Re: flexfax: ISDN Cards & Hylafax

[David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>]

> I would like to know which ISDN cards are supported by hylafax. Using my
> ancient AVM A1 (Class 0,8) Card on /dev/cui2
> i can't fax anything whereas with windows im able to fax.

I believe that is because the AVM card (also sold as the BT card in
the UK) is the ultimate of Win modems when used as a modem, i.e. a host
DSP modem.

In other words, there is no modem hardware or firmware at all and
a software driver does the digital signal processing (that replaces
analogue filters, etc., even in ordinary modems) is done in host software.
I suspect that the necessary drivers haven't been released for Unix.
They are likely to be significantly more demanding on the real time
performance of the system than even Class 1 fax modems, and therefore
not particularly suited to a multi-user system.

Hylafax requires that the combination of card and driver look like an
asynchronous serial port connected to an analogue fax modem as far
as operations done with system calls like open, close, read, write,
and terminal ioctls are concerned.  The easiest way of doing this is
by having a modem in the Terminal Adaptor, and connecting to the host
through a real asynchronous serial port, although any solution that
provides the same API with adequate performance will do.

> Has anyone installed Thomas Pfeiffers patched version of hylafax in order to
> get it working with ISDN Cards?

Not aware of these patches.