CPC091592 109.DOC The Complete Answering Machine Questions and Answers This document is provided as "For your information" and as is. Neither The Complete PC nor any of it's employees assume any responsibility for consequences resulting from the use of the following information nor can the Complete PC technical support provide help with this document. The user of said information does so at his or her own risk. What does CAM consist of? A 3/4 length add-in board with its own microprocessor Software to record, playback, dial, and deliver messages User's guide 6' telephone cord Telephone template Remote Access Guide (wallet-sized card) 2 year warranty What does CAM require? An IBM PC, PC-XT, PC-AT or 100% compatable A hard disk drive A DSDD or high capacity 5 1/4" floppy disk drive At least 384 KB of installed RAM with a minimum of 256 KB of available RAM A 80-column display MS-DOS or PC-DOS 2.1 or higher A standard telephone line with a RJ-11 or RJ-14 connection A touch-tone telephone (callers with pulse or rotary phones can leave messages in the default mailbox only) An external amplified speaker How many telephone lines can CAM handle? One telephone line per CAM board. Up to four CAM boards can be used in one PC, each handling a separate line. Will CAM answer the phone or dial out in the background? Yes, you can run your normal software while CAM takes or delivers messages How much RAM does the background code require? CAM's background code, ANSWER, requires 75KB of RAM. This TSR must be loaded in conventional RAM and cannot be loaded in to Extended or Expanded memory. How many mailboxes can CAM support? CAM can support up to 999 mailboxes Can I record my own greetings? Yes, you can have a library of greetings and select one anytime How can I retrieve my messages on CAM? Messages can be retrieved via the keyboard, the local telephone (plugged into CAM), or remotely using a touch-tone telephone from anywhere in the world. Can CAM automatically deliver my messages to me? Yes, using message forwarding, CAM can call you at home, in the car, your pager, or at any telephone number you specify. You can also change this number remotely from any touch-tone phone Can CAM schedule messages for delivery? Yes, you can record messages for delivery to other people and CAM will deliver them whenever you say to (Maximum of 25 messages per mailbox at one time) Will CAM retry message delivery if unsuccessful? CAM will retry up to 16 times, at a time interval you select, to deliver your outgoing messages. How do I know if someone received my outgoing message? You can request a recorded response to your message which will appear in your mailbox as a new incoming message. How long can messages be? Up to 999 seconds Can CAM transfer callers to another extension? Yes, if your phone system has call transfer. Call transfer must work by flashing the switch-hook then dialing the transfer code (optional) and extension How much disk space does a message take? Approximately 3-3.5KB per second of speech, or about 1 MB per 5 minutes of speech Will CAM support multiple levels (trees) of mailboxes? Yes, you can go to any mailbox from any other mailbox while the greeting is playing. Can a caller replay a greeting? Yes, by entering the same mailbox number following by # again Can a caller replay their message? The caller can replay, delete, continue to record, or re-record their message Can anyone retrieve my messages, or change mailbox options? No, all mailboxes are password protected for security. Only those who know the password retrieve messages or change settings. Does CAM require a modem or a COM port on my PC? No Does CAM have a modem which can be used for data transfer? No Does CAM use a speech synthesizer for the voice? No, CAM digitizes your voice and stores it on the hard disk for retrieval and playback. For every five minutes of speech it will require one megabyte of hard drive space. What is the sampling rate that CAM uses for digitizing voice? 8K samples per second. This is then compressed to 3-3.5K bytes per second for storage efficiency. Can I type in text and have CAM convert this to voice? No, CAM does not have this capability Will CAM work on pulse dial phone systems? No, CAM only works with tone dial phone systems What type of phone system will CAM work on? You should contact your telephone system installer and tell them that you need a standard Bell 2500 type analog telephone line. Note: This is the same type of phone line that the phone company supplies to your home or business. As a rule if you can put a modem on the phone system then CAM should work. Some phone systems won't work unless you use some type of adapter (i.e. AT&T Merlin requires a Basic Telephone Modem Interface to work) Can I have "Private" mailboxes? Yes, you can give business associates, friends, or relatives their own private mailboxes with personalized greetings Will CAM operate on a Local Area Network (LAN)? CAM must be installed on a local PC with a local hard drive. CAM has been tested with machines running Novell and 3COM networks Does CAM have a personal telephone dialer? Yes, and you can store up to 200 telephone numbers My CAM board operates erratically? Make sure that DIP switches 4 and 5 are both down (off) if your board has a five position DIP switch Are there telephones that CAM is incompatible with? Yes, CAM is not compatable with Panasonic telephones as well as many full feature or two line phones Are there versions of DOS that CAM operates erratically with? Yes, on the Epson Equity 1+ you need to use Epson MS-DOS 3.2 versus PC-DOS 3.3 Is CAM compatable with disk compression software? No, CAM will not work properly if installed on a hard drive using a disk compression scheme. CAM must be installed on an uncompressed drive.