I'm looking for a device that connects between my telephone line
> and the serial (RS232) port on my computer, capturing caller-ID on
> incoming phone calls and using that information to determine whether
> to ring my phone immediately or put up various touch-tone menus
> the caller must traverse.
> What is the correct jargon for such a device? (So that I might do a
> Google search and find the info I seek.)
Assuming you are looking for a device that receives Caller-ID, and the voice menu stuff is done by something else, I think it's called "a cheap modem". It needs Caller-ID but it doesn't need 56K or even
33.6k speeds. You don't want to set it up to auto-answer. The modem's RING response code will include caller-ID if it's set up to return it.
The various Digium PCI cards used by Asterisk to interface with analog phone lines let you do a lot more, including the voice menu stuff itself, but they don't do RS-232.
Gordon L. Burditt