Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Thu, 23 May 1991 11:41:23 PDT From: "Jonathan M. Zweig" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: A Very Simple ISDN Question Reply-To: zweig.PARC@xerox.com Message-ID: Organization: Xerox PARC Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 393, Message 7 of 14 Lines: 28 oberman@ptavv.llnl.gov writes: [stuff deleted] > Bottom line -- ISDN is a pure digital medium. Analog equipment will > NOT work with it. Period. Answering systems included. I expect two > products to appear to take care of this. ISDN answering machines and a > limited ISDN to analog converter. The latter would work well with > things like answering machines. I don't know about modems. In theory > they would work, but I suspect that there might be interoperability > problems. GACK! This is in direct disagreement with the existence of POTS interface doohickies I have seen demos of. Basically a box that has an RJ11 jack for a vanilla phone, and just enough ISDN smarts in it to accept dial strings, produce ring voltages, etc. I admit it's pretty horrid to think of turning my data into analog screamishness so it can get redigitized a meter away, but it would certainly work to plug a Trailblazer into the analog jack of a suitably equipped ISDN phone. 64,000 digitizations per second is 64,000 digitizations, whether my CO's 5ESS switch does it, or the box on my wall. Johnny Phone