Re: Device That Interfaces Between Phone/CallerID and Serial Port?

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Integrated Voice Response (IVR) system
> You need an IVR that can process the CID DTMF. Amanda comes to mind,

Ah, IVR is the jargon I was looking for in my original request. So I'm looking for the cheapest standalone IVR device I can find. Thanks.

In about 30 minutes, you ought to be able to build a pretty long wish > list and download some use(ful/less) software.

Two problems: My Macintosh has less than 17 megabytes available on hard disk, and most software I've seen on that Web site doesn't run on a Macintosh in the first place.

The IVR solution requires some serious hardware. In an Amanda > implementation you need a voice mail card (2 port version about $600 > or find one on eBay and get yourself a PC that accepts ISA boards) and > the software.

I have no money to buy a PC, and no space here to put one even if I got one for free. Your use of "card" bothers me. It sounds like something that plugs inside a computer I don't have, not anything I can just sit next to my Macintosh and use via serial port the way I use my current SupraExpress 56 modem.

Amanda allows variable length digit strings to be sent before the > greeting and can route according to the digits received. If the 10 > digit mailbox esists, play the greeting, if it doesn't, play the > greeting you suggested above.

I don't need any multi-line device. I have just one phone line, and one thing I hold in my hand to talk on phone. No mailboxes here. I just need something that will protect me from ten to twenty harassing calls per day, while allowing that one or two non-harassing calls per month to ring my hand-phoneset, using a sort of touch-tone Turing test to discrimate between somebody who has a legitimate reason for contacting me from the others who are just harassing me. (And what do you call that phone-handset anyway? The thing that has a base with touch-tone pad, and a thing you hold in your hand with microphone and earspeaker?) .