luesak@uop.uop.edu (Luesak Chowpradith) (05/04/91)
Would anybody be able to give me some information regarding a fax software that can be run on the Novell network. Right now I plan to buy a JT 9600 Hayes internal fax card and I would like to buy a software that the people on the network can share the fax. You can post or e-mail the information to me. Thank You in advance. Luesak -- +------------------------------------------||---------------------------------+ | |||| ||| || ||||||| | Luesak Chowpradith | | ||||||| |||||||| || ||| || | =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ | | || ||||||||| | Internet: luesak@uop.edu | | |||||| |||||| |||||||| |||||||| ||||||||| | fuzzy@uop.edu | | || || || || ||| || || || |---------------------------| | |||||| ||| || ||||| || || || || ||| || | Disclaimer: | | || || || || || || || || || || || | "This is rubbish!!!" | | ||| || |||||| || || || || |||||| || | --XYZ | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
kusumoto@chsun1.uchicago.edu (Bob Kusumoto) (05/07/91)
luesak@uop.uop.edu (Luesak Chowpradith) writes: > Would anybody be able to give me some information regarding >a fax software that can be run on the Novell network. Right now >I plan to buy a JT 9600 Hayes internal fax card and I would like >to buy a software that the people on the network can share the fax. >You can post or e-mail the information to me. Thank You in advance. Since you're buying the fax card, I would probably suggest going with buying network licenses to PC Tools Deluxe and hope things work out for the best. The only other solution would be cc:Mail fax option, but it makes almost no sense if you're not using cc:Mail already. On the other hand, if you're willing to spend some money ($2.5-4k range + a decent machine maybe), there are a few options out there. I've explored the following: 1) Gammalink's Gammanet software/hardware package. Requires a PC with a good amount of memory to make it work perfectly (3MB+). The company has been making fax boards for quite a while now and have a decent networked fax products for a while now. It runs in dedicated or non-dedicated mode, but the dedicated mode is a hell of a lot better, since it will convert on the fly rather than convert only when the fax software is run in non-TSR mode. Their product supports many file formats before faxing so that it's probably the most versitile of the products I looked at. Its also expandable up to 8 cards in one PC server (which hands off the novell network like a node). I had problems with getting the thing to work on a Compaq 386/20 on my 2.15c network. They claim it has to do with the Arcnet network I was running at the time. It's the only product I looked at that will handle postscript files. Also routes faxes with DTMF (touch tone) codes after answer to a user. 2) OAZ's NetFax Manager software/hardware package. Requires a 286/386 PC. This product looks a lot nicer than the Gammafax, at least in the fax server's console screen. The product runs as a dedicated only mode, and uses a email program called PMail (not to be confused with Pegasus) and MHS (included). The PMail program is nice, since it will let you view incoming faxes. The software will route faxes automatically via DTMF or DID (direct inward dialing trunks). It has your basic file formats that it can convert (HP PCL, PCX, uncompressed TIFF, ASCII and G3 fax format). Up to four fax boards can be placed in the fax server. It sits off the network as a node as well. I tested this with an AST Bravo/286 (10Mhz) with 2MB of RAM (extended or EMS 4.0) on the same 2.15c network over ARCNET. Although it looked OK, I didn't go with this product for a few reasons: a) I already had a mail program (cc:Mail) and it was a waste to have users learn another email program. b) It was difficult to send faxes. I have a lot of dumb users and the last thing I need is to explain how to send faxes every 5 minutes over and over again (to the same people invariably). c) In the tested configuration, it kept giving me low memory messages, which means that it wasn't using expanded or extended memory at all. Also, I had to reset the date a number of times since it would not increment the date after the first midnight it encountered. DID is a plus for larger installations, but I didn't get this version. I should mention that OAZ and Gammalink sell their own fax boards with their product. I don't believe that other fax boards can be substituted. 3) Castelle's Faxpress. This is a box that sits off the network and basically looks like a novell server (with a connection to one netware server to get the necessary files it needs to run). It has 4MB of memory and basically handles PCL jobs (either output or file). There's only one line so that it's not expandable but there is a serial and parallel printer port on the box so that you can attach a couple printers to it (and run a queue). I believe it basically assumes that there is a PCL 3 or 4 or higher printer attached to the ports for direct fax printing, but having a box that doubles as a remote print server is a nice bonus. Since its not expandable, the only thing to do when you want additional fax lines is to buy more of these boxes (at $3.5-4k a pop). The software is ok, but not great. It runs a couple of TSRs on the workstation to have it work with the fax server, plus there's this popup TSR that will capture the parallel port nicely. Otherwise it can handle either PCL output or ASCII files with the main program. There's no automatic routing so it's not a good deal if there's no one with enough rights to view the incoming faxes to route it manually. Apart from that, it's pretty good. We bought one and ran it on our 3.10a server running a coax ethernet segment. Works out ok. We didn't intergrate it with cc:Mail because it forced the cc:Mail name to be a certain length (like 8 or 10 characters) and most of our cc:Mail names are longer. There are other options that we didn't explore but we didn't pursue them due to time. Hope this helps. Bob -- Bob Kusumoto | I just come from the land of Internet: kusumoto@chsun1.uchicago.edu | the sun/ from a war that must Bitnet: kusumoto%chsun1@uchicago[.bitnet] | be won in the name of truth. UUCP: ...!{oddjob,gargoyle}!chsun1!kusumoto | - New Order, "Love Vigilantes"