Theo wrote:
> In comp.sys.raspberry-pi William Unruh  wrote:
>> Yes, I know.
>> I am suggesting that he get a good printer, a good scanner and a
>> faxmodem. You know-- the Unix philosophy-- small items each of which
>> does its job well, lined together to acmplish the task?
>
> It's been a very long time, but I don't recall such a thing as a 'good'
> faxmodem.  Either they didn't work reliably due to differences in AT command
> sets, or you had to install Winmodem drivers that used your CPU to do the
> signal processing, but with Windows driver hell (and rarely on Linux).  In
> the intervening time the drivers have rotted and the hardware ended up at
> lowest-common-denominator such that I'm doubtful you can buy a new modem
> today that will work out of the box for sending faxes from Linux.
>
> The advantage of a multifunction device is that the vendor has tested the
> whole workflow - scan/send/receive/print - and all the pieces work together.
> As a standalone device there's no drivers to mess with if you are faxing
> from paper, and printing then scanning is the backup plan if there's
> problems with fax drivers from Linux.
>
> Theo

Buy a modem with a datapump.

Several people have already specified the models
that use datapumps.

A datapump is a 90MHz 8 bit processor that executes
a DSP algorithm. It filters the 4KHz phone signal
into frequency buckets. Very similar to how ADSL
uses buckets too. By using buckets, frequencies
where transmission isn't working very well, can
be partially avoided.

The same algorithm can be executed on a host processor,
as in the winmodem case. It should be easy for Linux
to do this. And mainly a matter of accessing the
ADC and moving bytes from it, to the memory
area where the DSP action will be carried out.

Winmodems can actually *exceed* a Courier or
Sportster at thruput, by around 1% or so. It used
to be the opinion, that a DSP algo carried out
on a host CPU was no match for a datapump. Today,
the host DSP code is actually slightly better than
the datapump firmware.

The biggest enemy of FAX today, is "VOIP".
FAX only works at 9600 baud over VOIP, and
14400 is not likely to work. This means your
FAX transmission will likely take more time.

There are other ways of digitally interworking
with FAX (mail to FAX gateway), but the old way
(use a modem) allows the user to
control every aspect of the job.

    Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05