| One of the greatest successes of the
eighties is undoubtedly the fax machine (and also the portable version called the Filofax).
All of a sudden, offices everywhere required two telephone numbers - one for their
telephone and the other for their fax machine. In fact, such was the demand for additional
telephone numbers for fax machines in London that British Telecom had to do away with the
01 code and replace it with the 071 and 081 codes. The greatest benefits of having a fax machine is
obviously it's speed and cost-effectiveness. Imagine that you had a very important letter.
If you posted it first class, it should arrive at it's destination the next day. But, you
need it to arrive today. In this case, you hire a motorcycle courier to deliver the letter
today for you. By the end of the month, you've blown your postages budget for the entire
year. With the fax machine, the recipient receives the letter the exact minute that the
sender sends it. And all for the cost of a two minute telephone call.
This may start you worrying about the
complexity of such a machine, but I bet that you can make one yourself! Basically, a fax
machine scans the paper as it goes through, converts this information to computer data and
sends this data down the telephone lines. If you've been following the last two Hard
Cases, you'll know how easy it is to create scanners and modems. All we need
to do now is join the two of them together. It's as simple as that!
The usual words of warning apply - if
you make the electrical circuits incorrectly, you might just end up receiving your final
demand.
Required:
JAM, last two issues
Photocopier
BT Trimphone
Small screwdriver
Medium screwdriver
3 metre serial cable (Tandy ref. 3M SERIAL CABLE)
Sharp knife
Plastic strip wire connector, twelve socket variety (Tandy ref. 12 PLASTIC STRIP WIRE
CONNECTOR)
Can of Irn Bru
Lego Technic, sufficient to make a box 4cm by 4cm by 8cm
Bell wire
F-M Interconnector (Tandy ref. F-M INTERCONNECTOR)
Method:
- Locate the Custom Hardware Interface
Panel (Serial) in the photocopier and the conductive relay in the Trimphone (refer to the
previous Hard Cases).
- Remove the conductive relay.
- Cut the non-Amiga-fitting end off the
serial cable.
- Construct the Lego control box without
fitting the lid (see Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3).
- Connect the serial cable to the plastic
strip wire connector as follows:
Blue to Connector 1
Yellow to Connector 2
Red to Connector 3
Pink to Connector 4
Black to Connector 5
Grey to Connector 6
- Connect the red and blue wires of the
conductive relay to the F-M Interconnector (it doesn't matter which side of the F-M
Interconnector you interconnect them to) (see Figure 4).
- Using the bell wire, connect Socket 1
(this may instead be coloured yellow) and Socket 9 (fuchsia) of CHIPS to the connectors on
the opposite side of the red and blue wires respectively (see Figure
4 (again)).
- Connect the remaining conductive relay
wires to the plastic strip wire connector on the opposite side of the serial cable:
Orange to Connector 1
Yellow to Connector 2
White to Connector 5
Brown to Connector 6
- Using more bell wire, connect CHIPS to
the plastic strip wire connector as follows:
Socket 2 (Green) to Serial Connector 7
Socket 3 (Magenta) to Serial Connector 9
Socket 4 (White) to Relay Connector 7
Socket 7 (Cyan) to Relay Connector 8
Socket 15 (Grey) to Relay Connector 9
Socket 20 (Blue) to Serial Connector 8
- Place the Lego control box very
carefully over both the F-M Interconnector and the conductive relay and close the lid.
- Very carefully, place this box for
safety on top of the can of Irn Bru.
- Connect the serial cable to the Amiga
and switch on (see Figure 5).
- Use Prefs/Serial to set the BAUD Rate to
9200, Input Buffer Size to 1024, Handshaking to RTS/CTS, Parity to EVEN, Bits Per
Character to 7 and 2 Stop Bits.
- Create the MountList entry (see the MountList).
- Mount FAX: and enjoy (see Figure 6)!
MountList:
/* This is the MountList
for the Facsimile Machine */
FAX: Handler =
L:Aux-Handler
StackSize = 10000
Priority = 5
Buffers = 5
BufMemType = 1
Mount = 1
/* This has been a Wally
Dug Production
Copyright © Wally Dug Multimedia 1992
*/
#
Notes:
- Files can be saved as ASCII or IFF and
can be prepared and sent using most word processors.
- As FAX: is a logical AmigaDOS device,
disk-based files can be redirected to FAX: using the AmigaDOS COPY command along with the
redirection flags (> and >>).
- In certain circumstances, this set-up
will not work unless the can of Irn Bru is turned upside down.
- On no account should you stick your
fingers or any other part of your anatomy into connectors 10, 11 or 12 of the plastic
strip wire connector.
That's all for the now. Next month,
I'll be showing all you hard drive owners how you can build your very own tape streamer. |
