mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) (02/24/90)
Hi folks:
At long last, here's the summary of responses I received to last month's
inquiry about voice mail boards.
----
From Stan Voget (asv@gaboon):
Mark-
I noticed in your posting recently that you have an interest in voice
mail for unix. I've been investigating this for some time myself. Thus
far I've come up with only one baord that willl run under unix. This is
made by Dialogic Corp. of parsnippsomething, NJ. The problem is that
the board is $1200.00, $1000.00 for the unix driver and comes with NO
software. Several people have mentioned that Watson will no run under
VPIX. I think that running a Watson board on your old pc is the only
answer. If you have any other suggestions I'd be very interested.
Try the Watson demo line @ 1-800-6-watson. It's a good demo.
-----
From Remon Lapid (uunet!attctc!Dallas.TX.US!remon)
I unfortunately can assure you that Watson will not work
properly under Interactive's VPIX. I had the board running
under DOS-Merge when I had an 80286 machine.
It appears that VPIX can't keep up with the high interrupt
rate generated by the Watson board. All appears well until
some activity on the machine slows the system down enough
then the Watson software freezes up and its curtains. Even
cron running its little jobs from time to time is enough on
my system (386-16 Mz) to hang Watson.
Perhaps DOS-Merge 386 will do, although I'm not sure which
system offers it instead of VPIX.
I am very interested in knowing if you succeed in finding a
hardware/software combination that works. Could you let me
know what you find?
Thanks in advance.
Remon Lapid
+1 212 473 1149 (voice, evenings).
-------
From Dan (uunet!uop!wells):
I've been using watson for about 2 years now. So far no major problems with
it. Sometimes it gets confused about date and time. If you want to do any
programming with it (press 1 for car,2 for joke...) you will need their VIS
(or was it VAR) interface that they sell for ~$460. There is an outfit in
Canada that makes a watson toolkit with source - all in pascal I'm afraid.
If you can, I'd like to see a summary of the responses you receive.
-Dan.
------
From Jay Bowden (jcb@loral.UUCP)
Complete Answering Machine: You can do what you want with it if what
it does now is what what you want done (i.e., totally closed, non-
extensible system). Poor voice quality. (please buy mine! $120?)
Watson: Great, includes modem (maybe not a great modem), can be
adapted to do anything you can imagine (sometimes by buying more
software, but at least you *can* buy it). The software that
comes with it uses a system of imaginary 'cards'; each card can
be associated with a spoken phrase, or can record a phrase. Cryptic
at first, but if you try writing your OWN programs, you soon discover
that you need something like this. Also, I have a way you can
buy their $75 software add-on (called dbspeaker) and use it to
be able to write programs to control it in Turbo Pascal. To see
what I was able to do with it (all in Turbo Pascal), try calling
(619) 275-2419.
Mail me if I can tell you more. Also, I would appreciate getting
a copy of any of your replies! Thanks!
- Jay
From Dave Buck (dave@dlb.uucp)
I have no experiences to share yet, but I could add to your list of places to
investigate/products to query:
Dialogic Corp, 300 Littleton Rd, Parsipanny NJ 07054,
201-334-8450; they have a "Voice Server".
Bigmouth Voice Mail from Computer Expert, Inc., 1501 Boradway, Suite
2605, NY, NY 10036 (212)840-2010 (ad in Byte)
TeleGenie from Altex Electronics, Inc., 300 Breesport, San Antonio TX
78216 (800)531-5369 (ad in Byte) (system includes circuit board,
software, external speaker, complete docs; voice mail forwards to
extensions/beepers/cellulars, individual greetings&passwords,
multiuser box capacity, remote touch-tone access,
replay/delete/record/edit; unlimited phonebook/database,
autodial/redial/search/sort, caller/computer touch-tone interaction,
user definable voice prompted menus, call forwarding/call distribution,
inbound/outbound call logging, timed calls/automatic attendant)
>Also: does anybody have one working under Unix 386? (Sorry I missed
>the earlier discussion, but I wasn't in the market at the time.) In
>a DOS subtask under Unix?
See TeleGenie above. I'm requesting more info from Altex.
-----
From Phil Hughes (uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl)
I haven't used any but I have been shopping because I have an application
for something close to them. The complete PC people are a pain in the
ass. The board is smart but they will not tell you how to talk to it so
you can't write UNIX drivers. I even talked to their favorite VAR and he
said they wouldn't even tell him.
One other board is called BIGMOUTH by Talking Technology. It looks like
it is reasonable and they are more reasonable to deal with. They claim to
have UNIX drivers in the works. The bad news is that there is no
processor on the board, however they have a new board that is multi-line
and has a processor.
I have the info and have considered playing VAR with them but haven't, as
yet. The list price for BIGMOUTH is $295 or $369 for the board and
developer kit which is supposed to show you how to talk directly to the
board as well as supply a DOS-linkable library. Wholesale, qty 2-4
is $189 and $239.
Their number is 415-652-9600.
------------
From: uunet!chinet.chi.il.us!pdg (Paul Guthrie)
I have Dialogic bds running a voice-mail setup, natively under
Unix. Dialogic sells their own UNIX device driver ($1000),
but I wrote my own. Their prices are high ($2000 for a 4 CO line,
8 local line setup), but their equipment is high quality and
much better than the low end crap. I've never tried watson,
etc.
------
From: uunet!dialogic!drich (Dan Rich)
Dialogic has a four line voice card for the PC with drivers available
for both Unix (ISC, SCO, AT&T, and CTIX) and DOS. For more
information and prices, you can call our sales department at
(201)334-8450. We also just announced a voice editor that will run
under Unix and allow you to record, play and edit voice data.
--
Mark McWiggins Integration Technologies, Inc. (Intek)
+1 206 455 9935 DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong ...
1400 112th Ave SE #202 Bellevue WA 98004
uunet!intek01!mark Ask me about C++!