Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: What is Toll Saver? Message-ID: <11696@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 4 Sep 90 17:24:31 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 34 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 619, Message 1 of 10 Pushpendra Mohta writes: > Be prepared to be mislead if you call immediately after someone called > and left a message. On most (non-digital) answering machines, You > will continue to hear rings till the machine resets itself. Ah, what a sheltered life I've led. The two mechanical answering machines that I have owned that had "toll saver" (or as someone once put it, "cheap realtor") didn't have that problem, and for different reasons. The first was an ancient Coda-a-Phone model 333. This unit did not come with this mode, but one day I got a great idea. The machine had a light on it that would come on if the incoming message tape was "off home", indicating visually that you had messages. There was also an internal resistor that one could change to set the number of rings that would be ignored before the unit answered. Why not put a little relay in the unit that would bridge another resistor in the circuit if the "off home light" was lit, causing the machine to answer on the first, rather than fourth ring? It worked perfectly. And this was long before I had ever heard (1975) of "toll saver". The machine also had the advantage of being able to "reset" immediately. As soon as it hung up, it was ready for the next call. The other machine was a Panasonic two-line (I forget the model number). After each call, it would churn and whirr and clunk, but the entire time this was going on the line was kept off hook. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !