Using same phone line for voice, net and fax has the same problem regardless
of the fax being a pc or a real fax machine. Basically you have to know
beforehand an incoming call is a fax to have the fax answer the phone. If it
isn't a fax, people calling get that obnoxious fax tone if the fax answers
automatically. On the other hand, if you get mostly fax's and you elect to
answer the phone (voice) then it's you that hears the calling fax tone
(equally obnoxious). Your choice.
There are "black boxes" you can buy to connect your phone line to eliminate
this problem. You then plug your fax, modem and phone(s) into plugs into
disticnt plugs on the back of the unit.. The black box "answers" calls and
decides which "line" to switch the call onto (basically the one I tried
answered the phone while "faking" to the caller it was still ringing,
"looked" for a calling fax tone to decide). Doing this does allows one to
set the fax to auto-answer as it's line will only ring when it's a fax
calling in. mYour voice phones don't even ring if it's an incoming fax. On
top of that, the black box "kills" the other devices when the lines in use
so if your using your modem and someone picks up the phone, it's dead and
there was no noise generated on the modem's data stream. Note : the dead
phone, no rings etc. only work for devices connected AFTER the black box so
location of devices is a consideration, e.g. phone connected into main line
and not into black box will always be "live".
Incoming data calls (e.g. modem to modem pc) is a little harder to deal with
(and thankfully now with net it's a lot less common) as there's no way to
tell if it's a person or a modem calling without sending out an answering
modem tone and see if the caller responds, response means modem called
(that's the way they work by design).
