MS530 Fax / Voice Reception

We have had some reported incidents of MS530's being set up to receive either faxes or voice mail, but only receiving voice mail.

When a fax is sent, the MS530 will respond as if it were receiving a voice message, and asks the fax machine to leave a message after the beep.

There is a reference to the problem of fax/voice line sharing in the Cyberworks help file, from within Cyberworks, press F1 for help, click search and select fax receive mode, and select Switching the Fax/Voice line in the topics box that comes up.

When the MS530 answers the line, it can only tell if a fax machine is calling if it receives a CNG tone from the fax to identify to the PC that a fax is calling. If the PC receives that tone, the normal fax handshaking procedure takes place, and then the data transfer. If it doesn't receive a CNG tone, it assumes that the caller is human, and plays the answerphone greeting, and prepares to record an audio message. Like humans, fax machines generally dial a number and await a response from the person / fax at the other end of the line before doing anything else. The Cyberworks documentation states that many modems send out the correct tones, unfortunately it is a recent idea, and the majority of fax machines don't send out the correct tones.

There are two ways around this:

On a per call basis

As the answerphone message is playing, the caller can dial in the fax mailbox number. The default number is 77. The MS530 will then switch into fax-receive mode.

It is worth noting that not all fax machines will allow the mailbox number to be dialled after the MS530 has answered the call.

Further information - Switching the Fax/voice line in Cyberworks Help.

The MS530 can be switched into Fax-receive mode manually be clicking on Receive in the Cyberworks control centre (the little status window).

Further information - Switching the Fax/voice line in Cyberworks Help.

Switching to Fax receive only mode

In the Cyberworks message centre, click on the configure menu, and then the settings option. When the settings dialogue box appears, click on the modem button.

The Mode setting at the bottom of the window allows the user to specify what the limits of the MS530 are. It will allow the MS530 to be set to receiving faxes, sending faxes, and other combinations of fax and voice settings. If you set it to Receive Fax Only, the MS530 will be restricted to receiving faxes until the mode is changed again.

Further information - Modem Settings in Cyberworks Help.

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