>What ever happened to setting the modem's dip switch to auto answer? Is
>this not a viable alternative?
Not if your modem is all controlled through firmware and init strings
and doesn't have dip switches <g>! Actually, I think the situation is
where modems that are less frequently used may manage to lock up or
otherwise become munged while sitting there waiting for a call. By issuing
an "ATZ" command (or dropping the TR line) on modems that have been idle
for a specified period of time, the reset tends to fix whatever might be
ailing the "stale" modem (if there was a problem in the first place).
Good commercial BBS software packages, such as Galacticomm's MajorBBS or
WorldGroup have this feature. Every xxx minutes the software resets all
the idle modems.
Personally, I'd like to see it in the PMs, although I'd settle for a
compiled program that ran from cron (I hestitate to use plain perl scripts,
only because the PM's password would have to be stored in it and might be
observed through ps on the host where is was running...)
As an aside on the topic of stale modems, since Ascend is getting alot of
bandwidth on the list these days based on Livingston's forthcoming
"Ascend-Killer" - It's interesting to note the syslog entries from a P-50
that indicate it reboots itself every day or two. I'm told that they have
a problem locking up, but Ascend has good enough code to cause it to reboot
rather than hang. Anyone else with P-50's see this?