ericthered26
Technical User
Ok, I'm going to explain this as best I can and hopefully someone can help me out.
We have a POS system in my mothers florist that handles our day to day stuff for us. It uses two modems, one for credit card authorizations and one to send orders to other florist out of town. The modem that handles sending orders to the network to go off to other florist also has to answering incoming calls on that line to recieve orders from other florist. Procomm plus handles this. The company that sold use the hardware/software claims that you need two seperate phone lines, one for each modem. But at about 80 dollars a line here (yeah, the phone company has us bent over), it's not a very good option, and with our old system we NEVER had a problem with two modems on one line. Procomm does not however handle the credit card side of it, another DOS program does. Of course the credit card processing program does not need to answering incoming calls. So that's a little background on the setup.
Now on to the problem! The modems are "daisy chained" like this: Incoming phone line > CC Modem >> Wire Service Modem. So the wire service modem is connected to the CC modem and the CC modem to the phone line. Most of the time, it's problematic but rarely it works just fine. When a credit card authorization tries to go through, the credit card modem will pick up the line, and Procomm will register this as a ring, and pick up the line. It then starts blasting out the modem connect sounds and eventually you get the "if you'd like to make a call" from the phone system. Procomm is setup to answer after only one ring, and most of the time it misinterprets the CC modem picking up the line as a ring, you can even see this in the procomm window. The company that sold it to us (we pay them 130 a month for support too ROFL), told us almost literally, "too bad, you need to get another line, or you're going to continue to have this problem."
I know that it's not that simple. I'm convinced it can be fixed, it worked with the old setup. I'm thinking it could be as simple as setting the number of rings it must see before answering to two. But, I can't change that setting. When I try and do it in procomm is still answers on 1 ring and when I restart the program it sets itself back to 1 ring....... Is this something that they likely set in the Aspect script? I know nothing of aspect scripting. I mean I used procomm years ago with DOS to connect to the BBS, but never did any scripting and really didn't realize it was there until I started looking into this problem. Of course they fail to provide us with the uncompiled version of the script, so I can't even look at it to see. And from looking at these forums, I understand that there is likely not a decompiler for the wax files.
Further I really doubt I could get the company to send me the uncompiled script lol. They basically don't care we even have this problem. Get another phone line is their solution and they don't even think it can be fixed. But a small business has to watch it's expenses and when you plop down 10 grand on a POS system with multiple workstations, and 130 a month for "support" and various other things, adding another 80 dollars a month when it used to work fine this way is kinda hard for us to swallow. I mean, I guess if it comes down to this then fine. It's beyond an annoyance at this point, when you have a customer in the store and five minutes later their CC still hasn't been authorized cause the modems are playing games with each other, it's embarrasing. They do eventually time out and start the process again, but it has been known to happen twice in a row.
So any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I mean, am I missing something or did they likely set the number of rings before answering with the aspect script? Sorry for such a long post!
Thanks guys!
Eric
We have a POS system in my mothers florist that handles our day to day stuff for us. It uses two modems, one for credit card authorizations and one to send orders to other florist out of town. The modem that handles sending orders to the network to go off to other florist also has to answering incoming calls on that line to recieve orders from other florist. Procomm plus handles this. The company that sold use the hardware/software claims that you need two seperate phone lines, one for each modem. But at about 80 dollars a line here (yeah, the phone company has us bent over), it's not a very good option, and with our old system we NEVER had a problem with two modems on one line. Procomm does not however handle the credit card side of it, another DOS program does. Of course the credit card processing program does not need to answering incoming calls. So that's a little background on the setup.
Now on to the problem! The modems are "daisy chained" like this: Incoming phone line > CC Modem >> Wire Service Modem. So the wire service modem is connected to the CC modem and the CC modem to the phone line. Most of the time, it's problematic but rarely it works just fine. When a credit card authorization tries to go through, the credit card modem will pick up the line, and Procomm will register this as a ring, and pick up the line. It then starts blasting out the modem connect sounds and eventually you get the "if you'd like to make a call" from the phone system. Procomm is setup to answer after only one ring, and most of the time it misinterprets the CC modem picking up the line as a ring, you can even see this in the procomm window. The company that sold it to us (we pay them 130 a month for support too ROFL), told us almost literally, "too bad, you need to get another line, or you're going to continue to have this problem."
I know that it's not that simple. I'm convinced it can be fixed, it worked with the old setup. I'm thinking it could be as simple as setting the number of rings it must see before answering to two. But, I can't change that setting. When I try and do it in procomm is still answers on 1 ring and when I restart the program it sets itself back to 1 ring....... Is this something that they likely set in the Aspect script? I know nothing of aspect scripting. I mean I used procomm years ago with DOS to connect to the BBS, but never did any scripting and really didn't realize it was there until I started looking into this problem. Of course they fail to provide us with the uncompiled version of the script, so I can't even look at it to see. And from looking at these forums, I understand that there is likely not a decompiler for the wax files.
Further I really doubt I could get the company to send me the uncompiled script lol. They basically don't care we even have this problem. Get another phone line is their solution and they don't even think it can be fixed. But a small business has to watch it's expenses and when you plop down 10 grand on a POS system with multiple workstations, and 130 a month for "support" and various other things, adding another 80 dollars a month when it used to work fine this way is kinda hard for us to swallow. I mean, I guess if it comes down to this then fine. It's beyond an annoyance at this point, when you have a customer in the store and five minutes later their CC still hasn't been authorized cause the modems are playing games with each other, it's embarrasing. They do eventually time out and start the process again, but it has been known to happen twice in a row.
So any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I mean, am I missing something or did they likely set the number of rings before answering with the aspect script? Sorry for such a long post!
Thanks guys!
Eric
, as I just don't know.