abc@adm.brl.mil (Brinton Cooper) (02/26/91)
My niece has a PS-1 which runs and connects her to Prodigy (I think). Anyhow, they have call waiting at their house; as you know, this feature of the phone often disconnects dial-up modems. In fact, with their C-64 and TRS-80 machines, they experienced this when calling BBS lines. However, she tells me that when she's connected to Prodigy, the call waiting seems not to work. If someone calls during a Prodigy session, the caller gets a busy signal. Does someone have an explanation? I prefer e-mail. This is a very active group and one that I don't normally read. Thanks, folks. Brint <abc@brl.mil> Brinton Cooper BRL - Where "Research" is our Middle Name. [Moderator's Note: Might it be that the dial-up number for Prodigy being used somehow does not supervise on connection of a call? If supervision is not present, the originating switch may think it is still trying to set up the call. When you first go off hook and dial a number, call-waiting is de-activated since an incoming call at that moment would cause disruption in the dialing process. Otherwise, how about doing two things: (1) give us the in-dial number used for closer examination, and (2) ask your niece to try again and make sure this is really the case. Better still, *you* try calling her when she is known to be online with Prodigy and see if you can knock her down. I suspect she got this report from someone who tried dialing her just as she was dialing into Prodigy. They got a busy signal at that instant (naturally); reported it to her and she misunderstood the exact time at which they called and thought it had to do with Prodigy rather than her status at the moment. PAT]
tnixon@uunet.uu.net (Toby Nixon) (02/28/91)
In article <telecom11.162.9@eecs.nwu.edu>, abc@adm.brl.mil (Brinton Cooper) writes: > My niece has a PS-1 which runs and connects her to Prodigy (I think). > Anyhow, they have call waiting at their house; as you know, this > feature of the phone often disconnects dial-up modems. In fact, with > their C-64 and TRS-80 machines, they experienced this when calling > BBS lines. > However, she tells me that when she's connected to Prodigy, the call > waiting seems not to work. If someone calls during a Prodigy session, > the caller gets a busy signal. > Does someone have an explanation? I believe the Prodigy Startup software asks you whether or not you have Call Waiting. If you do, it automatically prepends "*70," to the phone number when it dials, to disable call waiting. Have them add "*70," to the beginning of phone numbers they use to call BBSes, and they shouldn't get interrupted by Call Waiting any more. There IS another explanation, by the way. The Hayes Personal Modem 2400 that is sold with the Prodigy Startup Kit has a special "Call Waiting" feature. Not only is the modem tolerant of the call waiting interruption, but it also has the ability to inform the software with a special message that a call is coming in. The software can then put a message up on the screen for the user which could say something like "You have another call coming in. Do you want to log off Prodigy and take the call now, or ignore it?" However, even though this feature was added at Prodigy's request (that modem was built by Hayes to Prodigy's detailed specifications), I don't believe the feature has ever actually been supported in Prodigy's software. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-840-9200 Telex 151243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 USA | Internet hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net
Ed_Greenberg@3mail.3com.com (02/28/91)
If I had reliable info that this was happening, I'd check to see exactly what Prodigy was dialing. Perhaps the Prodigious folks programmed their black-box software to dial *70 before the number, just in case? edg