when it comes to systems that I have to support from
hundreds of miles away.

>I mean, c'mon - real hardware hackers dont do Intel...

Don't I wish it were true.

>If I were to make a decision, I would spend the
>money to get a real sun solution, and save a million headaches later on.

You would probably spend a lot of money and still end up with headaches.
Given any three products that deal with compressed bit maps, one of them
will need the bits reversed.  

BTW, the products can be from the same manufacturer and the above law 
still applies.


My only relationship with OAZ is as a satisfied customer.  Drop me an
e-mail message if you can't find their telephone number.

/craig